The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Big Horn

Dr. Porter went “pistol shooting” with Lieutenants Harrington and Hodgson: “Porter was best,” he wrote, “so you see, some of the cavalry cannot shoot well,” in Luce, “Diary and Letters,” p. 81. Peter Thompson’s daughter Susan recorded her father’s comment about being scared “spitless” of his Springfield carbine in her unpublished manuscript about her father’s account of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. She also had some additional comments about the training standards of the Seventh Cavalry: “Thompson said . . . that he scarcely knew how to shoot a gun, he was scared ‘spitless’ of one. He had gotten to shoot his gun a little on the way from Ft. Lincoln when hunting was permitted, briefly, but that was about all the experience he had and he was simply not at ease with his gun loaded. Target practice had been neglected the winter of 1875–76. Of course, Thompson had been in the cavalry for nine months and he was considered to be a ‘trained veteran.’ He was; of horse grooming, stable cleaning, wood cutting, water hauling, policing barracks, saluting smartly and keeping a low profile around officers, listening to jokes and barracks rumors. Apparently, the recruits were supposed to get on-the-job training, if they lived long enough,” pp. 252–53. My reference to the kick of a Springfield carbine and its reloading difficulties comes from personal experience; my thanks to Dr. Timothy Lepore for letting me fire his replicas of a Springfield and a Colt revolver.
    Charles Windolph mentioned the ironies of a German immigrant joining the army in I Fought with Custer, p. 4. The demographics of the Seventh are in Thomas O’Neil’s Custer Chronicles, “Profiles of the 7th by S. Caniglia,” p. 36. The statistics concerning the size of the army and the territory it was responsible for are in Jay Smith’s “A Hundred Years Later” in Custer and His Times, edited by Paul Andrew Hutton, p. 125. According to Windolph, the “Old Timers” told the new recruits “we must save our last cartridge to blow out our own brains,” p. 6. John Keegan in Fields of Battle writes of the various levels of experience among the soldiers of the Seventh and adds, “[T]here were too many unfamiliar faces for it to be reckoned by European officers an effective fighting force,” p. 285. Don Rickey in Forty Miles writes of the high rate of suicide in the U.S. Army, p. 165, and claims that alcoholism was three times that of the British army, p. 159. James O’Kelly’s account of the hapless charge of Captain Weir’s company is in the Aug. 24, 1876, New York Herald . Charles King’s words of praise regarding the “snap and style” of the Seventh are in Campaigning with Crook, p. 72. Windolph described being “part of a proud outfit that had a fighting reputation” in I Fought with Custer, p. 53.
    Terry’s censure of Custer for having left the column “without any authority whatever” is from his May 31, 1876, diary entry, p. 19. Custer described his, Tom’s, and Boston’s antics in a May 31, 1876, letter to Libbie in Boots and Saddles, p. 270. Custer’s May 31 letter to Terry is in the Letters Received 1876 Record Group 98, NA. DeWolf wrote to his wife on June 1, 1876: “The men in their dog tents have it worst. They have been standing around the fire most of the day,” in Luce, “Diary and Letters,” p. 78. Terry wrote of his fears the Indians had scattered on May 30, 1876, in Terry Letters, p. 9. Terry described his quarters during the snowstorm on June 2, 1876, in Terry Letters, p. 13. Mark Kellogg wrote of the meeting between Terry and messengers from Gibbon in the June 12, 1876, New York Herald . In his diary, edited by Edgar Stewart, Godfrey wrote in a June 4, 1876, entry, “Genl Terry had Sun stroke today,” p. 5. Terry described his tactical thinking in great detail on June 12, 1876, in Terry Letters, p. 15. Edward Maguire described the alkaline bottomlands encountered by the column during its march toward the Powder River, in John Carroll’s General Custer . . . The Federal View, p. 41. The phrase “the sky fitting close down all around” is quoted by Libbie Custer in Following the Guidon, p. 196. DeWolf described his terrible sunburn in his diary, in Luce, “Diary and Letters,” pp. 79–80. As Chorne observes, “[I]f [a soldier] had a mustache, his upper lip . . . was protected,” p. 122.
    Terry told of his conversation with Custer about getting the column to the Powder