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

experience walking this same ravine in July 2009.
    Thompson seemed unsure of exactly how many times he went down to get water—hardly surprising given that he’d lost enough blood after suffering the gunshot to his hand and elbow that he’d passed out in the hospital prior to making his first trip to the river. In his Jan. 26, 1909, letter to Camp he wrote that he’d taken six trips to get water. In an undated note at the LBHBNM archives, Camp recorded a conversation with Thompson in which Thompson claimed to have made just three trips: “going first about 9 a.m—had to run down across open space to make gully. Then crept along watching at every turn in ravine to see if any Indians ahead. Had neither carbine, pistol nor knife. Finally got down to river for water. No sooner did I emerge from the mouth of the gully than a volley of about 20 shots was fired at me from same side of river and further upstream. There were no Indians directly across the stream. In all my trips I went for water alone.” In a May 24, 1877, letter recommending Peter Thompson for a medal “of conspicuous gallantry,” Captain Henry Jackson, then commander of C Company, wrote that Thompson had made three trips to the river even though “he was remonstrated with by Sergeant Kanipe, then in charge of the detachment of the Company.” (My thanks to Rocky Boyd for bringing this letter and the undated Camp interview to my attention in his unpublished manuscript, “Statements Related to the Water Carriers.”) In his published Account, Thompson described a total of four trips to get water. According to Thompson’s daughter Susan Taylor, those who doubt that the seriously wounded Thompson was capable of making three or more exhausting trips for water “do not understand an independent, patriotic Scotsperson who will do whatever he sets out to do or almost die trying. Patriotism and independence seem too rare to be believed, apparently,” in Susan Taylor MS, pp. xiii–xiv. When Thompson’s daughter was still a child, he reenacted many of his experiences during the battle. “He taught me . . . ,” Susan Taylor writes, “how to dip water out of the river with a kettle in my left hand under ‘Indian fire’ from the buckrush across the river. He taught me to ‘stroll’ under Indian fire on a pretend Reno Hill. This ‘strolling’ was more like a squatty shuffle, my mother said, and he should describe it that way in his MS. He said that would not sound ‘dignified.’ He said [that during the battle] he did not want to crawl on the filthy ground because of his wounded hand. He said he simply had to move around because his arm and hand hurt too much to sit still in the hot sun, and besides, he wanted to do something useful,” p. xv. Susan describes the injury to Thompson’s elbow and hand in the Susan Taylor MS, p. xii. Young Two Moons’ account of seeing “one soldier stripped to his underclothing” running to the river on June 26 is in Jerome Greene’s Lakota and Cheyenne: Indian Views of the Great Sioux War . “When he reached [the river],” Young Two Moons told an interpreter, “he threw himself in [the] water, filling his vessels and drinking at the same time. Half the time they could not see him because of the water thrown up by the bullets,” p. 72. Susan Taylor writes of how Thompson was questioned about the injury to his head when he returned from his first trip to the river; she claimed her father had a total of three bullet scars on the top of his head, in Susan Taylor MS, p. xii. Daniel Newell wrote that Private McVay, the same trooper who threatened to shoot Peter Thompson if he didn’t give him his canteen, offered him (Newell) seventy-five dollars for a drink, in John Carroll’s Sunshine Magazine, p. 13.
    Mechling described his trip to get water and how Benteen’s extended drink from his canteen almost started a rush for the river, in Hardorff’s Camp, Custer, pp. 76–78. In the opinion of Private William Taylor, Benteen’s decision to organize a detail of water carriers was “foolish and uncalled for” since it took away men who were vitally needed to defend the entrenchment, in With Custer, p. 60. Thompson wasn’t the only one who heard someone shout curses at the soldiers in English. Private John Siversten claimed that warriors on the other side of the river said, “Come on over on this side, you sons of [bitches] and we will give it to you! Come over!” in Liddic and Harbaugh’s Camp on Custer,