Edgerly's Account

[deadwoodgultch]

As we know Edgerly later became a General Officer and  was know to have an eye for detail. This account along with Varnum's gives us larger numbers of warriors than commonly credited.

Steve, you may want to give Susan these accounts or ask her to join the board to read them, as they talk of crossing her land.

LIEUTENANT EDGERLY of the Seventh Cavalry who was in Benteen's battalion, which joined Reno's force fifteen or twenty minutes after Reno's retreat, gave me the following account:

At about 10 o'clock in the morning of the 25th of June, 1876, we were, say, fifteen miles from the hostile camp. Our force was then all together. We halted while Custer went on a hill with the Crow and Ree scouts to take a look at the Inthan camp, which was in sight. When General Custer came down from the hill officers' call was sounded. The officers all went to where he was, and he told us that our presence was discovered; that his scouts had chased a small number of Indians that they had seen, and they had gotten away and gone, in the direction of the Indian camp, and as there was no use in trying. to surprise them, as his intention had been, the next morning, we would press on as quickly as we could and attack them in the village if possible. The idea was that the Indians would not stand against a whole regiment of cavalry, and that as soon as they learned of our advance they would try to get away from us. He then ordered troop commanders to mount their troops and report when they were in readiness to move on. In about a minute every troop commander had reported. General Custer and his Adjutant, Colonel Cook [Lt. W.W. Cooke], then organized the regiment into four battalions of three troops each, giving to each of the four senior officers the command of a battalion. These officers were Reno, Benteen, Keogh and Yates. He ordered Major Reno to move straight down the valley to the Indian village and attack, and he would be supported. He ordered Colonel Benteen to move off toward the left, at an angle of about forty-five degrees from Reno's course and attack any Indians he could find. The idea was that the Indians would run either to the right or left. He detailed Captain McDougall, with his troop, as rear guard, to take charge of the pack train. The orders he gave to Colonel Keogh and Captain Yates I don't know, but he went off with them -- five companies and about 250 to 300 men-in a direction parallel to Reno's. The last that I saw of General Custer alive he was going off in the direction mentioned. Colonel Benteen moved off as ordered, and almost immediately struck a series of high hills. He sent an officer -- Lieutenant Gibson -- to the tops of several of these hills, to see if any Indians were visible in the direction of his route. Lieutenant Gibson reported several times that there wet, no signs of Indians, and then Colonel Benteen swung around to the right, and about five or six miles from the starting point we came upon Reno's trail and followed it rapidly. After following it several miles, an orderly trumpeter from General Custer came in and handed Colonel Benteen a note to this effect:

"We have struck a big village. Hurry up. Bring up the packs.
Signed.
W. W. COOK [Cooke], Adjutant."

We then passed on, and when within about three miles of the Indian village we could see that there was fighting going on in the valley, and very shortly we saw a body of men -- upwards of a hundred -- make a break for the bluffs on the east side of Little Big Horn river, on the west side of which the Indian village was situated, cross the stream and disappear in the bluffs. We were then on the right bank, to the east of the stream, and some distance from it. As the orderly who brought the message from Custer had told us that the Indian village was surprised, and that, when he came away, Reno was driving everything before him and killing them right and left, I supposed that the men we saw running were Indians driven by our men. We hurried forward in the direction of the ford where Reno had crossed, with intent to hurry to his support; but as we approached the ford a Crow scout, Half Yellow Face, came out upon our right and beckoned us to come up on the hill. We immediately turned to the right and went up the hill. When we reached the summit we found Colonel Reno and his battalion there, with several wounded men crying anxiously for water, and then learned to our surprise that they had been driven from their ground. There were a few Indians around, behind rocks and the points of the hills, who were shooting into us at that time. A skirmish line was formed and these Indians driven away in a few minutes.

