Death at the Little Bighorn by Phillip Thomas Tucker

Author:Phillip Thomas Tucker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2017-04-29T04:00:00+00:00

Natural Defensive Position of a Low Rise

To compensate for Reno’s sharp reversal, Custer was now in an ideal position (facing almost no opposition) to charge straight through the Cheyenne village to reap a sparkling success as at the Washita. Custer now posed the ultimate nightmare scenario for the relatively few warriors who voluntarily chose to defend their village on their own without guidance or advice from leadership (religious or military). Indeed, Custer was seemingly about to gain a key position between the warriors upriver facing Reno and the greatest mass of women and children who had fled west from the Cheyenne village.

Recovering from the shock of a most serious new threat suddenly coming from a new direction and one of the first fighter-hunters, to dash east to defend the ford, American Horse, a respected Cheyenne warrior who also took the initiative on his own, described how he “saw Custer coming down the hill and almost to the river. I was one of the first to meet the troops and the Indians and the soldiers reached the flat [opposite the ford] about the same time. When Custer saw them coming, he was down on the river bottom at the river’s bank.”35

Most importantly, the first ford defenders had won their race by the narrowest of margins. Incredibly, the visions of Sitting Bull and Box Elder had now proved prophetic, first at the village’s upper end with Reno’s repulsed attack, and now at the village’s northern end with Custer’s charge: the decisive one–two punch.36

The sight of Custer and a mass of bluecoat troopers surging down Medicine Tail Coulee and across the open ground at the coulee’s mouth was literally a prophetic dream come true for these few warriors, who fully understood what was at stake. After quickly surveying the river bottoms for the best defensive position with the eyes of an experienced hunter upon nearing the riverbank, Bobtail Horse shouted, “Let us get in line behind this ridge” to make a defensive stand. Members of this band “slid off our ponies” and quickly took “whatever cover we could find” and the best firing positions on the river’s west side along the slight rise or “low ridge,” in White Cow Bull’s words. Covered in underbrush and saplings, including the silt-loving willows, this slight elevation (or rise) of sand and sediments that had been washed up by the river at flood stage. The Cheyenne village was located on ground that was several feet higher than the river, while the land gradually rose to the west. This slight rise just west of the river bank was situated on a shelf of land that stood about several feet higher than the village and about six feet higher than the rocky, lower-lying bottom on the river’s opposite side (east) that was the lowest-lying part of the flood plain. Therefore, despite positioned in the river bottoms, this united band of Sioux and Cheyenne possessed a slightly elevated advantage. They could now deliver a slightly plunging fire on the troopers

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