On the afternoon of June 25, 1876, Major Marcus Reno launched a cavalry charge against a massive Native American village along the Little Bighorn River. The attack collapsed almost immediately. His men were driven back in a chaotic retreat across the water, clutching at anything to stay alive as warriors closed in from all sides. One of the first to fall was Lieutenant Benjamin Hodgson, struck down near the riverbank.
A quick-thinking trooper seized him by the stirrup and dragged him the rest of the way across, but Hodgson was already dead. His body was later found on the far bank, and today his marker still stands alone on the prairie, isolated against the grass, a quiet testament to how fast the day had unraveled. Reno’s battered survivors scrambled up the bluffs, clawing through ravines to reach higher ground. Most funneled into the southernmost draw, but a few took different paths and paid for it with their lives.
One of them was James D. Wolf, one of the Seventh Cavalry’s three surgeons. He chose a riskier route and was killed. It was a brutal lesson in the fog of war.
As Reno’s men consolidated on the bluff, catching their breath and trying to make sense of the nightmare, they were joined by Captain Frederick Benteen’s battalion. Benteen had been riding hard after receiving a frantic note from Lieutenant Colonel George Custer: big village, come quick, bring the packs. It was a plea for ammunition and support. Reno showed him the message and gave the order to halt the command, explaining that he had already lost half his men.
Benteen obeyed without hesitation. From that moment, aside from a brief scouting push, he devoted himself to shaping the defensive perimeter that would become the survivors’ lifeline for the next thirty-six hours. The position Benteen chose was clever but far from perfect. It had elevated ridges that offered better sight lines, but plenty of low spots left the men exposed to enemy fire, especially from a rise to the north that the soldiers quickly nicknamed Sharpshooter Ridge.
His own company, Company H, dug in along the southern ridge, where the pressure would be most intense. On the western side, overlooking the bluffs and guarding the precious pack train, Company B took position. The northern flank fell to Companies D and K. Lieutenant George Wallace, commanding Company G, reported in grimly that he no longer had a company, only three men left.
Benteen, unflinching, told him to occupy his sector anyway with those three men. Wallace did exactly that, holding his thin line. Company A covered the eastern side, completing the rough circle. In the center lay a shallow depression, a natural bowl that became the heart of the chaos.
All the horses, mules, and pack animals were herded inside for whatever cover it offered. And at the very center stood the field hospital, run by the only surviving surgeon, Dr. Henry Porter. He worked under a flimsy tent fly that was constantly shredded by bullets, treating the wounded while animals and men dropped around him.
It was a slaughter pen, not a safe haven, yet Porter kept stitching and saving lives throughout the ordeal. The first evening was pure hell. Through the rest of June 25, twelve men were killed outright within the perimeter and another twenty were wounded. The officers looked at the attrition rate and realized it was suicide.
At this pace, they would be wiped out by morning. So they began digging like mad. This was a cavalry outfit, and they had not packed shovels or spades. The men improvised with tin cups, pocket knives, and their bare hands, clawing at the hard prairie soil.
They dragged over crates, sacks of coffee beans, and sides of bacon to build breastworks and rifle pits. It was gritty, desperate work. Everyone was at it except Captain Benteen. He held an optimistic hunch that with nightfall the Native American village would pack up and melt away into the hills, leaving them clear.
So he let his exhausted men sleep. They had been in the saddle for nearly two straight days and had fought a brutal engagement; they were running on fumes. Benteen himself was wiped out, but he prioritized their rest over fortifications. The rest of the battalion toiled through the darkness, shoring up every inch of their lines.
Dawn on June 26 brought the fight roaring back to life. Snipers resumed picking off the troopers, and the men burrowed into the dirt for survival. By all accounts, Benteen became the absolute rock of the defense. He was everywhere, striding the lines, rallying the troops, and even catching a quick nap when a bullet clipped the heel off his boot.
Survivors’ accounts painted him as a larger-than-life figure, inspiring courage when it was in short supply. Reno, by contrast, came across as hesitant and almost detached, at a time when bold leadership was everything. Benteen’s sector, Company H on the south, took the worst of it because they had not fortified overnight. His men were being whittled down fast.
If that line buckled, the entire perimeter would collapse and everyone would be finished. Benteen saw it coming and did not hesitate. He turned to Reno and said he was taking Company M and charging south. The troopers mounted up and thundered down on the warriors pressing in close, launching arrows, hurling rocks, and raising clouds of dirt.
The counterattack drove the warriors back and relieved the pressure on the southern flank, buying precious time. A couple of hours later, the northern companies pulled off a similar charge. Together, these actions kept the defense from crumbling. Then came the water crisis, perhaps the most critical moment of all.
With no supplies and the wounded suffering terribly, the officers called for volunteers. Four men stepped forward, volunteering to act as decoys and sharpshooters, drawing enemy fire to cover the water runs. Others grabbed canteens, pots, pans, and anything they could carry, then sprinted down Water Carrier Ravine to the river below. They filled their containers under a hail of bullets.
Several of those brave souls earned the Medal of Honor for their heroism. Without them, the command might have died of thirst before the enemy could finish the job. By the afternoon of June 26, the tide finally turned. The massive village began breaking camp, packing up and moving south, directly toward the approaching relief columns led by General Alfred Terry and Colonel John Gibbon.
As they moved, the villagers set the prairie ablaze, likely to obscure their movements and deny the soldiers any easy pursuit. From their hilltop vantage, the hardened Civil War veterans stared out in stunned silence. They were used to gauging the size of armies from afar, but this was different: thousands upon thousands of warriors, women, children, and lodges stretching as far as the eye could see. It was likely one of the largest Native American encampments in North American history.
A few troopers later admitted they could not hold back and let out three rousing cheers for the Indians. Warriors honoring warriors, pure and simple, amid the smoke and chaos. Through it all, one question haunted every man on that bluff: Where was Custer? Some speculated he was holed up on a nearby hill, fighting his own desperate battle.
Others clung to the hope that he had broken through and linked up with Terry’s forces. But there was no word. No scouts, no signals, nothing. The uncertainty gnawed at them.
Finally, on the morning of June 27, relief arrived, and the awful truth dropped like a hammer. Custer and all 210 men with him were dead, wiped out on a ridge a few miles north. The survivors were stunned. They had believed their grueling stand was the heart of the fight, the main event.
In truth, it was the sideshow, the one history would remember less.