here - The Mystery Of Sitting Bull

Chapter 1
The Battle of the Little Big Horn
The Battle of the Little Big Horn - President Grant - Author Frederick Whittaker - The
Motives for the Reno Court of Inquiry - General Terry Blames Custer - Major Reno takes
the High Road - The Reno Court of Inquiry a Restricted Document - The Reno Court of
Inquiry Convenes - Lieutenant Maguire and his 1876 Map - Recorder Jesse Lee - The
Indian Department - Jesse Lee’s 7 Questions - The Great Chief Sitting Bull
“I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle.”
Sitting Bull, July 20, 1881
In the early morning of June 27, 1876, a scout was dispatched with a desperate message from a location described in
the handwritten note as “Camp on the Little Big Horn, 20 miles from its mouth.” The message was from Major
Marcus Reno, the second in command of 7th Cavalry, commanded by the famous Civil War hero and ‘Indian fighter’
of the American West; General George Armstrong Custer. The message read:
I have had a most terrific engagement with the hostile Indians. They left their camp last evening at sundown moving
due south in the direction of the Big Horn Mountains. I am very much crippled (Major Reno’s forces) and cannot
possibly pursue. Lieutenants McIntosh, Hodgson, and Dr. De Wolf are among the killed. I have many wounded and
many horses and mules shot. I have lost both my own horses. I have not seen or heard from Custer since he ordered
me to charge with my battalion, 3 companies, promising to support me.
I charged about 2 p.m. (June 25, 1876) but meeting no support was forced back to the hills. At this point, I was
joined by (Captain) Benteen with 3 companies and the pack train and rear guard with one company. I have fought
thousands and can still hold my own, but cannot leave here on account of the wounded. Send me medical aid and
rations. As near as I can say now I have over 100 men killed and wounded.
Major Reno’s message was addressed to General Alfred Terry, who was in command of a second force of about 450
soldiers, and was marching up the Little Big Horn Valley from the north. Major Reno and seven companies of the
7th Cavalry, less than 400 soldiers, had been trapped and surrounded by thousands of Sioux Indian Warriors
and their allies, led by the Great Chief of the Sioux and warlord of all the Plains Indians at war with the government;
Sitting Bull, for two days on a bluff overlooking the Little Big Horn Valley, Montana Territory. General Custer and
about 200 cavalrymen had vanished after he had ordered an attack on Sitting Bull’s huge Indian camp in the Little
Big Horn Valley, described by 7th Cavalry scouts as the largest gathering of Indians ever seen in the American West,
two days before, on June 25.
Major Reno had made a separate charge on the Indian camp where his command had been badly defeated, and then
he had retreated to the bluff where he, and the soldiers of the 7 th Cavalry who had not been with General Custer, had
remained for two days, trapped and under siege by thousands of Indian Warriors.
General Terry and his command would arrive at Major Reno’s position on the bluff overlooking the Little Big Horn
Valley later that morning, passing along the way another hillside with almost 200 dead 7th Cavalry soldiers scattered
about. On the hilltop, behind horses shot for barricades, had been found a handful of 7th Cavalrymen and General
Custer who, after the Civil War, had become the country’s most famous ‘Indian Fighter’ and had even written a
popular book about his adventures in the American West. General Custer, and his entire personal command of five
companies of cavalry, had been wiped out to the last man. Lieutenant Charles Roe, an officer with General Terry’s
command, described what happened after General Custer and his command had been discovered:
We moved up the valley and in about two miles found Major Reno with the remaining seven companies entrenched
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on top of a high hill, and at the foot of the hill on the plain were the dead bodies of soldiers and horses. (Members
of Major Reno’s command killed in the Little Big Horn Valley)
General Terry and his staff went up to Reno and found that they had been surrounded and fighting constantly for
two days. They had been 30 hours without water and could have held out only a little while longer as ammunition
was running out. They had a great many killed and about 50 wounded … they knew nothing of Custer…
The Battle of the Little Big Horn had been fought, and lost, by General Custer and the 7th Cavalry. They had fought
thousands of Sioux Warriors and their allies, lead by the legendary Sioux Chieftain Sitting Bull, and it was the worst
defeat the U.S. Army was ever to suffer in the American West.
The Battle of the Little Big Horn
In the spring of 1876 three Army columns had been ordered to
seek out and defeat Indians hostile to the government and
who followed the Sioux Chieftain and Medicine Man;
Sitting Bull. His mounted Plains Indian Warriors
dominated vast regions of the American West, including
much of North and South Dakota, Wyoming, and
Montana. One of the Army commands searching for
Sitting Bull and his warriors had been General
Custer and the 7th Cavalry.
In 1868 a treaty had been signed with the Sioux
which guaranteed to them their homelands,
including the Black Hills, but it was a treaty that
the government had quickly broken. In 1873 a
railroad survey expedition had crossed Sioux
hunting lands as the first step for building a railroad,
and in 1874 an Army expedition into the Black
Hills had discovered gold, quickly resulting in a
‘gold rush’ by thousands of fortune seeking
miners. By 1876 the Black Hills were gone from
the Sioux domain; occupied by tens of thousands
of miners, and the eventual completion of the
railroad would bring a swift end to the remaining
Sioux homelands and their way of life.
Sitting Bull and General Custer were battlefield
acquaintances long before the Battle of the Little Big
Horn. In 1873 it had been General Custer and the 7th
Cavalry that had been the military escort for the railroad
survey, and he had fought two battles with Sitting Bull and his
warriors. It had again been General Custer and the 7th Cavalry that had
been the military expedition into the Black Hills in 1874 and, although the
Sioux had watched the soldiers closely, they had not attacked the well armed expedition. In 1876 General Custer and
the 7th Cavalry had returned to the Sioux lands once again, this time on a war mission to destroy once and for all
Sitting Bull and the alliance of Plains Indian Tribes and Warriors who followed him.
Sitting Bull had never signed a treaty with the American Government and for many years preceding the Battle of the
Little Big Horn he and his warriors had waged continuous war against all, white and Indian, who were not allied
with him. Sitting Bull’s allies included the Northern Cheyenne and members of other tribes, primarily Southern
Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Arapahoe; tribes that were officially at peace with the government, but which had many
individual War Chiefs and warriors who had chosen to continue to follow the ‘war path’ under the leadership of
Sitting Bull.
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Those who were not Sitting Bull’s allies and passed through his domain, or lived on its perimeter, were under
continuous threat, or victims of, Indian war parties and raids, and some Indian tribes that were enemies of the Sioux,
such as the Crow, were actually at risk of extermination by the Sioux and their allies.
Those Indians, who had taken the ‘peace trail’, as Sitting Bull knew, had not only been cheated out of the treaty
obligations promised them in exchange for vast amounts of their homelands, but in 1876 many were actually
starving at the Indian Agencies. For the Sioux, and all the Plains Indians, the ‘peace trail’ at the Indian Agencies had
proven to be a trail of broken promises, destitution, and humiliation, and it was a trail Sitting Bull would not follow
willingly. There would be a final battle of desperation for the Plains Indians in 1876; a battle in which it was
believed by the Indians that victory would force the government to honor its past treaty promises and end the
invasions of their homelands. In this battle the Plains Indians would be led by the Great Chief and Spiritual Leader
who had become both a legend and living hero to all the Plains Indians, and a legend and living terror to all his
enemies; Sitting Bull.
From across the entire American West Sitting Bull would rally the Plains
Indian tribes and warriors for the great battle he planned and which
he would term “The Big Fight.” Sitting Bull planned that “Big
Fight” to be with the soldier who was his greatest enemy, the
enemy who had taken the Black Hills from the Sioux and who
wanted to completely destroy the Sioux homelands with the
hated railroad. That enemy was the Army’s most formidable
cavalry commander and the dangerous foe of all the Plains
Indians at war with the government; General George Armstrong
Custer.
General Custer was the commander of the 7th Cavalry from its
very beginning and in 1876, and long before, it was
considered to be the best cavalry regiment in the entire
Army. It had been mustered shortly after the Civil War, in
1866, at Fort Riley, Kansas with General Custer as its
acting commanding officer. The mission of the 7th
Cavalry was to fight the Plains Indians who had not
surrendered to the government and had mostly
fought the southern tribes; the Arapahoe, Kiowa,
Comanche, Southern Cheyenne, and Sioux, until
stationed in 1873 at the newly built Fort Lincoln,
located in North Dakota. This was the lands of the
northern Cheyenne, Sioux, and Sitting Bull. In that
year General Custer and the 7th Cavalry had
provided the escort for a railroad expedition deep
into Sitting Bull’s domain and had fought two in
battles with the Great Chief and his warriors.
During the two battles on the Yellowstone in the year 1873, the two Warlords had warily felt each other out while
each had prevented the other from accomplishing their war goals. General Custer’s goal was, as always for the
Frontier Army, to find the camp of the Indians and destroy it. For Sitting Bull, his goal was to prevent the Army
from annihilating his camp with the ponies, teepees, possessions, and families of women and children. To
accomplish this war goal, Sitting Bull would destroy as much of the 7th Cavalry as possible.
The following year General Custer had led the military expedition into the Black Hills, which had been specifically
guaranteed to the Sioux by the Fort Laramie treaty of 1868. The discovery of gold in the Black Hills by Custer had
brought thousands of miners into the region, and both expeditions had created widespread and open warfare across
the American West. Sitting Bull had other enemies besides Custer, but it was General Custer and the 7th Cavalry that
was dismembering the Sioux homelands year by year, and in 1876 it was General Custer and the 7th Cavalry who
also was Sitting Bull’s most formidable enemy.
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On June 25th, 1876, General Custer and the 7th Cavalry had found the Great Chief, and the thousands of Plains
Indian Warriors who had rallied to his war lance to fight the soldiers, camped in the Little Big Horn Valley. The 7 th
Cavalry had numbered almost 675 soldiers and scouts, and the battle which followed had resulted in the massacre of
General Custer and over 200 cavalrymen with him, while about 4 miles away, on a hilltop surrounded by thousands
of Sioux Warriors and their allies, Major Reno had survived the battle with almost 400 soldiers under his command.
