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

chiefs and elders and to the key brokers of warrior opinion,” see Bray, Crazy Horse, p. 177.
    Utley writes of how the opening of the Milk River Agency represented a conscious attempt to undercut Sitting Bull’s influence; Utley also discusses the small number of lodges remaining with the Hunkpapa leader during the winter of 1872–73 in Lance and Shield, p. 97. According to Catherine Price in The Oglala People, 1841–1879, “The tiyospaye was commonly composed of ten or more bilaterally extended families,” p. 2. Grouard describes his falling out with Sitting Bull in DeBarthe, pp. 109–13. White Bull describes Sitting Bull’s courageous pipe-smoking demonstration in 1872, ww box 105, notebook 24; WCC. Grouard was with the Lakota along the Yellowstone during their encounter with the Seventh Cavalry in 1873 and remarked on the playing of the regimental band, DeBarthe, p. 114. Barrows’s description of the “stirring Irish air” was in the Sept. 9, 1873, New York Tribune .
    Standing Bear’s memory of Sitting Bull’s comparison of the Black Hills to a food pack is in DeMallie’s The Sixth Grandfather, p. 164. Bray has an excellent account of the U.S. government’s “general uncertainty about the region’s significance in a time of unprecedented crisis,” Crazy Horse, p. 187. Grouard speaks of his difficulties readjusting to a white diet in DeBarthe, p. 88; he also tells of his troubles relearning the English language, p. 175, and the varying reactions of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull to his return with a peace delegation, pp. 173–74. Hyde in Red Cloud’s Folk writes of Little Big Man’s confrontation with the peace commissioners, pp. 243–44.
    John Gray in Centennial Campaign cites the Watkins letter recommending military force, as well as Sheridan’s description of the Jan. 31, 1876, deadline as a “good joke,” pp. 28–33. Grouard tells of his role as government scout during the winter and spring of 1876 in DeBarthe, pp. 181–88; he also speaks of carrying “a map of the country in my mind,” p. 154. Wooden Leg described the army’s attack on his village in Marquis, Wooden Leg, pp. 161–67. John Gray has created a useful chronology of the village’s movements that winter and spring (largely based on Wooden Leg’s account) in Centennial Campaign, pp. 321–34. Wooden Leg describes Sitting Bull’s reception of the Cheyenne refugees in Marquis, Wooden Leg, pp. 170–72, as well as how Sitting Bull had “come now into admiration by all Indians,” p. 178. Vestal relates Crazy Horse’s explanation of the soldiers’ behavior in Warpath, p. 182; Vestal also discusses the dangers of staying on the reservation, writing, “it was so convenient to kill friendlies,” in Sitting Bull, p. 69. Wooden Leg speaks of Sitting Bull’s insistence that the warriors hunt instead of fight in Marquis, Wooden Leg, pp. 179, 185. Kill Eagle’s account of being forced to join Sitting Bull’s village is in W. A. Graham’s The Custer Myth, p. 49.
    One Bull describes Sitting Bull’s activities during the 1876 sun dance in box 104, folder 6, and box 110, folder 8, WCC. Grouard’s description of the “scarlet blanket” is in DeBarthe, p. 120. Raymond DeMallie in “ ‘These Have No Ears’: Narrative and Ethnohistorical Method” provides a probing analysis of how Vestal/Campbell interpreted and inevitably adjusted the accounts of Sitting Bull’s sun dance he received from both One Bull and White Bull, pp. 518–20. For a reference to the Rock Writing Bluff, see DeMallie’s The Sixth Grandfather, p. 198. Concerning the consequences of not following Sitting Bull’s injunction about the spoils, Ernie LaPointe, Sitting Bull’s great-grandson, says, “When you don’t follow a vision to the end, you will suffer,” in The Authorized Biography of Sitting Bull, part 2.

Chapter 5: The Scout
    Judge Bacon’s deathbed words about Custer having been “born a soldier” are in Frost, General Custer’s Libbie, p. 150, as is Libbie’s plea to Custer that “we must die together,” p. 126. Custer tells of his encounter with the psychic in an Apr. 17, 1866, letter to Libbie in the Merington Papers at the New York Public Library, cited by Barnett in Touched by Fire, pp. 59–60. Custer’s letter to Libbie about how “troublesome and embarrassing babies would be to us” is in Frost, General Custer’s Libbie, p. 178. Custer’s Jan. 31, 1876, telegram to General Terry about his impending bankruptcy is in the