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

belief that he “was being drawn into some trap,” as well as Reno’s response to the soldiers’ cheers: “Stop that noise,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 287. William Taylor heard Reno’s slurred order to charge then saw him sharing a bottle of whiskey with Lieutenant Hodgson, in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 151, and in Taylor’s own With Custer on the Little Big Horn, p. 36. Reno testified that he felt he had obeyed Custer’s orders: “I did not charge into the village, but I went far enough to discover that it was impossible. Of course, ten men could be ordered to charge a million: a brilliant illustration is the battle of Balaklava. I then knew nothing of the topography, but it afterwards developed that had I gone 300 yards further the command would have been thrown into a ditch 10 yards wide and 3 or 4 feet deep,” in W. A. Graham, RCI, p. 227. In Hardorff’s On the Little Bighorn, Varnum asserted that due to the line of timber on the right, only those in the advance on the left of the line could see “the tops of a few tepees, enough to show where the village was,” p. 101. Dr. Porter insisted that most of them couldn’t see the village until they had fled into the timber, and then the village was a quarter mile away, in W. A. Graham, RCI , p. 64. My description of how the horse holders secured the other three horses is based largely on Hutchins’s Boots and Saddles, p. 40. Rutten related his wild ride to the verge of the village and back to Camp, in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 118. Taylor in With Custer recounted the orders “Halt” and “Prepare to fight on foot,” p. 37.
    The testimony of Pretty White Buffalo Woman (also known as Mrs. Horn Bull) is in James McLaughlin’s My Friend the Indian, pp. 166–70, and in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, pp. 81–87. Little Soldier’s account is in Hardorff’s Indian Views, pp. 173–78. Kate Bighead told her story to Marquis, in The Custer Reader, edited by Paul Hutton, pp. 363–77. Black Elk’s account of children running from the river is in DeMallie’s The Sixth Grandfather, p. 181. One Bull’s account is in box 115, WCC, and is cited by Hardorff in Hokahey! , p. 38; see also One Bull’s account in Hardorff’s Indian Views, pp. 138–41. Holy Face Bear corroborated the fact that Sitting Bull’s first reaction to the attack was to see if the soldiers might be willing to negotiate; he remembered the Hunkpapa chief saying, “Wait, these men may want to make a treaty with us,” in Hardorff’s Indian Views, p. 182. According to Gray Whirlwind, Sitting Bull said, “I don’t want my children to fight until I tell them. That army may be come to make peace, be officials bringing rations to us.” Gray Whirlwind also recounted how the death of Sitting Bull’s “best horse” caused him to shout, “It is like they have shot me; attack them,” box 105, notebook 14, WCC.
    John Ryan told of using the prairie dog village as a breastwork, in Barnard’s Ten Years with Custer, p. 293. Private Daniel Newell opted for a buffalo wallow; “I said to myself,” he remembered, “ ‘Here is a good breastworks,’ ” in John Carroll’s Sunshine Magazine, p. 10. Thomas O’Neill told how “the men were in good spirits, talking and laughing and not apprehensive of being defeated and the Sioux . . . were . . . keeping well out of range,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 107. Charles White’s account of seeing the officers drinking whiskey is in Hardorff’s Indian Views, p. 17. Sergeant Culbertson testified that on the skirmish line “some of the new men [were] firing very fast,” W. A. Graham, RCI, p. 122; one of the men in Culbertson’s company reported that he’d fired sixty cartridges while on the skirmish line, p. 127. Moylan testified, “[I]t was impossible for an officer to regulate [the soldiers’ fire], owing to the men being new in the service, and not under fire before. On the part of those new men it was wild and at random,” in Utley’s Reno Court of Inquiry, p. 214, which also includes Varnum’s account of soldiers “shooting right up in the air,” p. 154. Hutchins in Boots and Saddles describes how the men’s ammunition was distributed between their belts and their saddlebags, p. 33; he also discusses the weapons used by Ryan and French, p. 30. Morris wrote how French and Ryan “scored hits,” in Neil Mangum’s “Reno’s Battalion in the Battle of the Little Big Horn,” p. 5; Morris claimed he fired thirty