In total, almost 269 soldiers, scouts, and civilians had been killed at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and the defeat
of the 7th Cavalry and the massacre of General Custer’s command had shocked the public and dumbfounded the
Army.
An immediate controversy resulted, a controversy that remains unresolved, with the newspapers of the day helping
to generate and promote partisan and political interpretations of the battle. With little, if any, regard for journalistic
standards, the newspapers of 1876 had openly promoted their political views of the battle, and the events leading up
to it, and General Custer himself had been a political controversy long before the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
In the months preceding his death General Custer had been in the nation’s capital, subpoenaed against his will to
testify before a Congressional Committee on the corruption in the Indian Department, and within the Army itself.
General Custer's testimony had named Orville Grant, the brother of President Grant, as well as Secretary of War
Belknap, as leading participants in this corruption, as well as other key members of President Grant's administration.
General Custer had for many years, and like many other Army officers stationed on the western frontier of America,
drawn attention to these issues, but the flourishing corruption at the Indian Agencies and Army Forts had continued.
In a series of Galaxy magazine articles, and then in his book published in 1874; My Life on the Plains, General
Custer had publicly exposed the brazen cheating of the Indians on the frontier by the Indian Department, and the
soldiers themselves by corrupt Army contractors and government officials.
Even in official military reports General Custer would draw attention to the corruption in the Indian Department,
which had become a national disgrace and a continuing cause of unrest among the Indian tribes which had trusted
the government to honor its treaty obligations; treaty obligations that were in exchange for vast amounts of Indian
lands. General Custer had also assisted an undercover newspaper reporter in exposing frauds committed by the
“Indian Ring;” the label that had been given to those who were profiting from cheating and exploiting the Indians
who had taken the ‘peace trail’ at the Indian Agencies.
In his testimony in Washington in the spring of 1876 this corruption, as General Custer pointed out, had been
causing thousands of Indian Warriors, and entire families, to leave the Indian
Agencies and join Sitting Bull in open warfare against the government, a war
Sitting Bull had been leading successfully in the American West for many
years.
President Grant
The year 1876 was also a Presidential election year and not long before
the Battle of the Little Big Horn General Custer had been singled out by
President Grant for special punishment and the President had attempted,
unsuccessfully, to have Custer removed as the commander of the 7 th
Cavalry. This was in direct retaliation for Custer's testimony before
Congressional hearings in the spring of 1876 concerning the wide
spread and continuing corruption in the Army and Indian
Department. After the battle, President Grant would then publicly
state the defeat of the 7th Cavalry had been General Custer’s fault
and he did not order the military to conduct a much needed official
investigation into the battle. President Grant said:
I regard Custer’s massacre (It has claimed the “Custer massacre” was not
a ‘massacre’ because women and children were not killed. In fact, the dictionary
definition of ‘massacre’ is “general slaughter, wholesale or indiscriminate killing.” This is an accurate description of
the Custer Battlefield.) as a sacrifice of troops, brought on by Custer himself, that was … unnecessary ... He was not
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to have made the attack before affecting the junction with Terry and Gibbon. He was notified to meet them on the
26th, but instead of marching slowly, as his order required in order to affect the junction on the 26 th, he enters upon
a force march of 83 miles in 24 hours and thus had to meet the Indians alone.
President Grant not only publicly, and falsely, accused General Custer of disobeying the orders given to him by
General Terry, Custer’s immediate commanding officer, and thereby causing the defeat of the 7th Cavalry at the
Little Big Horn, the claim that he had marched 83 miles in 24 hours was so far from the truth that it might be
suspected President Grant had not been misinformed, but was being deliberately dishonest. In a published letter
dated January 4, 1878, George Herendeen, who was an experienced frontiersman and one of General Custer’s
scouts, wrote:
The distance from the mouth of the Rosebud, where Custer started out, to the battlefield … was something over 100
miles. I think the first day we marched 12 miles, the second day 35 miles, the third day 33 miles, and the fourth and
last day 25 to 28 miles. We started at noon on the 22d of June and did not reach the battlefield until about noon on
the 25th of June.
All the stories about Custer running his men and horses until they were worn out by the time they arrived on the
battlefield are unqualifiedly false. A heavy pack train kept up with us. The movements of Custer throughout the
march, so far as I could judge, were deliberate and soldierly in the extreme.
The scout, George Herendeen, had many years of experience on the western frontier of America and had actually
been with General Custer and the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Big Horn and, unlike some others, had no
reason to misrepresent the facts or the truth. His judgment concerning the condition of the horses and the distance
marched before the battle is a knowledgeable one by a qualified participant. Lieutenant Edward Godfrey, the
commander of Company K, 7th Cavalry, was also at the Battle of the Little Big Horn and, like the 7th Cavalry Scout
George Herendeen, did not agree with President Grant’s statement. In a published article Lieutenant Godfrey wrote:
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The length of the marches has been a subject of comment, it being asserted that the command was subjected to long
and exhausting marches. They were: June 22nd, 12 miles; June 23rd, 33 miles to 35 miles; June 24th, 28 miles; then
June 24th at 11:30 p.m., about 8 miles; then from the divide between the Rosebud and the Little Big Horn to the
battle, about 20 miles; in all about 113 miles.
The total distance General Custer and the 7th Cavalry had marched to the battlefield, according to Lieutenant
Godfrey, from June 22 to June 25, was about 113 miles, and from the morning of June 24 to the afternoon of 25, the
day of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, about 56 miles, not the 83 miles claimed by President Grant. The Cavalry
could easily ride 30 miles in a rigorous day’s march and President Grant had added almost an entire day's march, 27
miles, to that actually covered by the 7th Cavalry in the last 24 hours before the battle. President Grant's false
statement about the distance marched by the 7th Cavalry before the Battle of the Little Big Horn has frequently been
quoted by authors and historians.
The misinformation about the distance marched to the Little Big Horn has been used to 'prove' the soldiers and
horses of the 7th Cavalry were exhausted at the time of the battle and that General Custer was in violation of his
orders in forcing unreasonable marches on the 7th Cavalry to the Little Big Horn, and then attacking Sitting Bull’s
Indian camp before a planned junction with General Terry’s command. The often repeated accusation that General
Custer had disobeyed his orders from General Terry originated from General Terry himself almost immediately after
the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and has been proven untrue by many historians and even a superficial examination
of those orders confirms that General Custer did not disobey the last orders given him in any way.
President Grant had demonstrated he was vindictive towards General Custer before the Battle of the Little Big Horn,
as he was after Custer’s death, and he was vindictive to the point of dishonesty. Both President Grant and General
Terry were to be instrumental in manufacturing false controversies after the Battle of the Little Big Horn; false
controversies which would deliberately distract attention from the real causes of the defeat.
General Nelson Miles, like General Custer, was a Frontier Army commander, and he would prove himself
instrumental in defeating the Plains Indians in less than a year of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. General Miles
would eventual command the entire Army, and he wrote in his book about his experiences:
The loss of two hundred and sixty two men under such circumstances would have caused a very searching
investigation in almost any country, and it is strange that there has never been any judicious and impartial
investigation of all the causes that led to that disaster. True, there was a court of inquiry held in Chicago … called
at the request of one of the participants …
General Miles was correct about the need for a “searching investigation of
all the causes that led to that disaster.” The inquiry he mentioned would
be requested by Major Reno and take place in 1879, but it would hardly
be the “searching investigation” General Miles believed was needed,
and it certainly would not expose “all the causes” which led to the
defeat of the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
Author Frederick Whittaker
In December 1876, author Frederick Whittaker published his book;
Life of Custer, the first biography of General Custer, printed only 6
months after the Battle of the Little Big Horn. The book included
a section on Custer’s last battle and contained interviews and
statements by 7th Cavalry officers who were participants at the
battle. General Custer’s widow, Elizabeth Bacon Custer, had
helped with Whittaker’s book and had encouraged surviving 7 th
Cavalry officers to speak with him and defend her dead husband.
As Whittaker pointed out in his book, there was only one official
document detailing the Battle of the Little Big Horn by a participant, and
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that was Major Reno’s report of the battle, dated July 5, 1876. Captain Benteen, the ranking surviving officer under
Major Reno, had also written a ‘report,’ however, this document included only Benteen’s advance to the battlefield
and nothing more after his arrival. Author Whittaker had made it clear in his book that he did not agree with Major
Reno’s report, or the conduct of Captain Benteen, and had written:
Had Reno fought as Custer fought, and had Benteen obeyed Custer’s orders, the Battle of the Little Big Horn might
have proved Custer’s last and greatest Indian victory.
Whittaker’s belief that General Custer and the 7th Cavalry could have won the Battle of the Little Big Horn;
“Custer’s last and greatest Indian victory,” if only Major Reno and Captain Benteen had followed General Custer’s
orders, has remained one of the predominant historical points of view. Captain Benteen had been the third ranking
officer at the battle and his conduct, especially his failure to follow the orders given to him by General Custer to
advance quickly to the battlefield, the ‘battlefield’ being where General Custer and his command was fighting, had
caused attention to be directed at him as well as Major Reno. However, as the third in command at the Battle of the
Little Big Horn, Captain Benteen was fortunate in having most of the scrutiny directed at Major Reno. In his book
Whittaker had also demanded a formal investigation into the battle and had written:
The action of a court of inquiry will be able to call forth the testimony of officers whose names the author withholds
from the public at present … Many witnesses have been deterred from speaking by fear of those superiors whom
their evidence will impeach, and these witnesses will be able to swear in public to what they have only dared to say
and write in private. The nation demands such a court to vindicate the name of a dead hero from the pitiless
malignity, which first slew him, and then (has) pursued him beyond the grave.