Then I heard heavy firing over in the direction in which we afterwards found the remains of Custer's portion of the command, and could see clouds of dust, and horsemen rushing back and forth on the opposite side of the river and about four miles away. While this firing was going on, Colonel Weir, my captain, came to me and asked me what I thought we ought to do. I told him I thought we ought by all means to go down to Custer's assistance. He thought so too, and I heard the first sergeant express himself to that effect. He then asked me if I would be willing to go down with only D troop, if he could get permission to go. I told him I would. He then walked towards Colonel Reno and Benteen, and very shortly came back, mounted his horse, took an orderly with him and went out in the direction from which we had heard the firing and which had then almost wholly ceased. I supposed that he had received permission to go out with the troop (though he afterwards told me he had not, and had not even asked for it), so I mounted the troop and followed him. After going a few hundred yards I swung off to the right with the troop and went into a little valley which must have been the one followed by Custer and his men, or nearly parallel to it, and moved right towards the great body of the Indians, whom we had already seen from the highest point. After we had gone a short distance down the valley, Col. Weir, who had remained to our left, on the bluff, saw a large number of Indians coming toward us, and motioned with his hand for me to swing around with the troop to where he was, which I did. When I got up on the bluff I saw Col. Benteen, Captain French and Lieutenant Godfrey coming toward us with their troops. We moved along on that bluff for a short distance, when the Indians commenced to fire on us. The troops were all dismounted, formed on the top of the ridge and returned the fire. This firing was kept up about half an hour, when the troops were drawn back to their original position by order of Gen. Reno. Our troops had one man killed in coming back and one horse only, although two or three Indians ran up on the hill immediately after we left and emptied their Winchesters on us. As soon as we got back to where Reno was we found the other troops disposed around on the crest of this elevation, and Weir's troop and Godfrey's fell in side by side so as to prolong their regular line already formed by our troops. Almost as soon as we took this position the Indians came up in our front and opened fire. The firing was heavy, but only a few men were killed, as most of the shots went over our heads. It continued for more than an hour, and until half an hour after dusk. That ended the first day's fight.

The next morning, before daylight, heavy firing commenced again from the hills, five to seven or eight hundred yards from us, and continued until about 10 o'clock. After that there was very little firing, although the Indians in small numbers could be seen on the ridges around us. During the afternoon the Indians on the other side of the river had taken down their lodges, or tepees, and about 4 o'clock they all started off. From the time we took our position the after noon before, we lost but few men. We remained right there, or in a new position adjoining, that night, and the next morning Lieut. Bradley, of Gen. Terry's column, who had command of the scouts came up and told us that Custer and all his men were killed. Shortly after Gen. Terry came along with his column. He then sent our regiment along to bury the dead.

The first dead soldiers we came to were Lieuts. Calhoun, Crittenden, and enlisted men of L troop. The bodies of these officers were lying a short distance in rear of their men, in the very place where they belonged, and the bodies of their men forming a very regular skirmish line. Crittenden's body was shot full of arrows.

The next lot we came to consisted of Colonel Keogh and his troop. They had evidently been falling back toward the knoll where we found Colonel Custer's body-fighting as they retreated. The other men that I saw showed no sign of regular formation; their bodies were scattered over the ground with a general tendency toward the knoll where Custer was.

On the knoll which I spoke of we found the bodies of General Custer, Colonel Cook [Lt. W.W. Cooke] his adjutant -- Colonel Tom Custer, several enlisted men and several horses, while lower down, just at the base of the knoll were Lieutenant Riley, Captain Yates, and a great many enlisted men and horses. General Custer's brother, Boston, and his Nephew, Reed, were about a hundred yards from the general's body.

The only bodies of officers that I saw mutilated were Colonel Tom Custer and Colonel Cook [Lt. W.W. Cooke]. All the bodies were stripped of their uniforms. The great majority of the men were stark naked, but in a good many cases they left the undershirt, socks and drawers on the bodies. The bodies were on the east side of the river, below the main village, and about four miles from where Reno had taken position.

When I went out with the troop, on the afternoon of the 25th, I could see quite a number of Indians galloping back and forth on the battlefield, where we afterwards found the bodies, and firing at objects on the ground, but we could not see what the objects were.

When I first reached the top of the hill where Reno was, on the 25th, I heard the heavy firing, and it continued about fifteen or twenty minutes. Then the heavy firing was all over. After we buried Custer and his men on the east side of the river, we crossed to the west side and buried the dead of Reno's command -- about forty in number -- and then we found two Indian lodges, or tepees, with six bodies of Indians in one and five in the other, beautifully dressed, and fastened to a pole in the center of the tepee. Chief Low Dog has told me since he came here that that is an honorable way of disposing of men who have died fighting bravely, and that their bodies are left to the enemy, to whom they belong. I never knew another such case. My opinion is that they were left because the Indians left in a hurry, being frightened by the approach of Terry's column. Around the tepees where we found the dead Indians were as many dead ponies as there were Indians. The ponies were arranged in a circle around the tepee, with their heads towards the tepee.

