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

slaughter all the more one-sided was the condition of the horses. The soldiers’ mounts were famished, exhausted, and burdened with equipment, while the Indians’ ponies were well watered, fresh, and, in many instances, barebacked. Pretty White Buffalo Woman compared the Indians’ ponies to birds that “flitted in and through and about the troopers’ broken lines.”
    The soldiers tried to defend themselves with their six-shooters, holding them out at arm’s length and firing at the approaching Indians; but all a warrior had to do was slip over to the far side of his horse—no easy matter in the midst of a gallop—until the soldier had fired his last round and then he was free to attack. Wooden Leg and Little Bird found themselves on either side of a soldier. They were lashing him with their pony whips when the soldier pulled out his pistol and shot Little Bird in the thigh. Wooden Leg responded by whacking the trooper with the elk-horn handle of his whip, then grabbed the carbine strapped to the soldier’s back and yanked it free as the dazed and bloodied trooper tumbled to the ground.
    By the time Varnum reached the head of the column, the troopers were being herded toward a makeshift fording place that was about to become a scene of even worse slaughter as the troopers floundered through the fast-flowing current and struggled up the river’s steep east bank. Now more than ever, an effort needed to be made to provide the retreating soldiers with some covering fire. In the building cloud of dust and black powder smoke, Varnum couldn’t see who was who at the ragged head of the column. “We can’t run away from Indians,” he pleaded. “We must get down and fight.”
    Out of the roiling dusty murk came the voice of Major Reno. “I am in command,” he said.

    O ver on the right side of the panicked herd of soldiers was Captain French. He may or may not have endorsed the move out of the timber, but he was now so angered by how the retreat was being conducted that he decided to try to cover his company by himself. As his men veered left for the fording place, he remained on the right, doing his best to hold back the Indians. “And when all had gone for safety,” he melodramatically wrote, “was when I sought death—and tried to fight the battle alone—and did so for nearly a mile.”
    It is tempting to dismiss French’s self-aggrandizing account of how he fought off hundreds of warriors so that his men might retreat to the river unmolested. Sufficient evidence exists from both sides of the battle, however, to credit French with being one of the few officers to actively resist the enemy during the battalion’s retreat.
    French claimed to have killed or wounded at least eight warriors while covering his company’s withdrawal to the river and immodestly opined what the result might have been if he, not Reno, had been leading the charge in the first place. “If I were able to do all this singlehanded,” he wrote, “what might I not have done with the coveted opportunity?”

    W hen the soldiers first entered the timber, Dr. Porter had been wearing a linen duster—a long billowing coat designed to keep the grime off a gentleman’s clothes. As the Indians’ fire increased, the scout Charley Reynolds pointed out that Porter’s fashionable smock was making him an inviting target. Not long after taking off the duster, Porter found himself stooped over a mortally wounded man. Then something strange happened: All the soldiers started to leave.
    When mounted Indians burst out of the woods behind him with their guns blazing, Porter realized it was time for him, too, to be going. He dabbed the trooper’s wound with laudanum, threw on a bandage, and mounted his badly frightened horse. “For God’s sake, Doctor,” the soldier cried, “don’t leave me to be tortured by those fiends.” By then the bullets were “flying thick and fast,” and Porter was on his way out of the timber without his patient.
    Private William Morris had also been tending to a fallen man when he, too, realized he was about to be left behind. “Go on, don’t mind me,” Private George Lorentz urged him; “you cannot do me any good.” Morris’s horse, the aptly named Stumbling Bear, was jumping wildly with fright. Unable to get his foot in the stirrup, Morris leapt desperately onto the saddle and was lying awkwardly on his stomach when Stumbling Bear took off through the woods. Morris emerged from the trees with a badly