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

history in the West, including the time in 1868 when as a trader at Fort Berthold he got into a scuffle with Sitting Bull, in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 229. Ring Cloud told Camp that Gerard was known as “Fast Bull,” in Richard Hardorff, Camp, Custer, and the Little Bighorn: A Collection of Walter Mason Camp’s Research Papers, p. 57. Peter Thompson recounted how at officer’s call at the divide, Custer told Gerard, “Go where you belong, and stay there,” Account, pp. 14–15; Thompson added, “It was Custer’s desire to keep every one in his proper place. This was perfectly right as in military life there must be discipline.” One Feather told Camp: “I scolded Gerard for not staying with us so as to give us the orders. Gerard left the scouts and went back with the soldiers and left us without an interpreter,” in Hardorff, Camp, Custer, p. 128. Gerard testified, “I turned my horse sideways, and waved my hat and hallooed to Gen. Custer, ‘Here are your Indians, running like devils, ’ ” in W. A. Graham, RCI, p. 35. Gerard told Camp, “[W]e could see a big dust over the valley . . . there being a north wind, and this gave the impression that the Indians were fleeing north,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 35. Reno’s account of Custer’s order to attack is in W. A. Graham, RCI, p. 212, as are the accounts of several officers and men. Red Bear spoke of Custer’s angry words to the Arikara scouts as well as one scout’s withering reply, in Libby, pp. 121–22. Varnum wrote of how he told Custer that the valley was “full of Indians,” as well as his final words with Custer, in Custer’s Chief of Scouts, pp. 65, 89. Varnum also wrote, “I was so completely exhausted that I could hardly sit in the saddle. Nothing but the excitement of going into action kept me in the saddle at all,” in Brininstool, p. 97.
    The Arikara scout Soldier’s affectionate memory of Lieutenant Cooke (“his very breath being nothing but kindness”) is in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 189. Reno’s description of his final interchange with Cooke is in W. A. Graham, RCI, p. 228. DeRudio told Camp that he “never quite forgave Custer” for not giving him the command of E Company; he also recounted his interchange with Reno at the LBH, in Hammer, Custer in ’76, pp. 83, 84. In an Apr. 1, 1898, letter to D. F. Barry, Benteen wrote of DeRudio: “the ‘Count’ was never at home on the Hurricane Deck of a horse,” in The D. F. Barry Correspondence, edited by John Carroll, p. 51. Gerard told Camp of how he went back to report to Cooke that the Indians were coming to fight us,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, pp. 231–32. What we know of the movements of Custer’s battalion after it left Reno comes primarily from the testimony of Sergeant Daniel Kanipe, Trumpeter John Martin, and Private Peter Thompson. Martin recounted Custer’s words while watering the horses, in The Reno Court of Inquiry: The Chicago Times Account, introduction by Utley, p. 312. The Arikara scout Soldier told how “Custer took off his buckskin coat and tied it on behind his saddle,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 188. According to Kanipe, “I sighted Indians on the top of the range of bluffs over the LBH River. I said to First Sergeant Bobo: ‘There are the Indians.’ Custer threw up his head about that time and we headed for the range of bluffs where we had seen the Indians,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 249. Donald Horn in “Custer’s Turn to the North” claims that Custer’s turn to the right was not in response to the Indians sighted by Kanipe but was instead in reaction to the news that the Indians were coming to meet Reno in “a temporary stand typical of rear guard action to bide time for a fleeing village. Custer wanted to get around Reno,” p. 20. In Little Big Horn Diary Willert writes, “[I]t was not due to a whimsical change of mind on Custer’s part that he failed to follow Reno into the valley but Gerard’s fear-aroused assertion that the hostiles were not running but pressing to attack the soldiers. This was not the situation at all. . . . [H]ow easily the uncertainty of a situation will accept the leadership of emotion rather than reason,” p. 274. Brian Pohanka in A Summer on the Plains writes that George Yates was so “neat and fastidious” that he “turn[ed] his pockets inside out every night and brush[ed] them,” p. 53; see also Pohanka’s “George Yates: Captain of the Band Box Troop.” Peter