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

pac[k]s.”
    Cooke handed the message to Martin. “Ride as fast as you can to Colonel Benteen,” he instructed. “Take the same trail we came down. If you have time, and there is no danger, come back; but otherwise stay with your company.”
    Martin turned his horse and started back up the coulee. “The last I saw of the command,” he said, “they were going down the ravine. The Gray Horse Troop was in the center and they were galloping.”

    F rom the beginning of the battle, Crazy Horse, the greatest of the Lakota warriors, had been in no particular hurry. The Oglala circle was to the north of the Hunkpapa, well back from the river. After learning of the soldiers’ approach, he had paused to pray with a holy man and then carefully painted his face, drawing a red zigzag from the top of his forehead to one side of his nose and back to the cleft of his chin. “This he did very coolly,” Standing Bear remembered. “He delayed so long that many of his warriors became impatient.” When he finally began to gallop toward the foothills beside the dry creek, a cry went up that could be heard throughout the village: “Crazy Horse is coming!”
    Like Custer’s brother Tom, Crazy Horse had suffered a gunshot to the face that had left him with a permanent scar across his cheek. Unlike Tom, who’d been wounded in battle, the Oglala warrior had been shot by the jealous husband of the woman he’d run away with. For having placed his own interests ahead of the greater good of the tribe, Crazy Horse had lost the prestigious position of Shirt Wearer.
    In the years since that scandalous incident, he had rededicated himself to what he did best. “Crazy Horse considered himself cut out for warfare,” the interpreter Billy Garnett remembered, “and he therefore would have nothing to do with affairs political or social or otherwise.” Sitting Bull had guided the northern Lakota through the tumultuous events of the last few months and days. Now it was Crazy Horse’s turn to lead them in battle.
    By the time he reached the hill to the west of the soldiers’ skirmish line, the growing throng of warriors was, according to Garnett, “almost uncontrollable.” What they needed more than anything else, Crazy Horse realized, was some composure. “[He] rode up and down in front of his men talking calmly to them,” Garnett said, “telling them to restrain their ardor till the time he should give the word.” Native warriors were known for their independence and lack of discipline in battle. But in this instance, the Lakota had the advantage over the washichus of a strong and forceful leader.
    They must wait, Crazy Horse said, for the soldiers’ guns to heat up “so they would not work so well.” So they sat upon their horses as the soldiers on the skirmish line continued to blast ineffectually away.
    Compared with modern-day brass shell casings, which remain remarkably stable when heated, the copper shell casings of the .45-caliber ammunition used by Reno’s men were more malleable. After about half a dozen quickly fired shots, the extractor mechanism had an unfortunate tendency to rip through the flange at the bottom of the heat-softened shell, leaving the barrel clogged with the remnants of the expended casing. The soldier’s only recourse was to try to dislodge the mangled shell with a knife—a laborious and increasingly nerve-racking procedure, especially when the enemy was massing for a charge.
    Having successfully slowed the tempo of the battle, Crazy Horse once again addressed the warriors gathered on the hill. It was now time to attack, he said. “Do your best, and let us kill them all off today that they may not trouble us any more. All ready! Charge!”
    Twelve-year-old Black Elk lay hidden in the timber near the river. “Just then,” he remembered, “I heard the bunch on the hillside to the west crying: ‘Hokahe!’ and make the tremolo. We heard also the eagle bone whistles. I knew from this shouting that the Indians were coming, for I could hear the thunder of the ponies charging.”
    By this time, the soldiers’ skirmish line had pivoted to the left so as to face the growing threat to the west. Reno had been warned that the Indians were also threatening the horses in the timber to the east. He’d already sent Lieutenant McIntosh’s G Company into the woods to provide the animals with some protection; as a result, the ranks of the skirmish line had become distressingly thin. Fred Gerard watched as