Tullock's Creek

By editor

Bighorn, Treasure County, Montana

In the summer of 1876, amid the vast and untamed expanses of the northern plains, the region surrounding Tullock's Creek occupied a place of considerable strategic contemplation by the United States military. As late as mid-June of that year, this quiet drainage in what is now Treasure County, Montana, was still regarded by military commanders as a plausible site for the great encampment of Native American warriors and their families, a village which had been reported with some urgency by scouts under the command of General George A. Custer along the Rosebud River. This possibility lingered even as the inexorable gears of the campaign against the Sioux and Cheyenne were set in motion, and the fateful march toward the Little Bighorn was underway.

The military campaign of 1876 was born of a collision between two vastly different worlds. On one side stood the United States government and its agents, bent on enforcing the terms of treaties made and broken, intent upon opening the land to settlers and railroads. On the other, the Plains tribes, proud and resolute, sought to preserve their ancestral lands and ways of life. The vastness of the region and the elusive movements of the Native encampments made the task of the army both uncertain and perilous.

The Seventh Cavalry, under Custer’s command, took up the campaign by advancing up Rosebud Creek on June 22, 1876. Custer’s written orders at this time included a directive that a scout be dispatched from the Rosebud Creek area to General Alfred Terry, then commanding the overall Montana Column. This route was to traverse the Tullock’s Creek drainage, a logical corridor connecting the two forces and affording a line of communication essential for the coordination of movements. Yet, curiously, when the appointed moment arrived two days later to dispatch this scout northward, Custer remained mute. He issued no further orders, gave no explanation, leaving his officers and men to wonder at his silence. This absence of instruction would have consequences that reverberated in the days to come.

Meanwhile, General Terry’s Montana Column found itself a few miles upstream along Tullock’s Creek on the morning of June 25. It was here that Terry, seeking to converge on the suspected Indian village, ordered his troops to veer sharply to the right, directing the column toward the Bighorn River. Expectations were high for an easier passage across the benchland with its promise of accessible terrain and water. However, the soldiers soon encountered a harsh reality: the ground grew rough and hilly, a labyrinth of ridges and coulees that offered little respite or sustenance. Water, the lifeblood of any march, was scarce or altogether absent, an affliction made all the more grievous by the oppressive heat of a mid-summer sun beating down mercilessly upon exhausted men.

The hardship of the march was compounded by the necessity of the cavalry to perform the crucial task of searching ahead for water. Mounted troopers had to ride forward to the Bighorn River, fill canteens, and return to the infantrymen who struggled behind, parched and weary. This exertion under such trying conditions tested the endurance and morale of the troops, as they pressed forward through a landscape indifferent to their suffering.

At this critical juncture, the intelligence brought by Crow scouts heightened the tension. These scouts, whose knowledge of the land was unsurpassed, reported the sighting of smoke rising over the Little Bighorn Valley to the southwest. This smoke was a dire signal indeed, emblematic of the fires of conflict and the presence of the Native encampment. For General Terry, already burdened with the weight of command and the urgency of the campaign, this report must have sharpened his resolve and quickened his pace, a reminder that time was slipping away and that the window to strike was narrowing.

The column’s arduous journey continued until mid-afternoon when the six companies of infantry finally reached the Bighorn River. Yet the day's trials were not ended. Pushing onward, the troops followed the river southward, the terrain still challenging and the heat relentless. Only at seven o’clock in the evening did they halt to make camp, having covered some twenty-four miles over difficult ground. This grueling march had exhausted men and horses alike, yet the campaign demanded no respite.

Meanwhile, the Second Cavalry, comprising four companies, pressed forward beyond the infantry, venturing through the gathering storm and the obscurity of a moonlit night. Their mission was to reach the confluence of the Little Bighorn River by June 25, a position General Terry had designated as vital to the campaign’s strategy. This detachment’s movement was swift and purposeful, yet unknown to Terry and his officers, the decisive moments of the campaign were already unfolding elsewhere. The fateful encounter at the Little Bighorn had already begun, and the military’s hopes of a coordinated assault were slipping beyond their grasp.

Reflecting on these movements, one perceives the complexity and fragility of military operations conducted over such vast and unforgiving terrain. The silence of Custer at the critical moment of dispatching scouts, the arduous diversion faced by Terry’s Montana Column, and the urgency inspired by the Crow scouts’ report of smoke--all these threads weave together to form the prelude to one of the most storied battles in American history. The landscape itself was a formidable adversary, as much as the Native warriors who sought to defend their homeland.

General Terry, a man of resolute character and considerable experience, had sought to marshal his forces with prudence and vigor. Yet, as he moved his column through the hills and along the rivers, the campaign’s outcome was shaped by factors beyond immediate control--terrain, timing, and the decisions of commanders operating under the shadows of uncertainty. The presence of the Indian village near the Little Bighorn, the silence from Custer, and the arduous approach through Tullock's Creek all contributed to a climax that would soon unfold with tragic consequences.

In the words of General Terry himself, the campaign was “a stern necessity, a duty imposed by the stubborn resistance of the tribes to the civilization which encroached upon their hunting grounds.” His mission was clear, though the path was fraught: to bring the tribes to submission and open the land for the advance of the nation. Yet, as the events near Tullock’s Creek reveal, history often unfolds not with certainty but with the unpredictable interplay of human will and natural circumstance.

Thus, Tullock's Creek, a modest watercourse winding through the Montana hills, emerges from the folds of history not merely as a geographical feature but as a silent witness to the unfolding drama of empire, resistance, and the relentless march of destiny across the American West.