Bill O'Reilly's Legends and Lies by David Fisher

Author:David Fisher
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2015-03-23T23:00:00+00:00

Custer’s reputation as an Indian fighter was established in his 1868 attack on a large Cheyenne village on the Washita River, where he first employed the tactics that would doom his troops on the Little Bighorn.

He divided his 720 men into four elements and, at dawn, attacked from four positions. The signal to attack was the unit band striking up the song “Garry Owens.” The unprepared Cheyennes were unable to mount any kind of defense and instead dispersed into the surrounding hills and foliage. The chief, Black Kettle, and his wife were killed in the first moments of the fighting. While Custer later reported killing 103 Cheyennes, that figure is generally accepted to be greatly exaggerated, with the actual number being closer to fifty. But that number included many noncombatants—women and even children. The Seventh Cavalry also took fifty-three hostages, who were put on horses and dispersed among the troops. But in the midst of the battle, several warriors reached their horses and escaped. Major Joel Elliott, Custer’s second in command, took seventeen men and raced downstream in pursuit.

As the battle raged, Custer must have been stunned when he looked up at the top of the rise and saw as many as a thousand warriors “armed and caparisoned in full war costume” looking down upon his force. “[T]his seemed inexplicable,” he wrote later. “Who could these new parties be, and from whence came they?” It was only after the battle that he learned the true size of the camp. However, his desperate strategy had been successful—it would have been impossible for those warriors to attack without risking the lives of the hostages. Custer feigned an advance, and rather than engaging him, the Indians dispersed.

Fully aware that he was outnumbered, Custer waited for nightfall and then ordered his troops to burn the village to the ground, destroy the herd of horses, and withdraw—without waiting for Major Elliott and his men to return or sending out scouts to find him. Many of his men considered leaving troops behind on the battlefield an unpardonable sin, among them Elliott’s close friend, H Company captain Frederick Benteen. Custer claimed that he had ordered the withdrawal to prevent additional casualties and that he was confident that Elliott would return on his own.

Elliott and all his men seemed to have disappeared. Two weeks after the battle, Custer returned to the river with a large force, and, as he described, “We suddenly came upon the stark, stiff, naked and horribly mutilated bodies of our dead comrades…. Undoubtedly numbered more than one hundred to one, Elliott dismounted his men, tied their horses together and prepared to sell their lives as dearly as possible…. The bodies of Elliott and his band … were found lying within a circle not exceeding twenty yards.” Major Elliott’s force had been wiped out, apparently in a single charge.

Although it would have been impossible for Custer to know it, as he bent over the bodies of his men, he was looking at his own future.

Despite

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