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

p. 110. Reno claimed the Seventh fought “all the desperadoes, renegades, and half-breeds and squawmen” in his July 5, 1876, report, reprinted in W. A. Graham, RCI, p. 277; see Walter Boyes’s “White Renegades Living with the Hostiles Go Up Against Custer,” pp. 11–19. William Taylor’s description of the “dirty and haggard” survivors watching the departing Indian village is in With Custer, p. 60. Edgerly’s comparison of the Indians’ pony herd to “a great brown carpet” is in the Official Transcript of the RCI, edited by Ronald Nichols, p. 780, and is cited by Stewart in Custer’s Luck, p. 428. Trumpeter Hardy described the departing Indian village “as a long black cloud at the foot hills across the bottom”; he also recounted Reno’s exclamation, “For God’s sake, Moylan, look what we have been standing off!” in a footnote in Hardorff’s Camp, Custer, p. 83. Ryan’s claim that he and French fired the last shots of the battle are in Barnard’s Ten Years with Custer, p. 301. Gerard’s account of overhearing the “cries of children . . . [and] the death chanting of the squaws” is in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 234. Edgerly told of how the horses skidded down the bluff to the river, adding, “Their rush for the river when they got near to it was very pathetic,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 58. Roy’s account of the horses plunging their heads into the water is also in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 116. McDougall’s nuanced description of Reno’s character is in W. A. Graham, RCI, pp. 196–97. Peter Thompson told how Benteen inspired the men in his Account, p. 42. The description of Benteen as the “savior of the Seventh” is cited by James Donovan in A Terrible Glory, p. 250.
    Brisbin’s account of Terry’s “anxiety and impatience to get on” is in Brininstool, p. 281. All quotations from Lieutenant Bradley are from his “Journal,” pp. 219–24. Charles Roe’s account of horsemen “clothed in blue uniforms” is from his Custer’s Last Battle, p. 7. Gibbon’s account of the column’s arrivalI at the battle site is in his “Last Summer’s Expedition Against the Sioux and Its Great Catastrophe,” pp. 298–99. In his diary, edited by Barry Johnson, Dr. Paulding wrote, “I picked up a buckskin shirt . . . marked Porter,” “Dr. Paulding and His Remarkable Diary,” p. 62. Windolph described Terry as openly crying as he approached the survivors of the Seventh, in I Fought with Custer, p. 109. Roe told Walter Camp of Benteen’s insistence that Custer “is somewhere down the Big Horn grazing his horses,” in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 249. Benteen’s response to discovering Custer’s dead body is in Hardorff’s Custer Battle Casualties, pp. 19–20.

Chapter 15: The Last Stand
    In writing this chapter, I have relied primarily on Native accounts. This does not mean, however, that there is a monolithic “Indian view” of what transpired during the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Much of the oral testimony that has been recorded over the course of the last 130 years is contradictory—as is, it should be pointed out, the evidence associated with the army’s side of the battle. However, the issues associated with Native testimony are particularly complex. Since few of the Indian participants spoke English, an interpreter was required, and as Curley complained to Walter Camp, interpreters were often suspect; but so were the interrogators, many of whom had a preconceived agenda they hoped the Indians’ testimony would support. There were also the warriors’ legitimate concerns that they might suffer some form of retribution if they told their questioners, many of whom were soldiers and government officials, anything they didn’t want to hear. The accounts collected by the Cheyenne tribal historian John Stands in Timber, who knew many battle veterans and who could speak both Cheyenne and English, is of special interest, since the testimony was not filtered by an interpreter.
    In the last decade or so, largely through the efforts of the superb researcher Richard Hardorff, immense amounts of previously unpublished Native testimony have made their way into print. In 1997, Gregory Michno published Lakota Noon, an account of the battle that relies almost exclusively on Native testimony. In 1999, Herman Viola published Little Bighorn Remembered, the culmination of two decades of collecting oral traditions of the battle from living descendants. More recently, the