Captain Ball's Scout

By editor

Hardin, Big Horn County, Montana, April-May 1876

Captain Edward Ball rode out of Fort Pease on April 24, 1876, with two companies of the Second Cavalry and a job that seemed, at the time, like a routine errand. He was to scout south along the Bighorn River as far as the ruins of Fort C.F. Smith -- the old Bozeman Trail post that had been abandoned in 1868 when the government gave up the road -- then cross the divide to the Little Bighorn and come back to Fort Pease by way of Tullock's Creek. One hundred and seventy-five miles. Eight days. No particular urgency.

He found nothing. That was the official report. No recent Indian signs during the entire march. The country was empty, or appeared to be.

But the country was not empty. On the return leg, a few miles north of present Lodge Grass, Ball's detachment came upon a large Lakota campsite from the previous summer. The rings of the lodges were still visible in the grass, the fire pits cold and scattered. Someone had been here, and in numbers. Ball noted it and moved on.

Later that same day, the two companies halted along the Little Bighorn to rest the horses. They were standing in a valley that Ball's journal described as pleasant -- good grass, water, cottonwoods along the bank. He did not know, and could not have known, that in less than two months this valley would hold more than a thousand Lakota and Northern Cheyenne lodges in an unbroken line two miles long. He did not know that the men resting their horses in this grass would be the last American soldiers to see this ground before it became a battlefield.

The final two days of the march down Tullock's Creek were uneventful, the officers and enlisted men noting in their journals the alkali water, the poor forage, and the crooked stream that required crossing after crossing. Ball arrived at Fort Pease and made his report. No recent Indian signs. The information raised little excitement.

But on June 21, 1876, General Alfred Terry convened a conference aboard the steamer Far West where the Bighorn met the Yellowstone. Terry was there. Colonel John Gibbon was there. Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer was there. They were planning the final movement against the great village that the scouts had located on the Rosebud. Someone at that table knew what Ball had found: the water in Tullock's Creek was alkali, the forage was thin, the creek crossed itself a dozen times. Ball's scout had mapped the country that Custer's command would have to cross if they needed to retreat or be reinforced. Four days later, Custer's command was annihilated on the ridge above the Little Bighorn, and no retreat was possible.

Immediately after the battle, Ball was ordered to follow the trail left by the departing village up the Little Bighorn Valley. Near the mouth of Lodge Grass Creek he discovered that the great village had begun to break apart -- some lodges heading toward the Bighorn Mountains, others turning east. He also found a substantial trail less than a week old heading north. The village that destroyed Custer had not come from one direction. It had been assembling from many directions, drawing in bands from across the northern plains, and the trail that Custer had followed up the Rosebud was only one of the threads that had brought it together.

Ball wrote none of this down as a lesson. He was a cavalry officer, not a philosopher. He wrote down what he saw: the trails, the directions, the age of the signs. The lesson was left for others to draw, and they have been drawing it ever since.

The marker at Hardin does not say any of this directly. It records the facts of the scout: the dates, the distances, the route, the absence of recent Indian signs. It notes that Ball's information about water and forage in the Bighorn basin was discussed at the Far West conference. It notes that Ball was the first officer to follow the departing village after the battle. These are the facts.

But the facts carry their own weight. A cavalry officer rides 175 miles through country that appears empty. He finds old campsites and notes them. He stands in a valley and rests his horses. He reports no recent Indian signs and the report raises little excitement. Four days after the conference on the Far West, 268 American soldiers are dead on the ridge above the valley where Ball rested his horses. The country was not empty. It had never been empty. Ball had simply arrived in the interval between one gathering and the next, and the interval had looked like peace.

General Terry, in his report to the War Department after the battle, wrote that the information gathered by Ball and other scouts had been "carefully considered" in planning the campaign. The careful consideration had not been careful enough. The village on the Little Bighorn was larger than any of the scouts had estimated, and it was better armed, and the warriors who defended it were not the scattered, demoralized bands that the Army's intelligence had described. Ball's scout had found the country empty and reported it. The country had been filling up the whole time.

See also

• Captain Ball's Scout at Hardin, Big Horn County (Custer Circle Project 2017 and Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks)
• 1984 Archeological Survey at Crow Agency, Big Horn County
• Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument at Crow Agency, Big Horn County