Wild West – June 2019

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and routinely displayed severed enemy heads as warnings out-
side their sedentary villages. Subsequent nomadic bands took
scalps, as did early frontiersmen and some soldiers. Lieutenant
James Ezekiel Porter of Company I (see related story,
P. 22) may account for another of the severed heads;
his bloodstained buckskin jacket was found with
a bullet hole over the heart. Lieutenant Henry
Moore Harrington of Company C also disap-
peared, though miles from the battlefield in 1928
an elderly Crow turned up a likely candidate—
the skeleton of a white officer who had fired
19 cartridges in self-defense before an arrow
struck his spine.
In 1877, on learning that Jerusha Wilcox Stur-
gis intended to visit the spot where her son had
died, chivalrous soldiers went to the battlefield and
erected a memorial cenotaph as a stand-in for an
empty grave.

Further criticism of Custer surfaced in a narrative from
Reno, found among the latter’s belongings after his death on
March 30, 1889, and published in the historical magazine Ameri-
cana in 1912:

Custer’s disaster was not the defeat of the 7th Cavalry, who had

held their ground for two days after his massacre against a savage

force outnumbering ours 10-to-1; and had he not separated his

regiment, he and his five companies would not only have escaped

their awful fate, but our united force could have whipped Sitting

Bull and his entire village....

The only explanation for such conduct on the part of so brilliant

an officer as Custer undoubtedly was, otherwise, was his great per-

sonal ambition....Absolutely insensible to fear, he was also reckless

and daring in the extreme, and driven by an intense desire to dis-

tinguish himself by some brilliant exploit, he made his headlong

dash to a horrible death, without the most casual regard for the

maxims of military prudence.

Sturgis, who died in 1889 six months after Reno succumbed
to cancer, never made common cause with the major—and for
good reason. Reno, a widower, had been dishonorably dis-

charged after a “peeping Tom” incident late on

the evening of Nov. 10, 1879, when he blearily

peered through a window of Sturgis’ quarters

at Fort Meade, Dakota Territory, frightening the

colonel’s daughter Ella out of her wits. Sturgis

brought charges, and Reno was shortly out of

the Army. Reno’s civilian career was so bleak

that he couldn’t afford a train ticket to attend his

son’s wedding. His official cause of death, cancer

of the tongue, was thought to have stemmed from

his alcohol abuse.

For the remainder of the lives of those who

had lost friends or loved ones at the Little Bighorn, the battle

lines were inflexible: Custer’s defenders, spearheaded by widow

Libbie, argued the colonel had been abandoned and doomed

by the cowardly Reno and the envious scoundrel Benteen,

who barely missed his own dishonorable discharge due

to alcoholic misbehavior.

Sturgis, Reno, Benteen and some of their sub-

ordinates insisted Custer had been a fool to divide

his command and attack a village the size of the

encampment at the Little Bighorn without a proper

reconnaissance. In fact, Custer had essentially

been making his reconnaissance when killed. Just

prior to the action Trumpeter John Martin (born

Giovanni Martini), the last soldier to leave Custer’s

five companies—barring any alleged survivors—

was dispatched with a hastily scrawled message to

Benteen: BENTEEN, COME ON. BIG VILLAGE. BE QUICK. BRING

PACKS. P.S. BRING PACKS. Martin elaborated in a 1908

interview paraphrased by Walter

Mason Camp:

Custer halted command on the high

ridge about 10 minutes, and officers

looked at village through glasses. Saw

children and dogs playing among

the tepees, but no warriors or horses

except a few loose ponies grazing

around. There was then a discus-

sion among the officers as to where

the warriors might be, and someone

suggested that they might be buffa-

lo hunting, recalling that they had

seen skinned buffalo along the trail

on June 24.

Custer now made a speech to his

men, saying, “We will go down and make a crossing and cap-

ture the village.” The whole command then pulled off their hats

and cheered. And the consensus of opinion seemed to be among

the officers that if this could be done, the Indians would have to

surrender when they would return, in order not to fire upon their

women and children.

Still Standing

The doomed leader stands beside his horse

in Richard Luce’s Custer’s Last Command.

Ella Sturgis

John Martin