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

Morris as the two soldiers climbed up the hill after crossing the river—refers to the practice of shaving the tail of a new, unbroken mule to distinguish it from the seasoned animals. Morris’s account of Hare’s brave actions after the retreat to Reno Hill are in Wengert and Davis’s That Fatal Day, p. 27. In a Jan. 31, 1896, letter to Goldin, Benteen claimed to have seen Moylan “blubbering like a whipped urchin, tears coursing down his cheeks,” in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 243.
    According to Trumpeter William Hardy, Sergeant Henry Fehler of A Company “had an unruly horse and could not get the guidon in [his] boot,” in Hardorff’s Camp, Custer, p. 88. DeRudio told of how he lost his horse while trying to pick up the A Company guidon, in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 253, and in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 65. DeRudio testified, “I went back for the guidon because I think it the duty of a soldier to preserve his colors at the risk of his life, though when I went, I did not think there was any danger,” in W. A. Graham, RCI, p. 115. O’Neill told how Jackson quieted his and Gerard’s horses by stuffing “a large bunch of grass” in each of their mouths, in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 108. My thanks to the Reverend Eugene McDowell for his explanation of what happens when a stallion and a mare find themselves in close quarters. Private Henry Petring recounted how he was midstream in the LBH when he jumped from his horse and swam back down to the timber, where he joined Herendeen and the others, in Hammer, Custer in ’76, pp. 133–34. Herendeen’s speech to the dozen or so troopers, in which he said he was an “old frontiersman” and “would get them out of the scrape, which was no worse than scrapes I had been in before,” is in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 258.
    Red Feather told of seeing two Arikara “in white shirts and blue trousers running across the river. . . . Kicking Bear took after them and shouted, ‘These two are Indians—Palini!’ ” in Hardorff’s Lakota Recollections, p. 84. Young Hawk told of hugging his horse before launching into his own last stand in Libby , pp. 99–100. Black Elk described how he scalped the still-living soldier in DeMallie’s The Sixth Grandfather, p. 183. The Oglala Eagle Elk described Dorman’s death; he claimed a Hunkpapa woman named Her Eagle Robe shot Dorman, in Hardorff’s Lakota Recollections , pp. 101–2; as several scholars have pointed out, this is undoubtedly Moving Robe Woman. Although Moving Robe Woman does not mention the incident in her own narrative, it may have been because she feared possible retribution, given that the African American interpreter was well known at the Standing Rock Agency; see Gregory Michno’s Lakota Noon, p. 88. Years later, the cowboy Ed Lemmon remembered talking with Moving Robe Woman, whom he knew as Mary Crawler and who was “said to be the only real squaw who took part in the battle of the LBH in 1876. . . . She told of killing two wounded soldiers herself, shooting one and stabbing the other. She said she did it because some soldiers had hung an uncle of hers on Lance Creek a little before the battle,” in Boss Cowman: The Recollections of Ed Lemmon , edited by Nellie Yost, p. 88. My account of the mutilations inflicted on Dorman’s body is based on Hardorff’s The Custer Battle Casualties, pp. 148–50.
    In a Jan. 28, 1934, letter, Goldin wrote, “McIntosh showed the Indian blood in his features very plainly,” in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 47. In a June 5, 1934, letter to Goldin, Fred Dustin quoted Charles Roe’s account of finding McIntosh’s body: “[I]t was naked, badly mutilated . . . and the features hammered to a jelly. As our sergeant-major picked up a gutta percha sleeve button, he said, ‘This may lead to its identification.’ ” Later that day, McIntosh’s brother-in-law, Lieutenant Gibson, said that “before leaving Fort Abraham Lincoln his wife gave him those sleeve buttons,” in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 133. Charles White’s account of how Reno refused to go back for the wounded is in Hardorff’s Indian Views, p. 21. Several of the Lakota in the valley fight later told of an officer of unusual courage. It might have been Captain Thomas French, but it also might have been Dr. James Madison DeWolf. According to Charles Eastman in “Story of the Little Big Horn,” several Native participants told him there was an