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

rely on you in everything, and shall send you on this expedition without orders, leaving you to act entirely on your own judgment.” Terry, in his affable way, had pretty much said the same thing; but it was also clear he wanted the others present at the meeting to see that blue pencil line, which would undoubtedly be reflected in the written orders Custer would receive the next morning.
    As was becoming increasingly clear to Custer, Terry had boxed him into a corner. To do as ordered, to continue marching south just as he drew within reach of the village, risked being detected by the Lakota scouts before he had a chance to attack. There was also General Crook to consider. Somewhere to the south was the Wyoming Column, and if Custer was to extend his own march in that direction, he increased the odds of blundering into Crook, who outranked him. Since Custer, like virtually every other cavalry officer in the army, wanted all the glory for his own regiment, this was unacceptable. And then there were Gibbon and the Montana Column, who would be somewhere to the northwest. Even if it meant risking another, career-killing court-martial, Custer must follow the trail to the village.
    Custer had always lived life at a frenetic pace. He thrived on sensation. Whether it was courting Libbie in the midst of the Civil War, learning taxidermy during his first expedition in the northern plains, or writing his articles while surrounded by his dogs and listening to his band, he needed to be in the midst of an often self-created uproar. But by the night of June 21, at the age of thirty-six, Custer was finding it difficult to marshal the old enthusiasm.
    He’d spent the winter and spring frantically staving off financial catastrophe. He’d battled the president of the United States to a draw. And, now, thousands of miles from Washington and New York, on the banks of the Yellowstone River, Grant’s deceptively benign emissary, Alfred Terry, was busily spinning his invisible and cunning web. Custer was about to embark on what was in all likelihood the last Indian campaign of his career. But as was about to become increasingly clear to his officers, the burden of being Custer had finally caught up with him.
    Custer appears to have spent much of the night writing the anonymous dispatch for the New York Herald in which he blasts Reno for not having followed the Indian trail. Reno, sullen and unapologetic to the last, was the perfect target as Custer prepared himself to do what his subordinate should have done. “Few officers,” he wrote, “have ever had so fine an opportunity to make a successful and telling strike and few ever so completely failed to improve their opportunity.” For Custer, there would be no turning back.

    B urkman had guard duty that night, and with Custer’s dog Tuck beside him, he marched back and forth in front of his commander’s tent. In the distance he could hear the steady beat of drums from the tents of the Arikara and Crow scouts. Many of the officers and soldiers were in the process of getting very drunk, “the liquor tasting good to the innards,” Burkman remembered, “after so much alkali water.” Others were writing letters and making wills; “they seemed to have a presentiment of their fate,” Lieutenant Godfrey wrote.
    If the Battle of the Little Bighorn had resulted in victory for Custer, it’s doubtful that these “presentiments” would have been remembered. But as is the way with most great disasters, the survivors later saw the catastrophe as preordained.
    Back in 1867, Custer’s regimental adjutant, the tall and elegantly whiskered Lieutenant William Cooke, had survived a terrifying encounter with the Cheyenne during which he and about fifty other men were attacked by an estimated five hundred warriors. They were able to hold off the Indians for three hours until reinforcements arrived and the Cheyenne fled. Nine years later on the Yellowstone, Custer’s adjutant was convinced his luck had run out and asked Lieutenant Gibson to witness his will.
    “What, getting cold feet, Cookie,” Gibson taunted, “after all these years with the savages?”
    “No,” Cooke responded, “but I have a feeling that the next fight will be my last.”
    Onboard the Far West, Mark Kellogg sat writing his dispatches for the New York Herald . It was after midnight by the time he joined Major Brisbin, who was smoking a cigar on the riverboat’s deck. Kellogg had originally planned to follow Gibbon and