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

stood dumbly by with carbines in their hands, in Hardorff’s Indian Views, p. 169. The Brulé warrior Standing Bear, not to be confused with the Minneconjou of the same name who wore a redbird on his head, recounted the pangs he felt killing soldiers who “lay on the ground, with their blue eyes open, waiting to be killed,” in Luther Standing Bear’s My People the Sioux, p. 83. Horned Horse told of how the warriors “were knocking each other from their steeds,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 63. Yellow Nose’s account of seeing two mounted warriors running into each other and rolling to the ground is in Stands in Timber’s Cheyenne Memories, p. 202. Wooden Leg recounted how the sight of the warrior with a missing jaw sickened him, in Marquis, Wooden Leg, p. 234. White Bull’s account of his hand-to-hand battle with a trooper is in Hardorff’s Lakota Recollections, pp. 107–26. See also Vestal’s Warpath , in which White Bull proclaimed, “It was a glorious battle, I enjoyed it,” p. 199. Foolish Elk described the soldiers fleeing toward Last Stand Hill, in Hammer, Custer in ’76, p. 199. Fox estimates that only twenty survivors of the Right Wing reached Last Stand Hill, in Archaeology, History and Custer’s Last Battle, p. 195. Two Moons described how the warriors circled around the soldiers, “swirling like water round a stone,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 102. Hardorff describes the topography of Last Stand Hill: “In 1876, the crest near the present monument was much higher and considerably narrower, and only a small level place with a thirty feet diameter existed then,” in The Custer Battle Casualties, p. 35.
    One Bull told of where he and Sitting Bull watched the battle with the noncombatants, in box 105, notebook 19, WCC; he also described how Sitting Bull was dressed during the battle: “buckskin clothes, no war bonnet, shirt was green quill work on buckskin, not painted and human hair hung from sleeves, wore one feather on head, no war paint,” in box 104, folder 6, WCC. According to Utley in The Lance and the Shield, Sitting Bull’s “willful and deliberate ways [as a boy] earned him the nickname Hunkesni, or ‘Slow,’ ” p. 6. Two Moons claimed that as Custer and the Left Wing and the survivors of the Right Wing gathered around Last Stand Hill “not a shot was fired,” in Hardorff’s Indian Views, p. 111; he also told of seeing the soldier in buckskin stagger from the northern ridge toward Last Stand Hill, p. 113. Fox believed that the remnants of both F and E companies redeployed at Last Stand Hill “to intercept right-wing survivors,” in Archaeology, History and Custer’s Last Battle, p. 192. Kate Bighead told of how there were “hundreds of warriors for every white soldier left alive” on Last Stand Hill, in Hutton’s The Custer Reader, p. 370.
    Two Moons described how the horses of the Gray Horse Troop were “turned loose by the soldiers and they fled toward the river,” in Hardorff’s Indian Views, p. 111. Standing Bear told of how the warriors shouted, “They are gone!” when the horses were released, then repeated the exclamation when the troopers followed, in DeMallie, The Sixth Grandfather, p. 186. Red Horse recounted how the group of soldiers and the group of warriors “stood for one moment facing each other,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 60. Iron Hawk told how he beat the soldier to death because “the women and children had run away scared,” in DeMallie, The Sixth Grandfather, pp. 191–92. Moylan testified that they found “20 odd bodies of E Company” in Deep Ravine: “The marks were plain where they went down and where they tried to scramble up the other side, but these marks only extended half way up the bank,” in W. A. Graham, RCI, p. 76. Fox cites Bourke’s reference to the seven skulls in Deep Ravine, in Archaeology, pp. 213–14. Gray writes about the discovery of what appear to be the bones of Mitch Boyer, in Custer’s Last Campaign, pp. 398–99; he also cites Boyer’s claim that the Sioux “can’t get even now,” from the July 15, 1876, Helena Herald, p. 396. Godfrey wrote, “I firmly believe [the E Company men found in Deep Ravine] belonged to Lieutenant Sturgis’ Platoon and had been ordered to locate a ford for crossing the river,” in W. A. Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 95. In addition to citing Godfrey’s belief that it was Sturgis who led E Company toward the river, Brust, Pohanka, and