From what I saw, I think there were as many as 7,000 warriors. I judged from seeing Terry's command -- about 500 men -- the size of which I knew, ride down where I saw the Indians the day before. Terry's command looked like a handful compared to the Indians.

Custer's trail showed -- and this is what the Indians say -- that he passed down the river, which is only about fifteen or twenty yards wide there -- on the east side; that is, on the right bank. Reno had crossed and attacked from the west. The river bank was so high and steep that it was impracticable to get down to it from the bluff until he got to a place a little over three miles from where Reno took his position after his retreat across the river. There he found a ford, and the general belief was that he attempted to cross and was attacked and driven back to where he was found dead. Dead bodies were found all the way from the ford to where Custer's body was found.

Custer's hair -- which he had been accustomed to wear long -- was cut short before he started on the march. His body was naked, but not mutilated.


The Custer Myth: A Source Book of Custerania, written and compiled by Colonel W.A. Graham.

[quincannon]

Tom I think there may be a little more Graham than Edgerly in that account. Just a feeling though, as Edgerly has most of the details right.

If you take the measuring stick out as I did this morning, and plot three miles north of Reno's position, as related by Edgerly then it would seem that Edgerly thought Custer used Ford C, or Gibbon's Ford, not Ford D. Ford B is a little less than two miles from where Reno planted himself.

Another thing that does not sit well is Edgerly saying that the regiment was formed into four battalions of three companies each. Then somehow, certainly by virtue of a miracle Company B is with the trains. This is one reason I think Graham may have done more than put just Edgerly's account in writing. He states that the officers returned to their companies. That would lead me to believe, or at least consider that Edgerly being with his company had no direct knowledge of what Custer and Cooke did in terms of task organization. Everyone under the sun would think that there was a Keogh and a Yates battalion after the fact. The only person I know who would have direct knowledge would be Godfrey, as he was a company commander in a position to have direct knowledge.

I don't blame anyone that thinks Custer at some later time separated the five companies into two battalions. Had I come upon that field as Edgerly did, I would think so too, without the benefit of any further knowledge, Custer indeed may have, and Edgerly's account right on the mark, but Godfrey's account was widely read in Century, and I know of no officer then present that has ever contradicted what he said, at least in print.

I can also see why Edgerly would think that Ford C was the place Custer intended to cross. Again without any other knowledge it would appear from how and where the bodies were found that a attempt was made there and what you see now in Cemetery Ravine was the direct result of an attempted crossing only to be pushed back and destroyed. In fact looking at C as the crossing place, vice D, adds to the get the hell out theory that we have all been following these past three years. The shorter the distance between LSH and Calhoun Hill even works better in the get out of Dodge scenario. That is especially true if one holds that it was a retrograde by bounds attempt.

[deadwoodgultch]

You know Chuck, Graham interviewed a fair number of the LBH vets. He is not unlike many latter day students of the battle only he had 1st had accounts to base some of them on. Right or wrong.

An interesting follow up is this piece, we have discussed aspects of this next before. Hits a few different stories.


The following piece has previously appeared on the June 25 anniversary of what the Sioux and Cheyenne call the Battle of the Greasy Grass, known to most Americans as the Battle of the Little Bighorn.


“Maka ki ecela tehani yanke lo!” —The war cry of Crazy Horse (Tȟašúŋke Witkó).Translation: “Only the Earth lasts forever.” (1876)

"There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry." George Armstrong Custer (1876)

The Custer Myth is a living thing, which refuses to die despite the efforts of careful historians to reduce it to uncontroverted facts. Almost everything about it is in some degree disputed."
—The Custer Myth, by William A. Graham (1953)


On June 25, 1876, the Custer myth got its start as Sioux (Lakota, Dakota), Cheyenne (Tsitsistas), and Arapaho (Hinono'eino) warriors defended themselves and their families against the U.S. Army's Seventh Cavalry in Medicine Tail Coulee and the surrounding area on the Greasy Grass River (Little Big Horn) in Montana Territory. When the shooting was over, five companies of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's command had been wiped out, with 262 men dead and 68 wounded, half the entire 586-soldier battalion. So startling was the Native victory that when Crow (Apsáalooke) scouts who had been riding with Custer met up with Gen. Alfred Terry the day after the fight and told him what they had seen, he refused to believe them.

So why even care about this event from the distant past in which all the participants and most of the children of every participant are long dead? Because the myth continues today to have a stereotyping impact, warping how non-indigenous Americans view Indians, not just the Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, but all Indians.

