August L. DeVoto served as a private in B Troop of the Seventh U. S. Cavalry, assigned to the regiment’s pack train, a duty that placed him at the junction of supply and combat during the 1876 campaign against the Sioux and Cheyenne.
In later years, he committed his recollections to paper, offering a ground-level account of those fateful days. On the 22nd of June, 1876, the Seventh Cavalry was encamped on the banks of the Yellowstone River, near the mouth of Rosebud Creek. That afternoon, General George Armstrong Custer took his leave of General Alfred Terry and led the regiment up the Rosebud, intending to make short work of Sitting Bull and his band. The regiment carried no wagons.
Instead, they relied on some 150 pack mules, and the soldiers themselves did the packing and cared for the animals. They marched up the Rosebud all that day until near darkness. On the 23rd, they set out at five in the morning and traveled until dark once more. On the 24th, they moved upstream and struck the Indian trail, which grew broader with every step.
By afternoon, they neared the headwaters of the Rosebud and made camp for the night. They broke camp between midnight and one o’clock. The darkness was so profound that DeVoto could barely see the man riding before him. That man’s mule had camp kettles strapped to its saddle, and DeVoto followed the clatter they made.
They moved that way until nearly daylight, then halted to rest and slept for perhaps an hour. On the morning of the 25th, they started out again. B Troop, under Captain Thomas M. McDougall, was in the advance.
After coming within some ten miles of the Indian camp, they halted for a half-hour’s rest. Then the officer’s call was sounded. This must have been the moment Custer formed his final plan of attack: five troops under his own direct command, three assigned to Major Marcus Reno, three to Captain Frederick Benteen, and one troop—B Troop—held as rear guard. Before the command moved, men from each troop were detailed to take charge of the pack train.
DeVoto was one of ten from his troop. Since B Troop had been the advanced guard, their mules were placed at the front of the pack train. Custer and his five troops went ahead, as did Reno and Benteen. The plan was to catch the Indians between two fires.
Reno crossed the river above the camp and made the first attack with his three troops, while Custer rode farther to the west with his five. The Indians, who were vast in number, must have dismounted and hidden themselves in a dry ravine, for when the soldiers later buried Custer’s men, they found no dead Indian ponies on that ground. DeVoto and the pack train moved at a lively pace. They passed a teepee holding a dead Indian.
Presently, they began to hear firing. Soon they met a Crow Indian coming from the direction Custer had taken. He spoke little English. Asked about the soldiers, he made motions with his hands, saying many soldiers down—no doubt meaning soldiers killed.
Next, they met a soldier from Custer’s command. Custer had sent him with a message for Major Reno. The fight had apparently not yet begun when he was sent, for he said nothing of it. Soon the pack train came into plain view of the Indian camp.
From a hill, the camp looked beautiful there in the green valley. Moving a little closer, DeVoto could see Reno and his command slowly climbing up a hill. He spoke with a man of G Troop named McGonagal and asked what had happened. McGonagal said Reno had retreated from the Indians and lost a good number of men.
Lieutenant McIntosh was killed. Lieutenant Hodgson was missing. The doctor had been killed just as he reached the hilltop—the first dead man DeVoto had seen among his own command. In the meantime, Benteen came up with his three troops, then the pack train, and finally B Troop, the rear guard.
Shortly after the rear guard arrived, a lieutenant, Sergeant Criswell, two other men, and DeVoto were detailed to find Lieutenant Hodgson. They had gone about halfway down the hill toward the river when an orderly told them to return. When they got back, Benteen’s troops started out in the direction Custer was supposed to be. The whole command had been strung out when Benteen came back at a charging gait.
The officers must have seen they were being surrounded. They moved east about half a mile, then dismounted. The ground was well chosen—near the edge of a hill with a good lookout toward the river on the south and east, while the north and west were open country, giving the Indians no place for concealment. A depression in the ground protected the horses and mules.
Almost before the troops were formed, the fight commenced. It kept up until dark. Shortly after the firing ceased, someone sounded taps, but not from their camp. This must have been a ruse by the Indians to make the soldiers believe Custer was camped nearby.
When they later buried Custer’s men, they found Custer’s chief bugler’s body about a mile from the battlefield, all alone and stark naked, in a kneeling position, his back stuck full of arrows. On the morning of the 26th, the fight began at daybreak and was swift and furious. It lasted until about noon, and DeVoto believed the Indians were getting short of ammunition. The wounded men began calling for water, and about a dozen soldiers volunteered to go to the river for it.
They went down a ravine that protected them from exposure. At the bottom was an open space of some twenty feet to the creek bank—dangerous, since it gave the enemy an excellent chance to shoot from concealment on the opposite side. Each man carried as many canteens as he could, but filling one took time, and standing by the bank meant sure death. One of the men had carried down a big camp kettle.
DeVoto decided it would be safer to wade into the stream, fill the kettle, and then run back under cover to fill the canteens. He did this. Another man, named Madden, tried to fill his canteen at the creek and was shot in the leg. His leg was amputated the next day by Dr.
Plumer, the only remaining doctor, the other having already been killed. Along about four o’clock that afternoon, the Indians moved away. The soldiers did not follow. That evening, they watered the horses and mules for the first time since the fight began, took up more ground, and had bacon, coffee, and hardtack—their first meal since the morning of the 25th.
The next day, the 27th, some men were detailed to search Reno’s battleground for the missing or dead. DeVoto, with Sergeant Criswell and three others, went to look for Lieutenant Hodgson. They found his body on the bank about twenty feet from the water. He was naked, shot in the temple and the groin.
Nearby lay several dead members of G Troop, including the first sergeant. The men laid Hodgson’s body across their carbines and carried it back. They dug a grave, wrapped him in a blanket, and buried him on the hill, planting a sapling to mark the spot. All this time, they did not know what had become of Custer and his men, never thinking that he and all of them had been slaughtered.
Around noon, they saw a cloud of dust in the west and thought the Indians were returning. They prepared to meet them, but it turned out to be General Terry and his command. They brought the sad news that Custer and all his men had been killed. The next day, the soldiers went over the battlefield and buried them.
It was a sickening and sad duty. Afterwards, they went over the ground where the Indian camp had been. Two teepees were left standing, full of dead Indians. As they rode past, DeVoto looked in.
The bodies were piled up like cordwood. One of them looked very much like a white man to him—he could not see the face, but the legs looked white. He had no chance to make a closer investigation. The men then skinned a number of dead horses and mules, cut the hides into strips, chopped down young saplings, and made litters.
That evening, they put a mule in front and one behind, placed the litters on their backs, and with two men leading them, transported the wounded—about fifty men—to the mouth of the Little Bighorn River, where the steamer Far West waited to take them to Fort Abraham Lincoln. They traveled all night along the banks of the Bighorn. After sending the wounded away, they traveled down the Bighorn to the mouth of the Yellowstone, crossed by boat, and camped at Fort Pease, where they got new supplies. They then traveled until they were opposite the Rosebud, crossed the Yellowstone again, drew clothing and rations, and started out once more.
On their second day out, they met General Crook’s command, with Buffalo Bill as his chief scout. The Seventh Cavalry and Crook’s command moved together for about three days, until it was discovered the Indians had disbanded, some having gone into Canada. The two commands then separated. The Seventh Cavalry went to the mouth of the Tongue River on the Yellowstone and camped there for about three weeks.
About a week after that, they made a short trip down the river to Standing Rock, took a lot of ponies from the Indians, and drove them to Fort Lincoln. So ended DeVoto’s account of the Little Bighorn expedition.