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

officer who killed three warriors before “a gunshot brought him down” after crossing the river. “The Indians told me,” Eastman wrote, “of finding peculiar instruments on his person, from which I thought it likely this brave man was Dr. DeWolf, who was killed there.” DeWolf made the mistake of taking the leftmost route up the bluff, where a group of Indians were waiting in ambush. Although the warriors apparently rifled through DeWolf’s medical kit, the doctor’s notebook diary was found intact. Later inspection showed that DeWolf had been killed by a gunshot to the chest, then shot four times in the face with his own revolver; see Hardorff’s The Custer Battle Casualties, II, pp. 121–24. Porter recounted Reno’s assertion, “That was a charge, sir!” in W. A. Graham, RCI, p. 63.
    Benteen described his swing left as “valley hunting ad infinitum,” in W. A. Graham, RCI, p. 147. Gibson told Camp that he thought he did finally see the valley of the LBH before they headed back for the rest of the column. “He now thinks however,” Camp wrote, “that he only went far enough to look down on the valley of the south fork of Sundance Creek,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 80. Benteen wrote of his premonition of trouble in the LBH Valley in his narrative, in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 168; he also described how he outwitted his horse Old Dick at the morass, p. 169. My thanks to Susan Beegel for pointing out that by taking the bit out of his horse’s mouth at the morass Benteen unnecessarily delayed his battalion. Camp wrote that Benteen “heard firing just before starting [from the morass],” in Hardorff’s On the Little Bighorn, p. 219. Godfrey heard one of the officers at the morass say, “I wonder what the old man is keeping us here so long for?” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 75. Godfrey said that Weir impatiently said the battalion “ought to be over there” and left the morass without orders; “Benteen, seeing this, immediately ordered the column to advance,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 75. Godfrey recorded Kanipe’s claim “We’ve got them, boys!” in his Field Diary, edited by Stewart, p. 12. Martin’s description of his ride from Custer to Benteen, during which he encountered Custer’s brother Boston, is in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, pp. 290–91, and in Hammer, Custer in ’76, pp. 101, 104. Martin told Camp he never said, as Benteen claimed, that “the Indians were skedaddling,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 101; however, Edgerly claimed in a July 4, 1876, letter to his wife that Martin said, “The Indians skedaddled, leaving the village,” in Bailly, “Echoes from Custer’s Last Fight,” p. 177. Benteen wrote of Cooke’s note in a July 4, 1876, letter to his wife, in which he commented that Cooke “left out the K in the last packs,” in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters, p. 152. Edgerly reported that Benteen responded to the message by saying, “If I am going to be of service to him I think I had better not wait for the packs”; he also heard Martin “telling the boys that Reno had attacked the village,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, pp. 54, 55. When the battalion reached the split in the trail, Gibson heard Benteen say, “Here we have the two horns of a dilemma,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 80. Martin recounted Reno’s first words to Benteen, “For God’s sake . . . halt your command,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 101. Benteen wrote “My first query of Reno was—where is Custer?” in his narrative, in John Carroll, Benteen-Goldin Letters , p. 170.

Chapter 12: Still Point
    Martin claimed that after the battle, on June 27, he showed Benteen where he’d left Custer’s battalion, and Benteen estimated it was only about six hundred yards from the river at the base of Medicine Tail Coulee, in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 105. The interview with Sitting Bull appeared in the November 16, 1877, New York Herald and is in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, pp. 65–73. The Oglala warrior Shot in the Eye corroborated Sitting Bull’s account of there being a significant delay between Reno’s retreat and Custer’s attack: “It was . . . some little time after Reno had been pursued on top of the bluffs that Custer’s command suddenly appeared to the Sioux like an apparition,” in Michael Donahue’s Drawing Battle Lines , p. 164. Of this delay, Walter Camp wrote in a June 22, 1909, letter to Daniel Kanipe, “The Indians all