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

Leg, p. 210. The various signs left by the Lakota and Cheyenne are described in Libby, pp. 78–79. According to the Arikara scout Soldier, they found “a stone with two bulls drawn on it. On one bull was drawn a bullet and on the other a lance. The two bulls were charging toward each other. Custer asked Bloody Knife to translate it and Bloody Knife said it meant a hard battle would occur if an enemy came that way,” Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 187. Red Star’s comment that Custer had “a heart like an Indian” is in Libby, p. 77. Custer’s participation in the ceremony in Medicine Arrow’s lodge is described by Grinnell in The Fighting Cheyennes, p. 264; by John Stands in Timber in Cheyenne Memories, p. 82; and by Custer himself in My Life on the Plains, pp. 357–58. Charles Windolph in I Fought with Custer writes, “[S]eems to me that Indians must have put some curse . . . on the white men who first touched their sacred Black Hills. . . . Custer got a lot of notoriety from his Black Hills Expedition. . . . But he never had any luck after that,” p. 43. In a note in Indian Views of the Custer Fight, Richard Hardorff describes Custer’s flag as “a large, swallow-tailed guidon, divided into a red and blue field, with white crossed sabers in the center,” p. 55. Godfrey told how the wind repeatedly knocked down Custer’s flag in his Field Diary, edited by Stewart, pp. 8–9, and in “Custer’s Last Battle,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, pp. 135–36.
    Wooden Leg speaks of the how the report of large numbers of antelope caused the village to move down the Little Bighorn in Marquis, Wooden Leg, p. 204. General Scott recorded that some Crow Indians had told him that the term Greasy Grass came from “a kind of grass growing up near the headwaters of [the river] that bore a kind of greasy pod or berry. After a horse had eaten a little while his jaws and nuzzle would be thickly smeared with a greasy substance,” in folder 52, Camp Papers, BYU. According to Ernie LaPointe in part 2 of The Authorized Biography of Sitting Bull, the term relates to the muddy slickness of the grass after a rain. Wooden Leg described the formation of Sitting Bull’s village on the Little Bighorn in Marquis, Wooden Leg, p. 206; see also Richard Fox’s “West River History: The Indian Village on the Little Bighorn River,” pp. 139–65. One Bull described how he and his uncle climbed to the top of the hills overlooking the river in box 104, folder 18, WCC. Robert Utley wrote of the Battle of Killdeer Mountain in The Lance and the Shield, pp. 55–57. White Bull described the battle in box 105, notebook 24, WCC.
    The interpreter Billy Garnett’s account of how the Lakota believed “that the first white man came out of the water” and their use of the warning “Wamunitu!” are recorded in the typescript of the Walter Camp Papers, BYU, p. 652. In The Oregon Trail, Parkman wrote how after they’d wiped out a Dakota war party, the Snakes “became alarmed, dreading the resentment of the Dakota,” p. 85. Sitting Bull’s “Dream Cry” is in “25 Songs by Sitting Bull,” box 104, folder 18, WCC. One Bull also told of Sitting Bull’s “Dream Cry” on the night before the Little Bighorn, box 104, folder 18, WCC. Utley described Sitting Bull’s appeal to Wakan Tanka in The Lance and the Shield, p. 144. Wooden Leg told of the dance on the night of June 24, 1876, in Marquis, Wooden Leg, p. 215.

Chapter 8: The Crow’s Nest
    Benteen wrote two narratives of the battle, both in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, where he speaks of his greeting by Keogh, pp. 165, 179. Brian Pohanka writes of Keogh’s life in Italy and the Civil War in “Myles Keogh from the Vatican to the Little Big Horn,” pp. 15–24; Pohanka cites Captain Theo Allen’s remark about Keogh’s spotless and tight-fitting uniform, p. 20; Pohanka also cites Keogh’s comments to his sister about the need for “a certain lack of sensitiveness,” p. 22, and Libbie’s description of Keogh as “hopelessly boozy,” p. 22. Edgerly’s letter to his wife in which he mentions Custer’s handling of Keogh prior to the battle is in E. C. Bailly’s “Echoes from Custer’s Last Fight,” p. 172. Benteen’s July 25, 1876, letter to his wife in which he relates his “queer dream of Col. Keogh” is in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 150. Ronald Nichols provides a synopsis of DeRudio’s career prior to joining the U.S. cavalry in Men with