Since that June day 143 years ago, hundreds of books, most of them bad and some of them brimful of outright lies from beginning to end, and more than 50 movies, most of them dreadful, have kept the myth (or collection of myths) flourishing except among the best scholars. A good deal of this was spun into being by Libby Bacon Custer, the brevet general’s widow, who wrote three books glorifying her husband and transforming him from a reckless, aggressively ambitious military politician into a heroic legend. For most Americans historically, and many still today, Custer’s “last stand” represents the most important part of the story passed down over the decades, the Indian side of what happened as well as contrary white survivors’ versions ignored or denigrated. This effort was assisted by two factors.

One was keeping secret the Official Record of the Court of Inquiry of 1879 until 1951. The inquiry was requested by Major Marcus Reno to clear his name for conduct he had been accused of during the battle. It was not until retired Col. William A. Graham wrote The Custer Myth: A Source Book of Custeriana (1953) that a book came close to telling the actual details of that bloody day on the Greasy Grass.

The second factor was President Theodore Roosevelt's persuading Edward Curtis in 1908 to leave an account of the three Crow scouts he had interviewed out of his photo-rich, 20-volume The North American Indian. The scouts' version conflicted greatly with the image that Libby Custer had created over three decades with her books, lectures and interviews.

This depiction of the Battle of the Greasy Grass or Little Big Horn was done by Kicking Bear, aka Matȟó Wanáȟtaka, an Ogala Lakota who was a first cousin of Crazy Horse (Tȟašúŋke Witkó) who, at the request of Frederic Remington in 1898, painted the battle as he remembered it.

This depiction of the Battle of the Greasy Grass (or Battle of the Little Big Horn) was done by Kicking Bear, aka Matȟó Wanáȟtaka, an Ogala Lakota who was a first cousin of Crazy Horse (Tȟašúŋke Witkó). At the request of Frederic Remington in 1898, he painted the battle as he remembered it.

Custer was a favorite hero of Roosevelt—having said of him that he was “a shining light to all the youth of America,” The president informed Curtis that Americans would not take kindly to having their "memory" of the "Last Stand" besmirched by a trio of Indians, who, of course, were untrustworthy just by being Indian even though they had been trustworthy enough to guide U.S. Army troops on numerous occasions. Curtis dutifully left out that part of the story. Indeed, despite ample opportunity, the Indian side did not fully emerge into the view of the general public until the 1970s. That came about in part because the murderous policies that led to the battle and hundreds of others throughout American history began then to be examined outside the scholarly circles that had for 40 years challenged Libby Custer’s version.

Graham's now 66-year-old book was the first popular work to dismember the myth, as historians and other writers have done in microscopic detail since. Yet, even today, in spite of the scholarly delving into the battle, archeological studies of the ground where the fight took place and the amateur and professional exploration of every scrap of minutiae, every bullet casing, every written or recorded word, elements of what happened at the Little Big Horn remain in dispute. Moreover, some Americans continue to revere Custer as a major hero. For instance, Congress voted in 1991 to rename Custer Battlefield National Monument the Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument. In the year before the change, the National Park Service received a steady flow of mail filled with racist slurs and other hate speech against the name-change, these missives bolstered by a twisted patriotism and labeling of the move as everything from a travesty to treason. White supremacy has not vanished.

As Graham wrote in reply to his publisher's pressure to ditch the word "myth" from the title:


Just what is a Myth? Ever since I began the study of history, many long years ago, I have been making the acquaintance of myths in one form or another. The exploits of the ancient gods of Greece and Rome come to one's mind instantly when one speaks of myths; but each of them, very probably, was founded in greater or less degree upon the accomplishments of some man, whose identity, once known, was lost in the maze of traditions, fictions and inventions that ascribed to him the attributes of a superman; and as the centuries passed, endowed him with the character of a supernatural person.

We have ourselves created myths in the course of our own short history, which spans less than two hundred years. Washington was in fact a very human person, as contemporary records prove; but the Washington the average American knows is not the real Washington. As "Father of his Country"; the all-wise leader, the military hero, the champion of freedom and foe of tyranny, his human qualities have all but disappeared. He has become a Myth.

So also with Lincoln, martyred savior of his country; about whom and around whom has been built so fantastic a structure of fictitious tales and absurd stores, that the real Lincoln has been obscured from view; and so in our own day with Franklin D. Roosevelt, who to millions of Americans was a selfless, immaculate latter-day Messiah, who gave his life on the altar of self sacrifice. Both these men were human beings—very human; but the Lincoln and the Roosevelt known to the average American are Myths.

