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

River on June 6, 1876, in Terry Letters, pp. 16–17. Boston Custer described the march to the Powder River in a June 8, 1876, letter to his mother in Merington, p. 300. Lieutenant Winfield Edgerly also described the march in an Oct. 10, 1877, letter to Libbie Custer in Merington, pp. 301–2. Peter Thompson’s description of Custer’s erratic riding habits is in Peter Thompson’s Account of the Battle of the Little Bighorn: The Waddington Typescript, edited by Michael L. Wyman and Rocky L. Boyd (subsequently referred to as Account ), p. 6. The description of a cavalry charge is from Frederick Whittaker’s Life of Custer, p. 158. In the July 29, 1876, Army and Navy Journal, General A. B. Nettleton wrote of Custer’s “instantaneous quickness of eye—that is lightning-like formation and execution of successive correct judgments in a rapidly-shifting situation.” Wert provides a good account of Custer’s activities prior to attending West Point, pp. 22–25. Custer wrote of his wish “to see a battle every day during my life” in an Oct. 9, 1862, letter cited in Thom Hatch’s Custer Companion, p. 20. Thom Hatch provides an excellent account of Custer’s role in the Battle of Gettysburg in Clashes of Cavalry, p. 118, to which I am indebted; for a recent, more detailed account of Custer’s pivotal role at that battle, see Thom Carhart’s Lost Triumph, pp. 213–40. Sheridan’s note to Libbie is quoted by Frost in General Custer’s Libbie, p. 130. Custer’s tongue-lashing of Corporal French is described in Account, p. 7. Red Star told of Custer’s abuse of Isaiah Dorman in Libby, p. 195, and of Custer’s firing at Bloody Knife during the Black Hills Expedition, p. 194. Custer’s claim that they were “the first white men to see the Powder River at this point of its course” is related by Edgerly in Merington, p. 302, as is Terry’s claim that “nobody but General Custer could have brought us through such a country,” in Merington, p. 302. Boston Custer wrote of Terry and his staff’s “exalted opinion of themselves” in a June 8, 1876, letter to his mother in Merington, p. 301.
    In a June 8, 1876, letter, Terry wrote, “The steamer was waiting for us & a welcome sight she was,” Terry Letters, p. 17. Mark Kellogg wrote of how “the sharp quick march of the cavalry kept pace with the steamer which was running up the Yellowstone,” in the July 11, 1876, New York Herald . Hanson writes of Terry’s trip up and down the Yellowstone with Marsh and the Far West on June 9, 1876, pp. 241–44. Lieutenant James Bradley’s journal provides an excellent account of the Montana Column’s movements prior to joining up with Terry in “Journal of the Sioux Campaign of 1876 Under the Command of General John Gibbon,” pp. 204–12.
    Hanson describes Marsh and Terry’s encounter with a herd of buffalo crossing the Missouri River in 1867, pp. 96–98. Yet another example of Marsh’s coolness in a crisis came in 1894, when his steamboat the Little Eagle was hit by a tornado. Only after he was sure that his crew had made it to the relative safety of the barge at the riverboat’s bow did Marsh, still at the wheel in the pilothouse, begin to look out for himself. But by then the Little Eagle was in the tornado’s grip. The vessel lurched suddenly to the side, and Marsh watched helplessly as the boilers broke loose from the tipping deck and exploded on contact with the cold river water. Before the now heavily damaged boat completely capsized, Marsh, then sixty years old, managed to climb out of the pilothouse through an open window. As the riverboat turned completely upside down, Marsh scrambled over the side and onto the bottom of the turtled hull while his crew watched in amazement from the barge, in Hanson, pp. 422–25. Terry wrote of what he hoped to accomplish with Reno’s Scout on June 8, 1876, in, Terry Letters, p. 19.

Chapter 4: The Dance
    For information on Sitting Bull’s sun dance and sun dances in general, I have consulted Peter Powell’s “Sacrifice Transformed into Victory: Standing Bear Portrays Sitting Bull’s Sun Dance and the Final Summer of Lakota Freedom” in Visions of the People, edited by Evan Maurer, pp. 81–108; Standing Bear’s account in The Sixth Grandfather, edited by Raymond DeMallie, pp. 173–74; Black Elk’s in The Sacred Pipe, edited by Joseph Epes Brown, pp. 67–100; Ella Deloria’s excellent description of the ceremony in Waterlily, pp. 113–39; and