Frederick Whittaker was to bring impressive credentials to the table in his attempt to force a formal investigation
into the Battle of the Little Big Horn. He had been in the Union Army and a cavalryman during the Civil War, as
had been General Custer and many of the officers of the 7 th Cavalry who died with him, and Whittaker was able to
use his experience as a cavalryman in reference when writing about the Battle of the Little Big Horn. He had served
on the staff of General Phil Kearny as an aide-de-camp, and assistant adjutant general, and had learned firsthand the
how the command structure in a wartime cavalry headquarters operated.
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Fredrick Whittaker’s cavalry unit had also briefly and temporarily served under General Custer in the spring of 1864
and the future biographer had the experience of actually having General Custer as a commanding officer. Whittaker
would not only be seriously wounded during the war, his meritorious service would see him promoted through the
enlisted ranks to Lieutenant (although some sources say he was also promoted to Captain and the historical record is
unclear) and he had participated in many of the famous battles of the Civil War.
At the time of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Whittaker had also been an editor with the Army and Navy Journal,
the semi-official newspaper of the American military, and had met General Custer during the spring of 1876 when
Custer had been subpoenaed to Washington, but had also briefly taken a trip to New York to meet with his
publishers:
He had left the fort (Fort Lincoln), expecting to be gone ten days at furthest and he had now been detained at
Washington for over a month, unable to go anywhere, uncertain of his movements from day to day. He was only able
to take one business trip to New York on one occasion, to have a little business talk with his publishers about his
'War Memoirs,' which he had commenced during the past winter at Fort Lincoln.
This hurried visit was the occasion of the last glimpse of Custer caught by the writer (Whittaker) while in the
editorial rooms of the 'Galaxy' (magazine). Custer looked worn and thin, and somewhat worried, his hair cut short,
a great change from the debonair cavalier of the Waynesboro (Civil War) fight. His manner conveyed the
impression of a nervous man with his nerves all on edge, in a state of constant repressed impatience. He had left his
wife behind at Fort Lincoln and knew that every day brought the season of active operations nearer (the Little Big
Horn campaign) while he was away. No wonder he looked worried.
Whittaker had resigned his position with the Army and Navy Journal to write his book about General Custer in the
summer of 1876. Whittaker’s wartime experience as a Civil War cavalryman, his credentials as military journalist of
the era, the support of Mrs. Custer, and his opportunity to interview actual 7th Cavalry participants of the battle, gave
Whittaker formidable advantages in researching and writing about the Battle of the Little Big Horn, advantages that
can never be repeated by anyone. Whittaker, however, had never fought the mounted Plains Indians and shared the
misconceptions of many members of the Army who had no experience concerning the warfare with them in the
American West. Whittaker wrote in his book:
Compelled as they are, by the inferiority of their men, to fight dismounted, too many of our cavalry officers have
fallen into the pernicious habit which spoiled the Confederate cavalry during the Civil War, and which ruined all
European cavalry from the invention of firearms … this habit is the distrust of the saber … the Indians, with all their
improved firearms, universally retain the lance with their other weapons.
The drilled soldier, possessing a saber, uses it only as an ornament on dress parade and leaves it in quarters when
he goes out to fight … can it be wondered at that Indians beat men who are so ignorant of the art of attack and
defense and who despise all the teachings of military history?
The “pernicious habit” of the Confederate Cavalry during the Civil War had been to arm much of their cavalry with
pistols and shotguns for close quarter combat and they had actually been very effective when commanded by
innovative Confederate Cavalry officers in ‘hit and run’ raids, especially when used against stationary Union forces.
Whittaker’s opinion aside, by the time of the Civil War the advent of modern firearms had nearly brought an end to
the days of huge mounted charges of opposing cavalry armies crashing into each other with lances and flashing
sabers, and within a few decades after the publication of Whittaker’s book, all cavalry forces throughout the world
would become obsolete.
Perhaps it had been General Custer’s own use of the saber during the Civil War, in the surprise flank attack with
drawn swords that Custer became famous for, that caused Whittaker to believe it could also be used in warfare with
the Indians of the American West. However, the Great Plains Indians of Western America had no knowledge of, or
interest in, military history or romantic cavalry traditions, and had developed their own methods, very effective
methods, of warfare on the endless plains and wilderness of the American West. (Sitting Bull, however, did have an
interest in military history and near the end of his life a white lady friend; Catherine Weldon, would read to him the
biographies and histories of famous military historical figures.)
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The “art of attack and defense” that Whittaker wrote about, and the battlefield tactics used by the cavalry of both
armies during the Civil War, were nearly useless when fighting mounted Indian Warriors. The Plains Indians of
Western America would avoid open and pitched battles with the cavalry and instead were masters at fighting from
ambush and concealment and expert at the use of ruse and decoy. These tactics would be used on nearly every
occasion that the Plains Indian chose battle with the U.S. Cavalry, the same tactics that have always been the bane,
and bafflement, of every conventional army. The modern army, however, usually has superior mobility to surround
the enemy with, where in the American West of 1876 the opposite was true. The swift and hardy Indian pony
allowed the Plains Indian Warrior to ‘hit and run’ and choose when to fight, or not
fight.
Nearly every cavalry officer who fought the Plains Indians, and later
chronicled this warfare, would also comment on the amazing horsemanship
of the mounted Indian Warriors and frequently termed them “the finest
light cavalry in the world.” As some of these officers would say, the
Plains Indian could ride a horse almost before they could walk and
the feats of the mounted Indian Warrior continuously astonished the
frontier cavalry. However, the Indian war pony and the trained
cavalry horse had a mutual fear of each other that almost always
prevented mounted close combat.
The Indian Warrior mounted on his favorite war pony terrified the
cavalry horse; the Indian pony looked different, smelled different,
and behaved in an unrecognizable manner with a 'wild’ whooping
Indian warrior riding on it. The larger cavalry horses equally
terrified the Indian pony for similar reasons and in the confusion and
excitement of combat, neither recognized the other as a ‘horse.’
Walter Camp was an early researcher into the Battle of the Little Big
Horn and personally interviewed many of the participants. One 7th
Cavalry soldier, Private Roman Rutten, who was with Major
Reno’s command, told Camp about his experience with his horse at
the battle:
Approaching Ford A (The ford Major Reno used in crossing the Little Big
Horn River into the Little Big Horn Valley.), Rutten’s horse, as soon as he
smelled Indians, began to act up badly and he could not control him. The only
thing he could do was to continually circle him around the three troops. The
horse kept this up after passing Ford A and when he got down near the
skirmish line, the horse lunged ahead of the command and took him
considerably nearer the Indians. He therefore circled him around to the right
and came back through the timber and joined the command.
Private Rutten, undoubtedly as terrified as his horse, certainly must have had an
exciting ride, as well as astonishing any nearby Indians. There are several other
accounts of 7th Cavalry soldiers at the Battle of the Little Big Horn whose
horses became unmanageable as well, and there are accounts of at least two of
Major Reno’s soldiers disappearing in the direction of the Indian camp on
unmanageable horses, never to be seen again. John Finerty was a reporter with
General Crook’s command and he wrote about when the soldiers met a ‘war party’
of Crow scouts who joined them on their campaign in 1876:
We saw a grove of spears and a crowd of ponies upon the northern heights, and there broke upon the air a fierce,
savage whoop. The Crows had come in sight of our camp and this was their mode of announcing their satisfaction.
We went down to the creek to meet them, and a picturesque tribe they were. Their horses, nearly every man had an
extra pony, were little beauties, and neighed shrilly at their American brethren, who, unused to Indians, kicked,
plunged, and reared in a manner that threatened a general stampede.
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In a disciplined military formation the well trained and larger cavalry mount could successfully charge and panic the
Indian war pony, even large numbers of them, but individually the cavalry horse reacted to the Indian pony as
though it were a wild animal it did not recognize and would frequently bolt from it, and the Indian pony reacted to
the cavalry horse in exactly the same way. The Indian pony was also much swifter than the usual cavalry mount and
could easily outrun it in a sprint (But not always. General Custer and a number of 7 th Cavalrymen rode thoroughbred
horses they had purchased themselves.), and in a long distance marathon run the hardy Indian pony, with the warrior
frequently exchanging mounts with extra ponies brought along on raids for that purpose, would run the cavalry
horse into the ground.
Any sort of close combat between the cavalry mount and Indian
pony was a near impossibility and the opportunity for a
cavalryman to use the saber in close combat with the Plains
Indian Warriors practically nonexistent. For this reason the
Frontier Cavalry of the American West, with
the occasional exception of individual
officers, rarely carried their sabers with
them on campaigns against the Plains
Indians.
General
Crook
also
commanded one of the three
expeditions searching for Sitting Bull
in the year 1876 and reporter Finerty
wrote:
The sabers had been left behind at
the different posts as useless
encumbrances.
Saber to saber mounted combat was not the
only difference between warfare in the Civil
War and the American West. The mounted
Plains Indian Warrior would charge an
enemy when they had overwhelming
numbers, but they would never charge
directly into a mass of enemy guns as both
armies, Confederate and Union, had so
recently, frequently, and always with many
casualties, done during the Civil War.
The mounted Indian Warriors also would never
allow themselves to circle around a wagon train in
range of their enemies’ guns as Hollywood style targets
while Gary Cooper and a few heroes picked them off one by
one. Indian war parties would, however, always surround their
enemy in combat, and this was a tactic General Custer termed
"circling" and this was when the Indian Warriors would circle their
enemy mounted, including a wagon train, out of the range of its weapons and waiting for an opening to rush their
adversary.
In any chosen combat, the Plains Indians would inevitably, and immediately, surround their adversaries, attacking
them from all directions and cutting off all avenues of retreat. As masters of ruse, ambush, stealth, and concealment,
Indian war parties only chose to fight when all the advantages belonged to them. The chosen form of warfare of the
Plains Indian was raiding for plunder and war honors, not fighting open and bloody battles as had been done
recently in the Civil War by many of the Army officers stationed in the American West, including General Custer.
