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

that he and a delegation of Lakota spoke with Custer prior to the Seventh’s departure from Fort Lincoln in May 1876 and “asked him not to fight the Sioux Indians, but to go to them in a friendly way. . . . We begged him to promise us that he would not fight the Sioux. He promised us, and we asked him to raise his hand to God that he would not fight the Sioux, and he raised his hand. . . . After we got through talking, he soon left the agency, and we soon heard that he was fighting the Indians and that he and all his men were killed,” Joseph Dixon, The Vanishing Race, pp. 76–77.
    In a note, Hardorff writes, “Evidence suggests . . . that [Black Bear and his party] were treated with contempt by the camp police of the Northern bands,” in Indian Views, p. 45. Black Bear’s account, in which he refers to how they attempted to camouflage themselves with grass, is in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 203; see also Standing Bear’s account in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 214, and He Dog’s account, in which he says Black Bear “took a look at the soldiers and went toward the agencies,” Camp Papers typescript, p. 291, BYU. White Bull, Brave Wolf, and Hump claimed that Black Bear returned to the camp after seeing the soldiers, in Hardorff, Indian Views, pp. 50–51. Varnum described how he and some others went off in pursuit of Crawler and Deeds in Custer’s Chief of Scouts, p. 63; he described Black Bear’s party on the ridge as looking “as large as elephants,” p. 88.
    Custer’s argument with the Crow scouts about whether or not the regiment had been discovered is in Libby, p. 92. John Finerty quoted Crook’s complaint that “it is rather difficult to surround three Indians with one soldier,” in War-Path and Bivouac, p. 198. In To Hell with Honor, Larry Sklenar writes, “Custer won at the Washita not by annihilating all of the Indians in a small village . . . but by taking as many prisoners as possible and then using them to make good his escape through a force of warriors that might have done the Seventh great damage,” p. 112. Varnum said he saw only two tepees at the intermediate village location, in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 60. Fred Gerard spoke of seeing “a large black mass,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 250. Godfrey in “Custer’s Last Battle” wrote, “The scouts saw the smoke . . . and the pony herds . . . when the vision was at the best, through a clear, calm atmosphere, with early morning sun at their backs; Custer’s observations at the same place were made at near midday, with a high overhead sun; he had a hazy atmosphere from the heated earth,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 295. Varnum described the Crows’ telescope as “a mere toy,” in Richard Hardorff’s On the Little Bighorn with Walter Camp, p. 103. On the optics of field glasses, then and now, see Vern Smalley’s More Little Bighorn Mysteries, p. 4-4. My description of Custer’s Civil War experience with a hot-air balloon is based on Tom Crouch’s The Eagle Aloft: Two Centuries of the Balloon in America, pp. 383–86. Varnum told of Custer’s interchange with Mitch Boyer at the Crow’s Nest in Custer’s Chief of Scouts, p. 88. Gerard described Custer’s displeasure with discovering that the regiment had left the ravine in Frances Holley’s Once Their Home, p. 264.
    Vern Smalley discusses the quality of DeRudio’s field glasses in More Little Bighorn Mysteries, p. 4-4. Although Varnum claimed Custer did not return to the Crow’s Nest a second time, in Custer’s Chief of Scouts, p. 102, DeRudio, who gave Custer his binoculars, claimed otherwise; see Richard Hardorff’s On the Little Bighorn with Walter Camp, pp. 100–101, as well as DeRudio’s testimony in Hammer, Custer in ’76, in which he spoke of Custer seeing “cloudlike objects,” p. 83. Luther Hare also claimed, “During this halt, Custer again went to the Crow’s Nest to look at Indians,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 64. According to Willert in Little Big Horn Diary, Custer’s second look from the divide may not have been from the Crow’s Nest proper; according to Curley’s nephew, Custer “took his view from the top of the slope north of Davis Creek,” p. 444. Gerard claimed that “the camp we had found was the smaller camp,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 250. According to Lieutenant Charles Woodruff, the intermediate village contained “about sixty lodges . . . and . . . in the early morning, when