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

god—“large brained, sagacious, far reaching, cool”—had set up shop aboard the riverboat, and whatever plan he came up with “must be successful.”
    Prior to the Civil War, when he had been clerk of the superior court in New Haven, Connecticut, Terry had been an amateur student of military history. He had even spent a year in Europe, traveling to famous battlefields and forts. His subsequent experience in actual warfare had done little to change his assumption that battle plans were to be drawn up on the European model, in which two well-ordered armies confronted each other on the open field. As had been true with his earlier, aborted plan, Terry based his strategy on using two columns in a pincer movement designed to ensnare the Indian village. Unfortunately, the mobility of the Indians meant that attempting to trap a village between two columns of cavalry was like trying to catch a glob of mercury between two sticks. From the start, the likelihood of successfully coordinating the movements of two different regiments over a vast and largely unknown territory was remote at best.
    On the afternoon of June 21, Terry unveiled his plan in the cabin of the Far West . In attendance were Terry; his aide-de-camp, Colonel Robert Hughes; Custer; Gibbon; and Gibbon’s commander of cavalry, James Brisbin. Even though he was the source of their latest and best information about the Indians, Marcus Reno was not invited to the meeting.
    They spread out the map on the table. The map was based on a partial survey conducted before the Civil War. Hostile Indians had prevented the surveyors from reaching many of the areas on the map. For example, the surveyors had not even seen the Little Bighorn River. That and portions of other rivers, including much of the Rosebud, were represented by dotted lines that could only be described as educated guesses.
    Based on Reno’s scout and a recent report from the Crows, Terry believed the Indians were somewhere to the southwest between the Rosebud and Bighorn rivers, probably in the vicinity of the Little Bighorn. As Custer led the Seventh up the Rosebud, Terry and the Montana Column would work their way up the Bighorn to the west. Since Custer had considerably less distance to cover before he reached the projected location of the Indian village, Terry ordered him to continue south up the Rosebud even if the Indians’ trail headed west. Only after he had marched almost to the Wyoming border should he begin to sweep west. Not only would this postpone Custer’s arrival at the Little Bighorn until about the time Terry and the Montana Column were in the vicinity, it might prevent the Indians from escaping to the south.
    Terry used stick pins to indicate Custer’s line of march. The pins pierced the thick parchment of the map and dug into the table underneath. Terry, who was nearsighted, asked Major Brisbin to use a blue pencil to mark Custer’s projected route.
    There was one glaring problem with this plan. As the blue pencil line clearly showed, Terry was ordering Custer to march away from where the village was supposed to be. Custer had recently rebuked Reno for not having the courage to follow the trail to its source even though Reno was in violation of Terry’s orders. Did Terry really expect Custer to postpone his own attack and wait for the Montana Column to arrive?
    There was an unwritten code in the military: Violating an order was accepted—in fact, encouraged—as long as it resulted in victory. At Gettysburg, Custer’s superior, General Alfred Pleasanton, had ordered him to join forces with General Judson Kilpatrick, an officer Custer disliked. Instead, he had chosen to remain with General David Gregg and had, it could be argued, won the Battle of Gettysburg for the Union. Custer, they all knew, was not going to let a blue pencil line prevent him from becoming a hero once again.
    As commander in chief, President Grant had insisted that Terry, not Custer, lead the Seventh Cavalry in the field. Ever since leaving Fort Lincoln, Terry had done exactly that, and over the last month both Custer and Reno had demonstrated a disturbing tendency to ignore his orders. The only way to ensure that Custer followed his orders in this instance was for Terry to be there in person. Why didn’t he do as the president and, as a consequence, General Sheridan intended and lead the Seventh in the field? After the conference, Major Brisbin privately asked him this precise question.
    “Custer is