Pursuit by the cavalry of mounted Indian Warriors in summer, when the warriors would frequently change ponies
10
while escaping, was absolutely futile and the cavalryman had only one horse for every purpose, including as a ‘pack
horse’ for the soldiers personal equipment, while on campaign in the American West. Not only were the Plains
Indian Warriors excellent horsemen far superior to most cavalrymen, the Indian pony itself was swift and hardy and
was more suited to the American West in every way.
To defeat the Plains Indians, the cavalry could only search for and discover where their main camp was located,
usually only successful in winter, and attempt a surprise attack on it. The cavalry would then charge mounted into
the Indian camp, or ‘village,’ to capture it. But once inside the Indian camp the cavalrymen would almost
immediately dismount to fight as marksmen or to fire volleys from disciplined military formations, and in this
respect the Frontier Cavalry of the American West could more accurately be characterized as ‘dragoons,’ or
mounted infantry. Attacking or threatening their camps was almost the only way for the Frontier Army to force the
Indian Warriors into open battle.
The dismounted Indian Warrior was a master at fighting from concealment and only a puff of smoke would betray
their position on the battlefield. Lieutenant George Wallace of the 7 th Cavalry fought at the Battle of the Little Big
Horn and commented on fighting the dismounted Indian Warrior:
.
… One moment you see an Indian and the next you do not. I can only estimate them by the number of shots fired.
General Custer had ordered that the sabers be left behind when the 7 th Cavalry marched to the Little Big Horn
because, as experience had taught him and the other Frontier Army Officers, this weapon was nearly useless in
fighting the Plains Indian Warrior.
The unforeseen exception to this would be the Battle of the Little Big Horn where, on the Custer Battlefield, the
huge amount of dust created by thousands of cavalry mounts and Indian ponies, and the gun smoke from the largest
gun battle that would ever be seen in the American West, would have quickly enveloped the entire Custer
Battlefield. This gun smoke and dust created the opportunity for the Indian Warriors to close in on the soldiers and
use their lances, tomahawks, and war clubs in the close combat they strove for in battle; to touch the enemy and
‘count coup’ for war honors, and where the soldiers only defense in close combat was to fire their pistols at close
range or use their carbine as a club.
Had General Custer’s 7th Cavalry soldiers been armed with sabers, or a bayonet for
their carbines, they could have defended themselves more effectively in close
combat near the end of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and perhaps even
prolonged the hopeless battle for a few minutes more. But neither the saber or the
bayonet could have done anything for General Custer’s command on the Custer
Battlefield other than add a few more moments of life for the vastly outnumbered
and doomed soldiers of the 7th Cavalry.
The Motives for the Reno Court of Inquiry
The author of the first biography of General Custer; Fredrick Whittaker,
would continue to publicly demand for an official inquiry into the Battle
of the Little Big Horn until, finally, a letter written to Congressman W.
W. Corlett asking for a Congressional Investigation, and then
published in newspapers across the country, forced Major Reno
himself to ask for a military court of inquiry. Whittaker’s letter said:
Information coming to me from participants in the battle, written and
oral, is to the effect that gross cowardice was displayed therein by Major
Marcus A. Reno, Seventh United States Cavalry, second in command that
day, and that owing to such cowardice the orders of Lieut. Col. (Brevet
Major General) Custer, commanding officer, to said Reno, to execute a
certain attack, were not made.
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That the failure of this movement, owing to his cowardice and disobedience, caused the defeat of the United States
forces on the day in question, and that had Custer’s orders been obeyed the troops would probably have defeated
the Indians.
That after Major Reno’s cowardly flight he was joined by Captain F. W. Benteen, Seventh United States Cavalry,
with reinforcements which were placed under his orders, and that he remained idle with this forces while his
superior officer was fighting against the whole force of the Indians, the battle being within his knowledge, the sound
of firing audible from his position, and his forces out of immediate danger from the enemy.
That the consequences of this second exhibition of cowardice and in competency were the massacre of Lieut. Col.
Custer and five companies of the Seventh United States Cavalry.
Whittaker’s charge of “cowardice and disobedience” (of orders) on the part of Major Reno, and that the 7 th Cavalry
could “probably have defeated the Indians” has remained a point of view which has appeared to be supported by
many of the known facts about the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and these charges would prove to be difficult for
Major Reno to defend himself against. Major Reno responded on June 22, 1878, in a letter addressed to the
President of the United States, who in 1878 was Rutherford B. Hayes, and Reno requested that a military court of
inquiry be held to determine the validity of Whittaker’s accusations.
By Presidential order Major Reno’s request was granted. However, the court’s inquiry would be officially limited to
Major Reno and his conduct at the Battle of the Little Big Horn and this, unfortunately, prevented what could have,
and should have, been a wide ranging investigation by the Congress, an investigation that could have exposed issues
unwelcome by many government officials.
The Reno Court of Inquiry was to be only an Army investigation into the conduct of an Army Officer at a battle on
the American Frontier, not a complete investigation, which might have also exposed, as General Miles had
mentioned, “all the causes” of the war in 1876 the Army had been ordered to fight. Major Reno should have known
this and it would be expected that the last thing Reno, or any other Army officer, would ever want is a court of
inquiry into their conduct about anything, let alone a public and controversial military inquiry into an officer’s
conduct at the epic, and very public, defeat of a famous General and an elite Army command at a distant location in
the American West.
A Congressional Investigation could have examined the actual causes into the Indian War of 1876 and the entire
government’s policy and conduct towards the American Plains Indian, especially the Indian Department, and
corruption in that department had even included the President’s brother; Orville Grant.
Orville had already been forced to testify before a Congressional Committee in the spring of 1876 and a military
inquiry would instead direct attention to the military; specifically Major Reno, and from the Indian Department’s
perspective it was much better the Army faced the resulting public scrutiny rather than them. There had not only
been graft and corruption in the Indian Department, it continued, and would continue for many years, termed the
“Indian Ring” by the Army and honest elements of the press, and this corruption would be protected.
The Army also did not want the Battle of the Little Big Horn examined too closely. For many years the “Indian
Ring,” and their supporters in the press, had turned nearly every Army battle on the frontier, against any tribe of
Indians, into a massacre of defenseless women and children. War parties of the swift and elusive Plains Indian
Warriors were impossible for the cavalry to successfully pursue after a raid and they only fought the Army at a time
and place of their choosing.
The only successful way for the Army to defeat the Plains Indians was to find their camps and destroy them, and
when they did that everyone in the camp who could hold a weapon would defend it, including women, the older
children and the elderly. In his book, My Life on the Plains, Custer wrote about the Army strategy of destroying the
Indian camps and his experience with this strategy when he and the 7 th Cavalry were on a winter campaign on the
southern plains of Western America in 1868 and successfully destroyed a Cheyenne camp on the Washita River:
… our Indian guides discovered the trail of an Indian war party … with the Indian scouts as trailers (the cavalry)
set out early the next morning, following the trail of the war party, not in the direction taken by them, as this would
12
be an idle attempt, but in the direction from which they came, expressing the conviction that such a course would in
all probability lead us direct to the villages of the marauders, which was the ultimate object of the movement we
were thus engaged in. By doing so we might be able to strike a prompt blow against our enemies and visit swift
punishment upon the war party…
The results of a successful Army attack on an Indian camp were devastating, with every Indian holding a weapon,
and many who were not, killed, the tepees and all possessions burned, and any captured ponies shot. This had been
exactly General Custer’s objective at the Little Big Horn; to destroy Sitting Bull’s Indian camp and, for the Army,
the less said about the brutal and unrestricted warfare with the Indians in the American West, the better, especially in
Congressional Hearings.
Even worse for the Army, there was also an “Army Ring;” those who were profiting by cheating the frontier
soldiers. In 1876 the tentacles of that corrupt operation had led directly to the Secretary of War; William Belknap,
with General Custer involved in exposing the frauds and helping to force Belknap’s resignation in the spring of
1876, only months before the Battle of the Little Big Horn. In 1879 the “Army Ring” remained a dishonest source of
income for a number of corrupt government officials, and this issue was also not something the Army wanted
discussed openly in any Congressional Hearings. In his book, My Life on the Plains, General Custer had publicly
exposed some of the frauds by the “Army Ring”:
Dishonest contractors at the receiving depots farther east had been permitted to perpetrate gross frauds upon the
Government, the result of which was to produce want and suffering among the men. For example, unbroken
packages of provisions shipped from the main depot of supplies, and which it was impracticable to replace without
loss of time, were, when opened, discovered to contain huge stones for which for which the Government had paid so
much per pound according to contract price.
Boxes of bread were shipped and issued to the soldiers of my command, the contents of which had been baked in
1861, yet this was in 1867. It is unnecessary to state that but little of this bread was eaten, yet there was none at
hand of better quality to replace it. Bad provisions were a fruitful cause of bad health … for all these evils desertion
became the most popular antidote. To such an extent was this case that in one year one regiment lost by desertion
13
alone more than half its effective force …
Having rocks for dinner, one would imagine, would have made even the toughest soldier grumpy, and having bread
almost a decade old would have been not much better. Yet, while the poor rations were survivable (hopefully) it was
the Indians that would cost the soldier his scalp, and it was the corruption in the Indian Department that had driven
many of them to the ‘war path’ in 1876. The open hostility between the Indian Department and the Army usually
meant most of the communications between them was in the form of exchanging public insults, and occasional
‘exposes’ printed in the various, and usually very partisan, newspapers.
