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

surface of the valley.
    To Wooden Leg’s right, on the flats beyond these desiccated riverbeds, boys raced horses and played games. Among the outlying hills on either side of the river, groups of women, children, and old men dug wild turnips with ash sticks.
    That afternoon the river was alive with splashing swimmers; others sat fishing in the shade of the cottonwood trees. One of these was the famed Santee chief Inkpaduta, over sixty years old and nearly blind. More than twenty years before, he had led his people in a bloody uprising in Minnesota before fleeing west to join the Lakota. Inkpaduta had been there with Sitting Bull at Killdeer Mountain when the soldiers had first attacked the Hunkpapa. After years of self-imposed exile in Canada, he was back with Sitting Bull’s people, fishing beside the crystal waters of the Little Bighorn with his grandsons.
    A village of this size—almost two miles long and more than a quarter mile wide with as many as eight thousand people living in approximately a thousand lodges—could exist only beside a water source like the Little Bighorn. In addition to the village’s human occupants, the seemingly numberless pony herd needed vast quantities of water, as did the herds of buffalo, antelope, and other game on which the Lakota and Cheyenne depended.
    Water provided the Indians with the essentials of life, but it was also the source of great spiritual power. Crazy Horse had experienced his life-changing vision beside a lake. Roman Nose, the greatest warrior of Wooden Leg’s youth, had once built a raft of logs and floated out into the middle of Medicine Water Lake in northern Wyoming. After four days and four nights of fasting and exposure to the sun, during which his raft was pummeled by a series of horrendous storms, Roman Nose finally returned to shore. His prayers, he said, had protected him. “The water had been angry, crazy . . . ,” Wooden Leg recalled, “but not a drop of it had touched him.”
    That afternoon on the Little Bighorn, Wooden Leg and his brother enjoyed a brief swim. “The sun was high,” he remembered, “the weather was hot. The cool water felt good to my skin.” The boys climbed up onto the grassy bank and talked about their adventures at the dances the night before. The conversation petered out until both of them closed their eyes and gradually drifted off to sleep.

    S ome three miles to the south, Major Marcus Reno and his battalion of about 150 soldiers and scouts had just crossed the Little Bighorn. Ahead of them extended a narrow plain covered with three to four inches of ashlike dust. A group of about fifty or so Indians—refugees from the abandoned village at the Lone Tepee—had already churned the valley into tawny billows as they rode toward the encampment ahead. To the right was the weaving timberline of the river’s western bank; beyond that, on the other side of the river, rose the crumbling, clifflike bluffs over which Custer’s battalion was beginning to march. To the left was a series of low foothills. Still out of sight, incredibly enough, was Sitting Bull’s village. About two and a half miles downriver, the Little Bighorn looped dramatically to the west, and the accompanying fringe of trees and brush screened the encampment from Reno’s view.
    As his earlier words to DeRudio might suggest, Reno had had misgivings about his assignment from the start. Despite having pretended to ignore Gerard’s warning, he’d already sent back one messenger telling Custer the Indians were “all in front of me . . . and were strong.” Another messenger was soon to follow.
    Reno’s three companies paused for at least ten minutes to prepare for the attack. They cinched the dark blue woolen webbing of their saddle girths, checked their Colt .45 six-shooters and single-shot Springfield carbines, and took their proper places. Before leaving the divide, the men in each company had counted off by fours. When it came time to fire their weapons, common procedure was for the Number Ones, Twos, and Threes to dismount and form a skirmish line while the Number Fours remained mounted in the rear with the other men’s horses.
    The soldiers swung into their saddles, and with the orders “Left front into line! Forward guide right!” they were soon moving down the valley at a slow gallop. Already well ahead of them were Custer’s favorite Indian scout, Bloody Knife, and about twenty-five fellow Arikara. There were also two Crow scouts, Half