Little Bighorn Battlefield

By editor

Crow Agency, Big Horn County, Montana

A short inscription marks this ground. It says that troops A, B, D, G, H, K, and M of the Seventh United States Cavalry, along with the pack train, occupied this area when Sioux warriors besieged them on June 25th and 26th, 1876. That is all the marker offers. It does not say there were roughly 360 men here, nor that 47 of them were killed and 53 wounded before relief arrived. It does not describe the choking dust, the relentless sun, or the sound of bullets thudding into flesh and wood. It certainly does not capture what it was like to be trapped on that hilltop, thirsty and bleeding, with death circling like a shadow that would not lift.

The land itself is uneven. Rolling bluffs rise from the Little Bighorn River, twisting and dipping beneath a late June sky that burns away the morning chill and replaces it with heat that saps strength. The grass is dry, the air thick with the smell of sweat and smoke. It was here that Major Marcus Reno led three companies across the river’s winding bend to strike at the southern edge of what they thought was a modest Indian camp. Instead, they found a village of immense size -- perhaps ten thousand people, with more than two thousand warriors ready and waiting. Reno’s charge plunged into the timber, where the tangled trees swallowed men and horses alike. His advance stalled; the brush was thick, the enemy numerous. The men scrambled back across the river, bleeding and broken, and pulled themselves up the bluffs. There, they dug in on the high ground, hoping for relief from Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, who had taken five companies north, along a ridge, to attack from that direction.

Custer did not come.

Instead, the men on the hilltop heard the distant crack of rifle fire, growing closer and then suddenly falling silent. The silence was worse than the gunfire. When the Sioux warriors who had destroyed Custer’s battalion swept south, they turned toward Reno’s position like wolves closing in on a wounded elk.

For two days, from the afternoon of June 25th through June 26th, the seven companies clung to their precarious perch. They used the bodies of dead horses as breastworks, their carcasses bloated and heavy beneath the relentless sun. The men dug shallow rifle pits, scraping with mess kits, knives, anything they could find, to create what little cover the earth would offer. The wounded lay in the center of their ring, moaning in the heat. The sun was merciless, the temperature climbing into the high 80s Fahrenheit, and water was almost nonexistent. The Little Bighorn River lay below but was out of reach without exposing oneself to enemy fire.

A small group volunteered to risk the river. Under a hail of bullets, they struggled down the bluff, their hands raw and trembling, and managed to bring back small amounts of water. Some never returned unscathed. Sergeant Frederick E. Toy, one such volunteer, later recalled, "The water was precious as life itself, and I saw men die thirsting within a few yards of it." The thirst gnawed at their resolve, and the wounds festered in the heat.

The fighting was desperate and chaotic. The Sioux and Cheyenne warriors assaulted repeatedly, their numbers pressing close enough to hear the ragged breathing of the cavalrymen. The soldiers fired their Springfield carbines and Colt revolvers until they ran dry or their hands shook too violently to aim. The men’s faces were streaked with dirt and blood, their uniforms torn and soaked with sweat. Lieutenant Charles Varnum, commanding Company M, was among those who held the line, his voice steady despite the chaos. In a later report, Varnum wrote, “We fought for every inch of that hill with what little we had -- our lives, our weapons, and the last drops of water.”

Major Reno’s command was a microcosm of fear and endurance. Corporal James L. Porter, wounded in the thigh, remembered the night as a nightmare. “You could hear the Indians yelling and firing all around us,” he said. “The dead lay where they fell, and the living waited for the dawn.”

The official reports, however, often gloss over these moments of agony. General Alfred Terry, who arrived with reinforcements on June 27th, described the hilltop defense in broad strokes, noting the "gallant resistance" of the cavalry. But Terry’s words could not convey the crushing heat, the gnawing thirst, or the way the soldiers’ minds unraveled as the battle dragged on.

The geography of the battlefield itself contributed to the confusion and tragedy. The ridge where Custer met his end was several miles north, out of sight and sound of Reno’s position. Communication between the two groups was nonexistent once the fight began. Custer’s five companies were overwhelmed quickly, but the men holding the hilltop did not know their fate. The silence from the north was a silence full of death, a silence that foreshadowed the dire days ahead.

When the Sioux lifted their siege on the afternoon of June 26th, it was because General Terry’s column appeared on the horizon. The cavalrymen had lost nearly a third of their number, but they still held the hill. The relief was bitter. They descended the bluffs two days later to find the grim evidence of Custer’s last stand -- bodies strewn across the ridge, rifles broken or empty, and the ground soaked with blood.

Captain Frederick Benteen, who survived the battle and later recounted the events, said, “We were fighting on a small knoll, surrounded by a sea of enemies, and each moment we expected the end. The men fought like cornered animals, knowing that if we fell, there would be no rescue.”

The Little Bighorn was not a clean fight. It was a confusion of smoke and dust, fear and fury, courage and desperation. It was a landscape where young men faced death with trembling hands and unsteady voices, where the earth drank deeply of blood under a sky too wide and indifferent to care.

The marker at Crow Agency tells only a fraction of this story. It names the companies, notes the date, and leaves the rest unspoken. But the ground remembers. The grass grows where men fell. The river flows past the bluffs that held the last stand. And the wind carries the faint sound of gunfire, lost to time but never quite silent.

See also

• Little Bighorn Battlefield at Crow Agency, Big Horn County
• Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument at Crow Agency, Big Horn County
• Captain Grant Marsh at Crow Agency, Big Horn County