However, for once both the Army and Indian Department were in agreement and after the Battle of the Little Big
Horn neither wanted any Congressional Hearings of which they might be a part of. Fortunately for them, Whittaker,
with almost no understanding of the warfare in the American West with the Plains Indians, had directed most of the
attention to Major Reno and had made him personally responsible for the defeat and massacre of General Custer and
the 7th Cavalry soldiers under his direct command at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
General Terry Blames General Custer
General Terry was General Custer’s immediate commanding officer whose
orders he had been operating directly under at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
General Terry had also been in personal command of the reinforcements,
numbering about 450 soldiers, which had arrived on the Little Big Horn
Battlefield June 27th, two days after the battle. Someone was inevitably going to
be blamed for the disaster, and General Terry had quickly found a way to avoid
any responsibility for the defeat by casting blame directly onto General Custer.
Within days of the defeat Terry had accused Custer of disobeying his orders to
him and attacking the Indian camp in the Little Big Horn Valley a day early on
June 25th, and therefore too soon for a claimed simultaneous attack ‘planned’
with General Terry’s force on June 26.
The opposite was actually true, with General Terry taking his time,
especially after he started seeing huge Indian War Parties on June 26,
and he did not arrive on the battlefield until June 27, a day later than
'planned,' and too late for the claimed ‘planned’ attack by the tow
commands on June 26. The fact was General Custer’s immediate commanding
officer, General Terry, had specifically ordered him to the Little Big Horn to find
and fight Sitting Bull and his alliance of hostile tribes, which General Custer had
done, and scrutiny of this decision and order was inevitable, and General Terry knew it.
General Terry, and members of his staff, however, would officially claim the results of the battle were General
Custer’s fault because he disobeyed General Terry‘s orders, not because General Terry had issued those orders.
When this false accusation had been repeated by President Grant it obviously received additional credibility. Author
Fredrick Whittaker had already thoroughly disproved the ’disobedience of orders’ charge against General Custer in
his 1876 book. But undoubtedly this issue would also be brought out at unrestricted Congressional Hearings, had
there been any, which would have also meant the Army’s entire decision making process, and the orders General
Terry himself was operating under, would also have been examined.
Fortunately for General Terry, President Grant, the “Indian Ring,” the “Army Ring,” and a host of unsavory
characters who had profited from cheating the Indians and the Army, and also profited from the Indian Wars, as
author Mart Twain pointed out; “a lie will make it half way around the world before the truth even puts its shoes
on.” The untrue disobedience of orders accusation against General Custer outran the truth in 1876 and, regardless of
the evidence to the contrary, has remained a poorly informed and irrelevant controversy which has confused, as
intended, the most important facts and issues concerning the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
Major Reno Takes the High Road
14
Major Reno’s request for a military court of inquiry into his conduct at the Little Big Horn was, however, like Reno
requesting his own public execution. It could only turn out badly for him, the content and results inevitably
controversial, and with all the attention concerning the death of General Custer and the defeat of the 7 th Cavalry at
the Battle of the Little Big Horn directed at him.
It also may not have only been Whittaker’s demand for congressional hearings which caused Major Reno to request
a court of inquiry. Perhaps powerful and unseen political forces also realized Major Reno was the most convenient
distraction and scapegoat available and, unlike Orville Grant and his shifty associates, politically expendable. Major
Reno was going to be the goat, and he knew it, but how willingly Major Reno went, or possibly unwillingly went,
perhaps under official encouragement and false promises of his redemption and restoration of his reputation, is only
speculation.
Yet, Major Reno did not resign his officer’s commission, which would have prevented, or at least hindered, the
military court of inquiry, and this resignation could not have been prevented by Reno’s superior officers, or any
civilian authority. At the time of the court of inquiry, Major Reno had already been convicted at a frivolous court
martial which had only been a transparent excuse to harass him and, as Major Reno had to know, they really were
'out to get him.' Major Reno could have, and probably should have, prudently chosen resignation from the Army as
the alternative to a court of inquiry, an inquiry which would be directed at him alone.
Instead, Major Reno stayed in the Army, perhaps hoping enough of the truth would come out at a court of inquiry to
actually vindicate him, or perhaps it was his personal honor and a remarkable courage that demanded he face the
controversy head on. Major Reno would challenge in a very public court of inquiry Whittaker and the others who
demanded he alone be held responsible for the defeat of the 7th Cavalry and the massacre of the soldiers under
General Custer’s command at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
The Reno Court of Inquiry a Restricted Document
Confirming the political sensitivity of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, the proceedings of the court would
immediately become, and remain, a restricted military document until 1951 when Colonel W.A. Graham, a retired
Army Officer and author who studied and wrote about the Battle of the Little Big Horn, managed to have the
transcript released for publication. At his own expense Colonel Graham printed 125 copies of the entire proceedings
and since 1951 this document has been available to historians and researchers. In a letter to another military officer
and Battle of the Little Big Horn researcher, Major Kenneth Hammer, Graham would make an observation
concerning the Reno
Court of Inquiry which
stands upon its own
merits. Colonel Graham
wrote:
Only one source exists
(the Reno Court of
Inquiry) that contains
the sworn testimony of
the men who were there
and participated in the
struggle; a record that
sets forth in detail all
that was then known of
the battle.
It was only because of
the author; Fredrick
Whittaker, that any
court of inquiry took
place at all, and this
accomplishment alone is
the
most
valuable
15
historical contribution ever made concerning primary source material for the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Yet,
Whittaker’s goal was to absolve a "dead hero;" General Custer, of any responsibility for the defeat of the 7th Cavalry
at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, which meant from Whittaker’s viewpoint, as well as many others, that of course
General Custer could have won the Battle of the Little Big Horn. It was Major Reno who must have been at fault,
and it was Major Reno’s conduct and decisions that had caused the defeat at the Little Big Horn.
The Reno Court of Inquiry Convenes
On January 13, 1879, the
military court of inquiry
Major
Reno
had
requested convened in
Chicago, Illinois. The
court was to be held in
the Palmer House which,
in 1879, was a luxurious
hotel and restaurant and
today remains as a
historical landmark and
business. This proceeding
would be the only official
investigation into the
Battle of the Little Big
Horn, which has become
known in popular culture
as Custer’s Last Stand.
The battle itself dwarfed
ever other battle fought in
the
American
West
between the Army and the Plains Indians, and which had also killed the commander of the 7th Cavalry, General
George Armstrong Custer, whose successful record as a Union Cavalry Officer and General during the Civil War
had made him a recognized and popular national hero.
For over a decade since the end of the Civil War General Custer had gained additional fame in the American West
as the country’s most famous and experienced ‘Indian Fighter’ and General Custer’s death alone, under any
circumstances, would have been a big news story and historical event all across America. As the only ‘official’
inquiry into the controversial Battle of the Little Big Horn, scrutiny of the Reno Court of Inquiry by many
newspapers and the public was inevitable.
When the Reno Court of Inquiry began on January 13, 1879, Lieutenant Jesse Lee was “duly sworn” by the
President of the court as “Recorder.” Officially, Recorder Lee would not be the 'prosecutor’ of Major Reno, but his
role throughout the proceeding would, in fact, be identical to that of a prosecutor. Major Reno’s application for the
court of inquiry was marked as Exhibit 1. The next order of business for Recorder Lee was to state to the court
exactly why the court of inquiry had been requested by Major Reno. Recorder Lee said:
There is a man by the name of Whittaker whom I understand has made certain accusations against Major Reno and
his name will perhaps be brought up in connection with this case and I desire to submit the question to the court
now and let it decide whether Mr. Whittaker shall be notified to be present and invited to suggest the names of any
witnesses in this case, or to suggest any other evidence that will … throw light on this investigation.
Having a military court proceeding in a civilian establishment, one would imagine, would have made the members
of the military court crabby enough. Having a civilian, especially a controversial author, designated as the reason the
military court of inquiry had convened, and then asking permission to have this civilian suggest witnesses to be
called and present “other evidence,” must have sounded like fingernails scratching a chalkboard to every member of
the military court. Yet, confirming the political nature of the inquiry, the ruling of the court was:
16
The Court decides that Mr. Whittaker shall be subpoenaed to appear and invited to suggest the names of witnesses
in this case.
Further confirming the political overtones of the inquiry, the court also ruled:
The court decides that it will sit with open doors, but further decides that no record or notes of the proceedings shall
be taken for publication.
After the proceedings began, the Chicago Tribune would respond to this ruling by having its reporters running
relays in and out of the courtroom, one reporter writing down the testimony from memory, while another listened
and waited for his relief and his turn to write down the testimony he had heard. The court could only take so much
of this and, after a few days of watching the distracting reporters bolt in and out of the courtroom, the restriction was
lifted and the reporters were allowed to take notes during the proceedings.
On the second day of the proceedings Major Reno asked the court for permission to introduce Lyman D. Gilbert, a
civilian attorney, as his counsel and this request was granted. Why Major Reno chose a civilian attorney to represent
him, instead of a military attorney, is not known, but it would seem a military attorney would have been more
appropriate and useful to his defense. Possibly, Major Reno believed a civilian attorney would be more effective in
defending himself against his civilian accuser; Fredrick Whittaker. Attorney Gilbert’s first item of business was to
protest the reading to the court of Whittaker’s letter to the congress, saying:
I protest against the reading of the letter of Mr. Whittaker, it is not a part of the proceeding of the court.
Whittaker was, of course, Major Reno’s public, and now courtroom, adversary, and Attorney Gilbert would try to
take him on directly and head on. However, as Whitaker’s letter was already included in Exhibit 1, it was a futile
gesture by Attorney Gilbert and the court ruled that the letter would be included. Whittaker would continue to be an
influence throughout the proceedings, commenting and giving interviews to the newspapers covering the court of
inquiry, and even suggesting to the court questions to be asked to and answered by Major Reno. “Exhibit 3” would
be a list of seven questions Whittaker wanted Major Reno to answer and the salutation to this list of questions was:
Questions to be asked the witness Herendeen respectfully submitted to the court by Fredrick Whittaker, the accuser
of Major Reno.
