In June 1876, as the United States Army prepared to crush the gathering strength of the Lakota and Cheyenne nations, a correspondent named Mr. Kellogg sat at the confluence of the Rosebud and Yellowstone Rivers and put pen to paper. Four days before Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer led the Seventh Cavalry into disaster at the Little Bighorn, Kellogg wrote a letter describing the campaign as it unfolded. That letter, along with another written in the same period, would later be read as a record not just of optimism but of the fatal errors already setting the stage for catastrophe.
Kellogg wrote on June 21, 1876, just days before the battle that would claim his own life along with Custer’s entire command. His account is striking for its confidence. The army’s plan seemed sound. General Alfred H.
Terry commanded the expedition, and his design was methodical. A supply depot had been established at the mouth of the Powder River, and the steamboat Far West had been converted into a mobile base carrying thirty days of provisions. The steamer had moved to the mouth of the Tongue River, where Terry’s headquarters took up station. Custer, meanwhile, marched his men up the Yellowstone Valley, covering roughly forty miles from the Powder to the Tongue.
The march itself was unremarkable. Custer, in his characteristic fashion, offered a display of marksmanship, dropping an antelope at four hundred yards and narrowly missing several sage hens. The terrain north of the Powder River was harsh, with poor soil and sparse vegetation, nothing but sagebrush and cactus. On June 15, the column came across an abandoned Indian encampment, a vast site stretching over two miles and likely containing twelve hundred to fifteen hundred lodges.
It was clear evidence of a large host, but no Buffalo were spotted, and game was scarce. The Yellowstone itself was impressive, its waters rushing and swirling, the color of yellowish clay, cool and pleasant to the taste. Kellogg observed that it surpassed the Missouri in volume and was far more navigable for steamboats. The Tongue River, by contrast, ran deep and reddish, swift and less palatable.
The problems began with Major Marcus Reno. On June 10, Terry had issued explicit orders. Reno was to conduct a reconnaissance of the Powder River up to the confluence of the Little Powder River, cross Pumpkin Creek and the Tongue River, and then proceed down the Tongue to its junction with the Yellowstone, where he was to meet the remaining companies of the Seventh Cavalry and supplies. Reno’s command carried twelve days of provisions and forage.
The guide Mitch Bouyer and eight Indian scouts detailed by Custer were to report to him, along with Acting Assistant Surgeon H. R. Porter. The plan was precise, and Terry expected it to be followed.
Reno did not follow it. For reasons Kellogg admitted he did not understand, Reno deviated from his instructions. Instead of heading down the Tongue River valley as ordered, he turned south from the Powder River toward the Rosebud. There he found a fresh and hostile trail, the unmistakable sign of a large Indian force moving through the country.
Reno’s deviation wrecked the careful coordination of the campaign. The original plan had called for Custer to organize his regiment in the Tongue River valley, scout up the Tongue, cross to the Rosebud, and move down toward Terry, while Terry himself steamed to the mouth of the Rosebud, united with General Gibbon’s command, and marched up that valley to meet Custer. Reno’s unauthorized move meant the main Indian force, perhaps fifteen hundred strong, slipped away and avoided capture. The campaign had to be restructured.
On June 22, Custer took twelve companies of cavalry and moved up the Rosebud Valley, following the trail Reno had discovered. The Indians were hunting buffalo and moving at leisure, and there was hope of catching them. Terry would take the steamer to the mouth of the Bighorn River, scout Pumpkin Creek, and join Gibbon’s forces, marching up the Bighorn Valley to intercept the Indians if they attempted to escape in that direction. Optimism ran high.
Kellogg wrote that it was believed, with good reason, that Sitting Bull’s band would be captured and dealt with accordingly. The march was punishing. Custer pushed his men hard from the Tongue to the Rosebud, crossing difficult terrain with steep descents and deep canyons. The heat was exhausting, and the men sweated and panted, but the cavalry kept pace with the steamer ascending the Yellowstone.
Kellogg noted that Custer’s light-colored buckskin attire could often be seen in the rear of the column as they climbed the heights above the winding river below. The valley itself was a revelation, with abundant grass and timber, enchanting groves of trees, and a channel deep enough to permit light-draft steamers to navigate nearly five hundred miles from the Missouri to the Bighorn. Kellogg, writing for readers of the Herald, described the land in glowing terms, noting that the valleys of the Far West stretched from thirty to five hundred miles in length, far grander than anything in the settled East. Kellogg’s letter is also a portrait of the men leading the expedition.
General Terry, in his estimation, was the ideal commanding general, possessed of intellect, sagacity, foresight, and composure. Kellogg believed Terry’s planning was of the finest character and that it must succeed unless his subordinates thwarted it. Then he turned to Custer, whom he called the most peculiar genius in the army, a man of strong impulses, great-hearted friendships, and bitter enmities, quick of temper, undaunted in courage, with an electric mind and an iron constitution. Custer, Kellogg wrote, was the hardest rider, the greatest pusher, with untiring vigilance and an ambition to succeed in all things.
His men respected and loved him and would have followed him freely into the jaws of hell. Kellogg had no doubt about the outcome. He praised the regiments of the expedition, the Seventh and Second Cavalry, and the infantry units under Terry and Gibbon. He called General Crook’s troops the finest fighting men in the army, made up largely of whites and Mexicans, with some colored soldiers serving alongside them.
He believed the force now pursuing Sitting Bull would certainly capture or destroy him. The soldiers, he wrote, would cheerfully starve to accomplish their mission, willing to subsist on horse or mule meat rather than abandon the pursuit. He asked only that his friends and comrades remember him kindly if he fell, as seemed possible, and he expressed pride in serving the army and hope that he would acquit himself well. The confidence in that letter is painful to read now.
The campaign that seemed so carefully planned had already fractured at its first test. Reno had ignored his orders and found the trail that would lead Custer into the valley of the Little Bighorn. Terry’s coordination had been broken, and the separate columns were no longer marching in mutual support. The plan that depended on precise timing and obedience had been undone by one commander’s decision to act on his own judgment.
Kellogg himself would not escape the consequences of his own confidence. He rode with Custer’s column and was among those killed on June 25, 1876, when the Seventh Cavalry met the combined force of Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors along the Little Bighorn. Custer’s command was annihilated, and Kellogg’s letter, written with such hope only days before, survived as a quiet testament to the gap between the army’s expectations and the reality of what awaited them. The fatal mistakes had been made before the first shot was fired, in the orders ignored, the trail pursued, and the confidence that the enemy could be caught and crushed at leisure.
The letter reveals that the disaster at the Little Bighorn was not merely a matter of bad luck but of decisions made in the days beforehand, decisions that sealed the fate of the Seventh Cavalry and the correspondent who believed so fully in its success.