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

Custer, p. 83. Benteen’s account of the conversation prior to officer’s call is in his narrative, in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 165. Godfrey in “Custer’s Last Battle” describes officer’s call in the dark as well as Custer’s original battle plan, in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth , p. 136. Varnum in Custer’s Chief of Scouts wrote of the Crows’ hope of seeing the village as the morning “camp fires started,” p. 61. John Finerty wrote of a night march in War-Path and Bivouac, pp. 241–42. Godfrey described losing his bearings when the dust cloud wafted away in “Custer’s Last Battle,” p. 136. Lee Irwin writes of the “below powers” and how “outstanding topographical features” provided the setting for Native visions in The Dream Seekers, p. 37.
    My account of the Battle of the Washita is based on the following sources: Richard Hardorff’s excellent compilation of primary source material in Washita Memories; Custer’s My Life on the Plains; Godfrey’s “Some Reminiscences, Including the Washita Battle, November 27, 1868”; Jerome Greene’s Washita: The U.S. Army and the Southern Cheyennes, 1876–9; Stan Hoig’s The Battle of the Washita; and Charles Brill’s Conquest of the Southern Plains . Greene in Washita refers to the campaign as “experimental,” p. 86; Custer’s description of setting out in the blizzard is from My Life on the Plains, pp. 215–16. Hardorff in Washita Memories has a useful note describing the “coloring of the horses,” p. 177, a process Custer describes in My Life, p. 208; Benteen’s complaints about Custer’s actions are in the annotations he left on his own copy of Custer’s book, cited by Hardorff in a note, Washita Memories, p. 177. Benteen wrote of how Elliott had been “peppering” Custer in a Feb. 12, 1896, letter to Goldin, in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 253. The doctor who examined Benteen in 1888 wrote that he “has had attacks of neuralgia of the head (beginning in the eyes) ever since his eyes were affected in 1868—a campaign on the snow . . . he blackened the eyelids above and below, with powder moistened with saliva. The glare affected the vision of the horses and men,” in John Carroll’s introduction to Karol Asay’s Gray Head and Long Hair: The Benteen-Custer Relationship, p. v.
    John Ryan wrote of the crunch of the horses’ hooves and how the men warmed the horses’ bits at night, in Ten Years with Custer, edited by Sandy Barnard, pp. 75, 72. Brewster’s comparison of the regiment to a snake winding up the valley is in Hardorff, Washita Memories, p. 159. Dennis Lynch told Walter Camp how Custer and Tom strangled one of Custer’s dogs with a lariat; William Stair claimed Custer tied a dog’s head up in a woman’s apron in an attempt to quiet it; in Walter Camp’s Field Notes, folder 75, BYU. Ryan described the black dog getting a picket pin through the skull in Barnard, Ten Years, p. 74. Ben Clark related how Custer summarily dismissed an officer’s fears that there might be too many Indians, in James Foley’s “Walter Camp and Ben Clark,” p. 20. Custer described the “rollicking notes” of “Garry Owen” in My Life, p. 240. Ben Clark was beside Custer as he charged into the village; see his interview with Walter Camp, cited in Hardorff, Washita Memories, p. 225. Custer described Benteen’s encounter with the young Cheyenne warrior in My Life, pp. 241–42. Benteen wrote of how he “broke up the village” in a Feb. 12, 1896, letter to Goldin, in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 252; he wrote of how he taught Custer to respect him at the Washita in a Jan. 11, 1896, letter, p. 238.
    Godfrey told of discovering the much larger village to the east and his conversation with Custer about Elliott in “Some Reminiscences,” pp. 493, 495–96. The Cheyenne Moving Behind, who was a young girl during the battle, remembered how the injured ponies “would moan loudly, just like human beings,” in Theodore Ediger and Vinnie Hoffman’s “Some Reminiscences of the Battle of the Washita,” p. 139. Dennis Lynch told of how the wounded ponies ate all the grass within their reach in Walter Camp Field Notes, folder 75, BYU. Benteen described the “steam-like volume of smoke” that rolled up from the burning tepees in the letter that was published in a St. Louis newspaper, in Hardorff, Washita Memories, p. 178. Charles Brill interviewed the scout Ben Clark, who claimed that after