“The accuser of Major Reno” was a clear indication of the role in the proceeding Whittaker had chosen for himself
and the course he wanted the court to follow, and he closed his list of questions with the “Accuser of Major Reno”
as well. The first question Whittaker wanted asked of 7th Cavalry Scout George Herendeen was:
Did you or did you not observe any evidence of fear on the part of Major Reno …
While nearly all of the seven questions to be asked of Major Reno concerned “fear” on the part of Reno, question
four is worth noting:
What words were uttered by the cavalry soldier who was shot at the same time as Bloody Knife, if you heard them.
According to witnesses, the words “uttered” by the soldier who had been shot was “Oh my God, I’ve been shot,”
and why Whittaker would consider this meaningless question worth asking seems odd. In his agenda to prove Major
Reno guilty of cowardice and disobedience of orders, it would appear Whittaker was grasping for irrelevant straws
to prove his case, and also that his view of the Battle of the Little Big Horn was muddled and one dimensional.
Fortunately, Recorder Lee would allow most of the 7th Cavalry witnesses to tell of their experiences at the battle
without irrelevant and time wasting questions, and much valuable information about the Battle of the Little Big
Horn would be solicited from the witnesses.
Although Major Reno was to be the dart board, and was undoubtedly already written off by the military with the
Reno Court of Inquiry only a formality to officially blacken his name, any defense of Major Reno’s conduct at the
Battle of the Little Big Horn could only be done by examining the entire battle. This was something Major Reno’s
attorney, Gilbert, did not spend a lot of time on, and probably was not qualified to do anyway. Instead, throughout
17
the inquiry Gilbert seemed to direct his attention to an endless questioning of the witnesses on insignificant details
of the battle which avoided the big picture a military attorney, especially one experienced in the American West,
might have been able to draw attention to.
Regardless of what the court’s verdict would be, the Reno Court of Inquiry itself was a successful diversion
preventing the congressional hearings, which was also the successful result the “Indian Ring” and the “Army Ring”
had hoped for. The controversy the inquiry created concerning the Battle of the Little Big Horn would ensure, one
way or another, endlessly, that Major Reno (and, or, General Custer) would be the scapegoat for the defeat and the
continuing corruption in the Indian Department, and Army, protected.
Lieutenant Maguire and his 1876 Map
The Reno Court of Inquiry would hear testimony from 23 military and civilian witnesses. Eleven of these witnesses
were officers of the 7th Cavalry who had participated in the
battle, and 4 were officers who had examined the
battlefield afterwards or had testimony considered
relevant to the inquiry. Three enlisted men and five
civilians who were with the 7th Cavalry at the Battle
of the Little Big Horn also testified.
The first witness called to testify before the court, a witness
who was to be of critical importance, was Lieutenant Edward
Maguire, the Chief Engineering Officer serving with General
Terry’s command when they had arrived on the Little Big Horn
Battlefield, June 27th, 1876. He would be assigned the duty of
drawing a map of the battlefield on the spot. Lieutenant
Maguire graduated from West Point Military Academy June
17, 1867 and on that date was promoted to Second
Lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers.
After various assignments, he served as Chief Engineer of the
Department of the Dakota from April, 1876 until September,
1882, and in that capacity accompanied General Terry, along with
General Custer and the 7th Cavalry, on their expedition against the
Sioux and their allies in the spring of 1876.
In 1881 Maguire was promoted to Captain and in 1884 he authored a
book; The Attack and Defense of Coast Fortifications. For a nation
that had the world’s two largest oceans as borders, Maguire’s book would have been an important military
contribution and indicates he was a military officer who took his position very seriously. Maguire would serve in
many prominent positions until his death in 1892, including serving as Secretary of the Fortification Board from
1885 to 1888. Lieutenant Maguire was well qualified to survey and draw a map of any battlefield.
In his capacity as Chief Engineer of the Department of the Dakota, Lieutenant Maguire had measured and surveyed
the Little Big Horn Battlefield while the bodies of the slain cavalrymen were still being buried. There could not be
any evidence of more importance presented at the Reno Court of Inquiry, or any investigation into any military
battle, than a map of that battle. Confirming the importance of the map, the first evidence presented at the inquiry;
‘Exhibit 2’, (Exhibit 1 was the order opening the inquiry and was not ‘evidence’.) would be a map of the Battle of
the Little Big Horn. Although Maguire’s original map would accompany his official report in the fall of 1876, a
“printed” copy of this map would be presented as “Exhibit 2” at the Reno Court of Inquiry in 1879. At the court of
inquiry Lieutenant Maguire was questioned about the map he drew of the Little Big Horn Battlefield and he
testified:
Q. State whether you, in your official capacity as Engineer, ever made an examination, measurement, sketch, or
map, of what is known as the Battlefield of the Little Big Horn.
A. I had such measurements made by a Sergeant who accompanied me.
18
19
Q. What do you recognize that to be? (Showing witness a map)
A. That is a printed map, the original of which I sent to Washington attached to my report to the Chief Engineer. It
(the original 1876 map) was published as an appendix to the Chief Engineer’s Report for 1876...
I instructed the Sergeant who had the odometer cart and the instruments to pace off the whole of the bottom land
down to the Indian village, taking compass bearings so as to make a plat … some views were taken with the
prismatic compass, and intersection lines were taken and the map filled in by eye on the field … The man (the
sergeant assisting Lieutenant Maguire) had orders to start above Major Reno’s crossing, keeping the course of the
river and pacing the distance, using the prismatic compass and taking shots to prominent points to take the
intersections … I had the teepees put in to indicate a general idea of where the village was in relation to the rest of
the topography …
Q. State whether you regard this map as showing the relative position of the troops, the village, the stream, and
other prominent points as reasonably reliable.
A. I certainly do.
Q. State when the data was gotten from which this map was prepared.
A. On the afternoon of the 27th (June, 1876) and a short time on the 28th (The Battle of the Little Big Horn took place
on June 25 and 26).
In his official capacity as Engineering Officer, Lieutenant Maguire’s original map was drawn from notes and
measurements made with surveying instruments on the battlefield only days after the battle, while the evidence was
fresh at hand and available for examination. The surviving 7th Cavalry participants of the Battle of the Little Big
Horn, all of them, still remained on the battlefield, available for questioning by Lieutenant Maguire. At the Reno
Court of Inquiry, Maguire repeatedly stated that he received information directly from the 7 th Cavalry survivors,
saying:
… I put it there from information furnished me … I simply put it down from information given me … (I received
information) from some officer down there in the fight …
The original 1876 map, however, apparently remained with Lieutenant Maguire’s report of September, 1876, and
“Exhibit 2” at the 1879 Reno Court of Inquiry was a “printed” copy, as Maguire testified, drawn from the original
1876 map. However, the “printed” map used at the Reno Court of Inquiry was significantly different than the
original 1876 map, although the differences between the two maps probably was the result of hast and carelessness,
rather than by design.
There are also critical omissions of significant details on the “printed” map presented to the court of inquiry which
would have dramatically assisted Major Reno in his defense, had these significant details been reproduced on the
“printed” map. ‘Exhibit 2’ is also the map almost always referenced by researchers and authors, and the overlooked
omissions on the “printed” map are omissions never referenced, or even mentioned, in any history of the Battle of
the Little Big Horn, and have left an important part of the battle; Sitting Bull’s decisive leadership, untold.
Recorder Jesse Lee
Lieutenant Jesse Lee of the 9th Infantry was assigned as the ‘Recorder’ at the court of inquiry, a role similar to that
of prosecutor, but, as any verdict of the court would be a recommendation only, the title ‘Recorder’ was used. As the
president of the court, Colonel John H. King, also of the 9 th Infantry, was his commanding officer, Lieutenant Lee
was obviously in an especially delicate situation. He would also have been well aware of the enormous public
attention that would be part of the proceeding. The Chicago Tribune would daily publish a transcript of the
proceedings in its newspaper, and newspapers throughout the country were also covering the court of inquiry. If
these handicaps were not severe enough for Lieutenant Lee, he had the further concern that the entire Reno Court of
Inquiry, and the very name of Custer, would create political undertones, or perhaps the correct word is overtones, to
the entire proceeding.
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At the conclusion of the 26 day court of inquiry, the opinion of the court was given and, while the proceedings had
only generated more controversy, as intended, it officially cleared Major Reno of any misconduct at the Battle of the
Little Big Horn:
The conduct of the officers throughout was excellent and while subordinates
in some instances did more for the safety of the command by brilliant
displays of courage than did Major Reno, there was nothing in his conduct
which requires animadversion from this Court … It is the conclusion of this
Court in view of all the facts in evidence that no further proceedings are
necessary in this case …
While the court of inquiry had cleared Major Reno of any "animadversion"
(severe criticism), and the goal of creating controversy concerning
Reno’s conduct at the Battle of the Little Big Horn a success, the
court had still failed to take the final required step, which was to
find a way to cast the blame for the defeat directly onto General
Custer as well. This result would have pleased both the Army and
the Indian Department. Yet, even the court, regardless of the
political agenda, could not bring itself to blame General Custer
directly for the defeat. However, in reviewing the court’s verdict,
the Army Judge Advocate’s office would not stray far from the
political objective and its “opinion and recommendation,” dated
February 21, 1879, and forwarded to the Secretary of War, said:
The common feeling was at the time one of anger with General Custer for sending
them into so dangerous a position and apparently abandoning them to their fate.
The Indian Department
The accusation that General Custer had "apparently abandoned them to their fate" was, in fact, so ludicrous and
contrary to the known facts of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, that it could only have been motivated by a political
agenda. General Custer had only about one third of the 7th Cavalry with him at the battle, and how one third of the
regiment could “abandon” the other two thirds of the regiment could not, of course, be explained by the Judge
Advocate's office, or by anyone else. It was another manufactured controversy with the purpose of casting blame for
the defeat directly upon General Custer and distracting attention from the actual causes of the overwhelming defeat
of the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
The “dangerous position,” or, as General Miles had hinted in his book, the “actual causes” as to why General Custer
and the 7th Cavalry rode into in the Little Big Horn Valley on June 25th 1876, was largely the result of both
government incompetence and the widespread corruption of the Indian Department. During the spring of 1876
thousands of otherwise peaceful Indians had left starving conditions at the Indian Agencies all across the American
West, joining with Sitting Bull and the hostile Plains Indian tribes he led.