And so with Custer, and so with nearly everyone involved in the Custer story. It began in controversy and dispute; but because a devoted wife so skillfully and so forcefully painted her hero as a plumed knight in shining armor—a "chevalier sans peur and sans reproche," that all who stood in the way of her appraisal were made to appear as cowards or scoundrels; and because her hero went out in a blaze of glory that became the setting for propaganda which caught and held, and still holds, the imagination of the American people, what began in controversy and dispute has ended in Myth; a myth built, like other myths, upon actual deeds and events, magnified, distorted and disproportioned by fiction, invention, imagination and speculation. The Custer known to the average American is a Myth; and so is Reno; and so also in Benteen.

The Little Big Horn battle was neither the greatest nor most important fight in the Indian Wars that began in North America in 1540 when Francisco Vasquez de Coronado attacked the Tiwa in what is present-day New Mexico and ended in Bear Valley, Arizona, in 1918 in a clash between the African American 10th Cavalry "Buffalo Soldiers" and a band of Yaqui.

But the battle practically every American older than 10 can name has come down to us as the mythical "Custer's Last Stand" and has in a multitude of ways shaped the American psyche regarding the collision between Europeans and Natives. Although the myth has been under attack for decades, both by scholars and Indians alike, it refuses to yield completely.

•••

SOURCES:
• The Custer Myth: A Source Book of Custeriana, W.A. Graham, 1953 and 1981
• Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Big Horn, Evan S. Connell, 1991
• Little Big Horn Remembered: The Untold Indian Story of Custer’s Last Stand, Herman J. Viola, 1999
• A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Big Horn—The Last Great Battle of the American West, James Donovan, 2008

[quincannon]

" A Cavalier without peer and above reproach" Yeh, that pretty well sums up everything about the mythical Custer.

Over on the other thread I have in recent days reported on the MacArthur myth, one that MacArthur himself self generated, by his dispatches from Bataan. Truth is he only visited Bataan once, and was as far from the fighting, as the distance between DC and Baltimore. His troops called him Dugout Doug for ample reason, while those that protected him, the shit for brains sycophants, made him into Superman with a corn cob pipe.  He was so effective that there was a movement in the Republican Party to draft him for President in 1944. Thank God for Tom Dewey, that being the first and hopefully last time I will say that. MacArthur was a 20th Century Custer.

You may attempt to fix ignorance Tom, but you can't fix stupid.

[dave]

Colonel Graham certainly allowed Goldin to prove himself a liar, valor thief and prevaricator. Goldin reminds me of the class reunions were people tend to have that remembering disorder where their exploits and victories are greater today than in days of yore.

Goldin irritates me the most because of his finagling to secure the Medal of Honor for himself though he certainly did not merit the awarding of the honor. I realize that many MOH were not deserved and many more were never awarded due to a lack of witnesses. The army, in 1916, established a review committee to study each individual awardee and determine it they deserved the award. The committee was under the leadership of Major General Nelson Miles.

"One by one, the Board reviewed each of the 2,625 recipients who had been honored since the Medal’s creation (1,520 recipients from the War Between the States, all 443 Indian Wars recipients, plus the 662 from the Spanish-American War)." * In the end 911 names were removed from the Honor Roll but Goldin received his MOH in 1924 and never was subject to review, unfortunately.
Regards
David
*http://www.jmarkpowell.com/when-the-army-took-back-the-congressional-medal-of-honor-2/

[quincannon]

It is guys like Goldin, MacArthur, and Charles Lindberg, who do not deserve in the first place, or dishonor themselves after receipt that really piss me off. Then it takes guys like Teddy that have to wait a hundred years for such an award, who really do deserve it.

It is gratifying to me that I have lived to see some redress of justice in the better late than never award of Medals of Honor to truly deserving African American and Japanese American soldiers from World War II. Up until Korea, and I believe this correct (but check me) the highest award ever received by an African American was the Navy Cross awarded to Seaman Doris Miller of the USS West Virginia for action on 7 December 1941, and Nimitz had a hell of a time getting that one through.

Further it is my opinion that no time constraints be placed on the award of the Medal of Honor.

I cannot see how in the name of God there were 662 awards of the Medal of Honor in a war that lasted two months. Don't dispute it Dave, just can't imagine how it could happen.

[deadwoodgultch]

So Steve, would you post Gordy's thoughts here or somewhere else.

Regards,
Tom