The rivalry and open hostility between the Army and the Indian Department had been reported in the newspapers for
many years, with numerous Army Officers, including General Custer, calling attention to the widespread graft and
corruption which continuously cheated the Indians who took the ‘peace trail’ at the Indian Agencies. This dishonesty
had created a continuing and well founded unrest and mistrust among all the Indians of the American West. Without
this corruption there very well may have been no ‘Indian War’ in 1876, and certainly the Army would not have
confronted the huge numbers of Indian Warriors who had left the Indian Agencies, unreported to the Army by the
Indian Department, and whom General Custer and the 7th Cavalry unexpectedly found at the Little Big Horn on June
25, 1876.
Colonel John Gibbon had been in command of one of the three Army expeditions ordered in the spring of 1876 to
find and defeat Sitting Bull and his alliance of hostile tribes, and Gibbon had been second in command of the
reinforcements under General Terry which arrived on the Little Big Horn Battlefield on June 27, two days after the
battle. The following year Colonel Gibbon wrote a series of articles for the American Catholic Quarterly Review in
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which he discussed the campaign against the Indians in 1876, and also what he believed were the causes of the wars
with the Plains Indians on the western frontier of America. Colonel Gibbon wrote:
How do you ever avoid war? It can be avoided sometimes by the exercise of a spirit of concession and justice, a
spirit directly opposite to that which has universally characterized the treatment of the Red Man of this continent by
the American people.
You cannot point to one single treaty made with the Indians which has not, at some time or other, been violated by
the whites, and you can point to innumerable instances where the Indian has been most outrageously swindled by
the agents of the government and the great wonder is not that we have had so many wars, but that we have had so
few.
(The Indian’s viewpoint) “The white man has come into my country and taken away everything which formerly
belonged to me. He even drives off and recklessly destroys the game which the Great Spirit has given me to subsist
on. He owes me something for this but generally refuses to pay. Now and then we find the settlements closing in
around us and we succeed in getting him to promise us a certain yearly amount of food and clothing so that our
wives and children will not starve or freeze to death. But when his agents come to turn these over to us, we find the
quantity growing less and less every year and the agents grow rich upon what was intended to feed and clothe us.”
“We try to reach the ear of our Great Father (the President of the United States) to tell him of our troubles and how
his agents defraud us, but he is so far away that our words do not reach him. We cannot see our wives and children
starve and year by year the danger becomes greater for the constant encroachment of the whites who insist upon
settling upon the land guaranteed to us by solemn treaty. Let us go to war and force back the settlements of these
intruders or, if we must die, let us die like men and warriors, not like dogs.”
Like General Custer and Major Reno, Colonel Gibbon had attained the Civil War rank of Brevet General of
Volunteers for courageous and meritorious service, but after the war he reverted back to his permanent army rank of
Colonel. In fact, many of the officers who died with General Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn had Civil
War ‘Brevet’ ranks higher than their permanent rank and Captain Tom Custer, General Custer’s brother who died
near him at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, had enlisted during the Civil War as a private, the lowest rank in the
Army, and had been promoted through the ranks to become an officer and Brevet
Lieutenant Colonel by the end of the Civil War. Tom Custer had also been the
only soldier in the Civil War awarded two Congressional Medals of Honor for
his heroism in battle.
In 1876, and still in 1879 at the time of the Reno Court of Inquiry, the entire
Army leadership, including the Commanding General of the Army, General
Sherman, and all of the higher ranking officers, were Civil War combat veterans
and most of them heroes many times over. The four year Civil War had brought
the best in the Army to the top, Army Officers who had proven themselves in
the largest battles ever seen on the North American continent, and these
soldiers had fulfilled President Lincoln’s mission to “preserve the Union.”
Unfortunately, for many of those in the Army, and others who had
not actually had experience in the American West fighting the Plains
Indians, like author Whittaker, Indian warfare was a mystery and the
use of Civil War battlefield tactics against the Plains Indian Warriors
was almost useless. General Sherman, who commanded the Army at the
time of the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876 and during the Reno Court
of Inquiry of 1879, himself had no experience fighting the Plains Indians.
This would remain an insurmountable handicap concerning any real
understanding of the Battle of the Little Big Horn by the Army establishment.
However, the Army officers stationed in the American West, as well as most of the enlisted men stationed with
them, clearly understood the unique methods of warfare needed when fighting the Plains Indians, as well as one of
the primary causes of those wars, if not the actual cause; the Indian Department.
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Practically every Army Officer who served on the American frontier and chronicled their experiences expressed
outrage over the corruption in the Indian Department. However, Colonel Gibbon had actually been on the Little Big
Horn Battlefield only two days after the battle, and he was an eyewitness to the carnage and horrific mutilations that
the dead enemies who fell into the hands of the Indians suffered. (To a large extent, these mutilations were practiced
by the Indians to handicap their enemies in the Spirit World.) Colonel Gibbon would also have known that the
remains of many soldiers had not been found on the battlefield, and there were indications that some of these
soldiers had been captured and then tortured and burned alive after the battle.
Unlike the many public demands for revenge made by many others after the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Colonel
Gibbon must have been an extraordinary person to have placed justice above any personal feelings of retribution,
feeling that would have been nearly universal in the Army. Also, his articles in American Catholic Quarterly Review
would have made him many enemies in the government and obviously, as an active duty Army Officer, Colonel
Gibbon valued honesty and integrity even at risk to his Army career.
Colonel Gibbon would also have been well aware the Grant administration had recently mangled General Custer in
the political arena for speaking out publicly on the very same issues he wrote about, and Colonel Gibbon must have
been a man of enviable, and very rare, honor and courage. In his articles Colonel Gibbon also wrote:
…with but few exceptions all (Indian) agents retire from their positions enriched by the spoils from the agencies
and, although exposures of these frauds have been made over and over again, none of these government agents are
ever brought to punishment or made to disgorge their ill-gotten gains, while the Indians are left to suffer for the
actual necessaries of life.
When the Indian, driven to desperation by neglect or want, and his sense of wrong, goes to war, the Army is called
in to whip these ‘wards of the nation’ into subjection, and when the (military) task is successfully accomplished, as it
always is in the end, the same old round of deceit and fraud commences again, and continues until the next war is
upon us (and the Army used) for the purpose of bringing into subjection a people forced into war by the very agents
of the government which makes war upon them!
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Colonel Gibbon's comment that the Indians were "a people forced into war by the very agents of the government
which makes war upon them" was an astonishing accusation, but also one frequently repeated by other Army
Officers stationed in the American West during the era. During the winter and spring of 1876 the conditions at the
Indian Agencies had been particularly bad and thousands of Indians had left the agencies, and the ‘peace trail’,
swelling by many thousands the ranks of Sitting Bull’s army of warriors already at war with the government. Only
months before the Battle of the Little Big Horn an article was published in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, April 29,
1876, titled “Starving Sioux” and this article said:
Telegrams from Red Cloud and Spotted Tail agencies via Fort Laramie yesterday evening state that no supplies
worth mentioning have been issued to the Indians at those points since the 10th …
The Indians are on the point of starvation, owing to the failure of Congress to vote an appropriation and on the part
of the government to forward the supplies needed. The Indians would have undoubtedly have left on a raid here had
it not been for the moral effect of the late expedition against Crazy Horse’s band (by General Crook in March,
1876), but there can be no question but that they will be forced to raid unless supplies are promptly forwarded.
General Crook has been, and is now urging, the necessity of the supplies and holding to the agencies those Indians
who are disposed to be friendly, but is apprehensive that
the hostile Indians will be largely reinforced from
those at the agencies on account of the lack
of supplies.
In fact, thousands of Indian
Warriors did leave the Indian
Agencies in the spring of 1876
to join with the Great Chief
Sitting Bull and his alliance
of Plains Indian tribes
hostile to the government.
It is incredible that, while
the government expected
the Plains Indians to
forfeit a life which
allowed them to hunt
buffalo and other wild
game for substance, and
maintain a centuries old
culture, that when they gave
up that culture and lived at
the Indian Agencies they were
almost always cheated and
swindled out of their promised
treaty obligations. These treaty
obligations were not gifts from the
government, they were in exchange for the
Indian homelands and a pittance compared to
actual value, even during the era. In the spring of
1876, those Indian Warriors who had taken the ‘peace trail’ had
been actually starved and forced to abandon the Indian Agencies, if not to join Sitting Bull in his war against the
government, then to hunt for buffalo on the open plains in the American West and provide for their families.
To protect themselves from scrutiny, and to maintain inflated numbers for the amount of supplies they received,
much, or perhaps most, of which was never given the Indians, the Indian Agents did not report the mass defections
of warriors from the Indian Agencies in 1876 and the Army had to rely on other sources for this critical information.
An article in the Army and Navy Journal dated October 21, 1876, only months after the Battle of the Little Big
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Horn, documented the continuing corruption at the Indian Agencies:
The most complete expose of the elastic arithmetic of the ‘average’ Indian Agent is made as the result of the last
official count of the Indians at Standing Rock Agency made by Captain Johnson, First Infantry, in charge and acting
as agent. (After the Battle of the Little Big Horn, outrage by the public and the Army forced the Indian Agencies to
be temporarily turned over to the Army to be certain treaty obligations would actually be given to the Indians to help
end the war, and hopefully prevent another war.)
Out of 7,000 - the basis upon which supplies have been sent out by the Indian Bureau for the last year or two - only
2,300 are now present and Captain Johnston is satisfied that at no time for many months has there been a larger
number than 3,500 present.
According to Captain Johnston, from an official census count of 7,000, between 3,500 and almost 5,000 Indians, and
this number would have included most of the warriors, had been observed by him as absent in 1876 at the Standing
Rock Agency alone. Of course that is presuming the original count of 7,000 had been correct and not inflated, but
even only 3,500 had originally been present, if there remained only 2,300, then the 1,200 known absent would have
included most of the warriors. If any official reports from the Indian Agencies existed concerning the actual
numbers of Indian Warriors who had left the agencies in the spring and summer of 1876, this evidence was not
presented at the Reno Court of Inquiry.
The “arithmetic” was simple enough; more Indians at an Indian Agency meant more treaty obligations, and more
treaty obligations meant more for the Indian Agent to steal. Obviously, any honest official reports concerning Indian
numbers at the Indian Agencies in 1876 presented at the Reno Court of Inquiry would have been embarrassing to the
Indian Department. In fact, during the entire proceeding there is not one mention of a single report from the Indian
Department on how many Indians, and specifically how many Indian Warriors, had left the Indian Agencies in 1876.
While it is unlikely any honest reports ever existed, the Army, of course, should have been the first to officially
know of any warrior defections from the Indian Agencies in 1876, or any other year, because it was their duty to
defend the American West and, as Colonel Gibbon had pointed out in his magazine articles, the Army would be
inevitably ordered to fight these same Indian Warrior defections.
Had accurate reports been available concerning the numbers of Indian Warriors that had left the Indian Agencies to
join Sitting Bull in the spring of 1876, these reports would have demonstrated Sitting Bull did not have the 1,500
warriors the Army and General Custer expected to fight. These reports would also have proven the accepted high
historical estimate of 2,500 warriors is also wrong. In a letter dated July 4, 1876 Lieutenant Charles Varnum,
Custer’s Chief of Scouts, wrote his family about a belated warning that had been received after the Battle of the
Little Big Horn from General Sheridan, General Terry’s commanding officer, and this letter said:
When we got a mail yesterday by
a carrier from Fort Ellis, we
received a letter from (General)
Sheridan,
a
month
old,
cautioning Terry not to split his
command, as he had information
that at least five thousand
warriors were assembled …
The warning from General
Sheridan’s
headquarters,
“cautioning Terry not to split his
command” and that Sitting Bull's
forces would number “at least
5,000 warriors,” would have
been made with information
coming from military officers
like Captain Johnston stationed
near the Indian Agencies, and not
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from the Indian Department. Unfortunately, this critical warning from General Sheridan arrived too late to influence
the decisions made by General’s Terry and Custer before the Battle of the Little Big Horn. By the time of the Reno
Court of Inquiry in 1879, Lieutenant Varnum would testify he believed the number of Indian Warriors at the Battle
of the Little Big Horn were “as high as 12,000;” information he would have received from his many contacts with
Indian sources as General Custer’s former Chief of Scouts.
There are many other primary sources which prove Sitting Bull actually had at least 5,000 warriors at the Battle of
the Little Big Horn, and probably many more, which were impossible odds for General Custer and the less than 700
soldiers and scouts of the 7th Cavalry. On June 25, 1876, General Custer and the 7 th Cavalry were to fight Sitting
Bull, his alliance of Plains Indian tribes led by all the Great War Chiefs; Crazy Horse, Two Moons, Gall, and dozens
of other Plains Indian War Chiefs, reinforced by the many thousands of warriors who had defected from the Indian
Agencies and joined them.
While any accurate estimate of the number of permanently hostile warriors led by Sitting Bull was impossible in
1876, it was believed they numbered between 1,500 and 2,500. The thousands of warrior defections from the Indian
Agencies would be added to Sitting Bull’s hostile forces and give him an overwhelming numerical advantage over
the 7th Cavalry in any battle.
Unreported by the Indian Agencies, these warrior defections were unknown to General Custer and the 7th Cavalry
and they entered the Battle of the Little Big Horn without this critical information. The thousands of warrior
defections from the Indian Agencies in 1876 were not the responsibility of General Custer, Major Reno, Captain
Benteen, Colonel Gibbon, General Terry, General Sheridan, General Sherman, or any other Army officer. These
warrior defections were the responsibility of the Indian Department.
Jesse Lee’s 7 Questions
In spite of the political influences, and a mistaken agenda, Lieutenant Jesse Lee would perform a remarkable and
courageous job in his role as Recorder at the Reno Court of Inquiry, and he would honestly solicit from the
witnesses the facts of the Battle of the Little Big Horn as those witnesses knew them. The Reno Court of Inquiry
will always remain the best historical source for information concerning the Battle of the Little Big Horn. However,
it is apparent that Recorder Lee sincerely believed Major Reno was indeed guilty of the charges made against him,
and the honor of the Army, as well as General Custer, required the court’s verdict to be unfavorable to Major Reno.
Recorder Lee would, in his summary at the end of the proceeding, present to the court seven questions of which he
believed the answers would be decisive in recording the responsibility of Major Reno for the defeat of the 7 th
Cavalry, and the massacre of General Custer and the soldiers with him, at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. The
seven questions asked by Lieutenant Lee were:
First: The orders under which he was acting, and his obedience to those orders.
Second: His responsibility in any manner for the defeat of the 7 th Cavalry in that battle and the massacre of
General Custer and his troops.
Third: Whether he manifested cowardice, timidity, or misbehavior in the face of the enemy in that battle, or any
portion of it.
Fourth: Whether he knowingly or through negligence, abandoned General Custer to his fate.
Fifth: Had he any means of informing himself as the danger in which General Custer’s command was placed, and
did he take all measures and make proper efforts to obtain information and act upon it.
Sixth: Were his relations of feelings toward General Custer, his commanding officer, such as would lead him to
obey the orders he received from that officer in a hearty spirit of vigorous and unhesitating support, or were they
those of distrust and suspicion, leading him to criticize and evade those orders, or neglect his duty.
Lastly: Was Major Reno’s conduct during those two days in any other respect unofficer-like and contrary to what
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should expected or required of an officer occupying such a responsible position and at such a time? In one form or
another, these are the same questions that have been asked by historians ever since.
Answers favorable to Major Reno inevitably cast General Custer as the cause for the defeat of the 7 th Cavalry at the
Battle of the Little Big Horn. Answers unfavorable to Major Reno indicate that he was the cause of the defeat and
massacre and General Custer the betrayed hero. It was the conduct and decisions of one or the other, Major Reno or
General Custer, which caused the epic defeat of the 7 th Cavalry, and the massacre of General Custer and the soldiers
with him at the Battle of the Little Big Horn on June 25, 1876.
The Great Chief Sitting Bull
The most important evidence was not presented, and hence the most important questions not asked, or answered, at
the Reno Court of Inquiry, and it was not only General Custer or Major Reno who influenced the course of the
Battle of the Little Big Horn and the resulting overwhelming defeat of the 7 th Cavalry. There was another person
who also had a decisive role, the decisive role, at the epic and controversial battle, and whom the court could not
interview and knew little about. This was the most mysterious and powerful Indian Warlord and Spiritual Medicine
Man ever seen in the American West who, in 1876, and still in 1879 at the time of the Reno Court of Inquiry, was an
undefeated living legend among both friend and foe, and who had successfully fought
the Army and terrorized his enemies, both Indian and white, for many years.
This was the Plains Indian Warlord; Sitting Bull, and he was the Great Chief,
Medicine man, and leader of all the Sioux tribes; his own Uncpapa, and also
the Ogallala’s led by Chief Crazy Horse, the Minneconjous led by Chief
Fast Bull, the Sandarcs led by Chief Red Bear, the Santee’s and
Yanktonias led by Chief Red Top (Inkpaduta), and the Blackfeet
Sioux under Chief Scabby Head (These tribes also had other
prominent Chiefs sometimes listed as “Head Chiefs” as well).
The Northern Cheyenne, led by Chief Two Moons, and also
many smaller parties of the Southern Cheyenne, Arapahoe,
Kiowa, Comanche, and the remnants of other Plains Indians
tribes who had refused to make concessions to the
government, and who still roamed at will throughout the
American West, also followed the Greatest of all the
Plains Indian Chiefs; Sitting Bull.
In 1876 it was the Sioux Chieftain Sitting Bull who led
all the Plains Indian tribes hostile to the government,
and he ruled over much of the American West. The
very name of Sitting Bull chilled the blood and struck
terror into the hearts of all his enemies; every soldier
and white person who lived in or traveled through
the Western Frontier of America, as well as his
Indian enemies; the Crow, Shoshoni, and other
tribes not his allies, and all lived in fear of the
Great Sioux Chief and warlord.
All the Great Chiefs of all the tribes of the Plains
Indians at war with the government, and the warriors
who followed them, were at the Battle of the Little Big
Horn on June 25, 1876; and all were under the command
of the Great Chief Sitting Bull. Even by the time of the Reno
Court of Inquiry in 1879 Sitting Bull, and many of his
followers, had still refused to surrender to the government, even after
overwhelming military forces had been sent to destroy him after the Battle
of the Little Big Horn. Instead, Sitting Bull had sought refuge in Canada and there he remained at the time of the
Reno Court of Inquiry of 1879, his return still dreaded and feared throughout the American West.
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On June 25, 1876, it was not General Custer or Major Reno who ’lost’ the Battle of the Little Big Horn. It was
Sitting Bull who had won it. It was he, the great Chieftain and Warlord of all the Plains Indians at war with the
government; Sitting Bull had carefully planned for, and was going to win the “Big Fight,” the greatest battle ever
fought between the U.S. Cavalry and the Plains Indians in the American West. And when that greatest of all battles
ever fought in the American West finally happened, it would be between Sitting Bull and his greatest enemy;
General Custer, that Sitting Bull knew for certain.
*******
In 1876 Sitting Bull had invoked all of his formidable powers; mystical and mortal, to make certain he would win
what he would call the “Big Fight,” regardless of any decision that was made, or could possibly have been made, by
either General Custer or Major Reno, on the fateful and epic day of the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
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