Private George W. Glenn, riding in H Troop under the alias George W. Glee, was a survivor of Major Marcus Reno’s battalion at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. His firsthand account preserves a ground-level view of the Seventh Cavalry’s march, the chaos of the valley fight, the desperate defense on the bluffs, and the grim aftermath.
His testimony captures the experience of the enlisted cavalrymen who endured one of the most catastrophic defeats in American military history. The campaign began in the spring of 1876, when the H and M Troops were ordered to depart Fort Rice and report to regimental headquarters at Fort Lincoln, Dakota Territory. The regiment had barely settled into camp when hostile scouts appeared nearby and made clear that war had been declared. The Seventh Cavalry was ordered to take the field, and on the 17th of May the regiment broke camp, bringing roughly twenty-five to thirty wagons.
The steamer Far West was chartered to carry provisions and ordnance stores and to transport the wounded should a battle be fought. The column passed through Bismarck at ten in the morning, accompanied by Mrs. George A. Custer and the U.
S. paymaster. At Heart River, the paymaster distributed the regiment’s wages, a precaution taken out of fear that many men would otherwise be left behind drunk in Bismarck. The march was slow from the start.
A hard rainstorm hampered the crossing of the Heart River while the men labored to build a pontoon bridge for the wagon train. The regiment struggled through the Gumbo Hills of Dakota, and a snowstorm that blew through the night delayed their arrival at the Little Missouri River until the end of May. They camped there until the 4th of June, then pushed on, making a dry camp between the Little Missouri and Powder River. Boots and Saddles sounded early on the morning of the 5th of June, and the regiment reached Powder River on the evening of the 7th.
There, General Terry discovered an Indian trail. Scouts followed it and quickly returned with word that the Indians were moving toward the Little Bighorn. Terry left his wagon train at Powder River, taking only the pack train and those men fit for the hard ride ahead. The guard and the men who could not endure the trip stayed behind, roughly one hundred men including trumpeters.
The column moved slowly up the Yellowstone River. On reaching Tongue River on the 16th of June, they found Indian burial platforms raised on stakes and lodged in the crotches of trees. The Seventh Cavalry tore these graves down and threw them into the river. It was a reckless act.
Glenn drank water about a hundred yards below where the bodies had been thrown. One body lodged in a tree was not cut down and never fell into the water, and a decomposed infant lay at the foot of the tree where it had fallen from one of the graves. The column continued its cautious advance up the Yellowstone, with flankers deployed to prevent an ambush. A few days later they reached Rosebud Creek.
There they found the steamer Far West tied up, along with Colonel Gibbon and four troops of the Second Cavalry and the Seventh Infantry. It was at the Rosebud that Custer received his orders. He was to issue each man twelve pounds of oats and two horseshoes, one for the forefoot and one for the hind foot, to be carried on the horse. He was to send word to Terry at the mouth of the Little Bighorn by scout once he located the Indian village.
Custer left the mouth of Rosebud Creek on the 24th of June. The regiment marched through broken camps where the Indians had concentrated before moving over to the Little Bighorn. They marched day and night, resting only around midnight while holding their horses by the bridles. On the morning of the 25th, they were issued more ammunition.
It was then that Mitch Bouyer, the half-breed scout, returned and told Custer the village contained eight to ten thousand people. Custer paid no attention. Everyone knew what Custer would do. He would go in, and Mitch Bouyer was willing to guide him.
But Bouyer knew the consequences. Custer was a man who could not be dictated to, and no one knew his plans. On the 25th of June, Custer halted within five miles of the Little Bighorn and gave Reno his orders. Custer would take five troops and go ahead, while Reno was to keep close in the rear with the rest of the troops and keep the pack train up.
Custer had brought Mrs. Custer’s horse along for a fresh mount when he went into battle, and he started on at a dash. Reno soon lost Custer’s trail and went astray in the hills. When he came back out, he met trumpeter John Martin with a dispatch ordering him to come quick and bring the packs because there was a big village.
But for reasons that remain unclear, Reno did not follow Custer’s trail. Instead, he switched off four miles up the Little Bighorn, on the left side of the village. After arriving on the bluffs facing the river, he attempted to move downstream to join Custer. Seeing so many Indians between himself and Custer, he realized he was cut off.
Benteen advised Reno to fall back and corral the pack train in a ravine. By then, Custer was already fighting. Custer made his charge around 2:30 in the afternoon. Reno made his around 3:00.
After crossing the river, Reno saw so many Indians emerging from the timber that he dismounted his men to fight on foot. The last time he mounted them, they panicked and retreated back to the ford where they had crossed, while the Indians shot men out of their saddles. Reno lost heavily in the valley. After the retreat to the hills, H Troop held one bluff while the other troops held the hills behind.
It was not long before the Indians launched a charge directly at H Troop. Their objective was the hill H Troop held, and if they had taken it, they would have massacred every man in Reno’s command. They charged three or four times and never took the hill. The last charge was so fierce that Benteen was forced to call for reinforcements, and M Troop was sent to repulse the Indians.
Whenever there was time, the men dug holes in the ground with their butcher knives, having no picks or shovels. They wanted only to get their heads out of sight. When Custer’s command was destroyed, every Indian converged on Reno. Each troop ran out of ammunition on the hill.
Men looked at one another to see who would go down to the ravine where the pack train was to fetch more. Seeing that no one would go, Glenn and a comrade named Jones went down for a box. Jones was killed. Glenn could not carry a box of carbine ammunition, so he took a box of pistol cartridges.
On his way up the hill, bullets struck the box he carried, and he fell to the ground, pretending to be dead. Benteen ordered some men to go down and get the box, but Glenn spoke in a low voice, saying he was only resting and would be there in a minute. When he reached the top, the Indians launched another charge, the one that nearly drove H Troop from the hill. That was the evening of the 25th.
The charge on the morning of the 26th was not as severe. During the siege, the men broke open boxes of tomatoes and other fruits, the officers’ stores, and gave them to the wounded who were suffering for water. A water party was selected, protected by a firing party along the ridge, with orders from Captain Benteen to give water only to the wounded and to let every man get his own. It was on the evening of the 25th that Madden of K Troop lost his leg, amputated on top of the hill.
On the morning of the 27th, few shots were fired. It seemed to Glenn that if Terry had been a dashing man like Custer, he could have arrived on the 26th instead of the 27th, for he had only twenty miles to come. When Terry reached Reno, he asked where General Custer was. Reno replied that he did not know.
The last he had heard from Custer’s men was firing down the river at sundown on the 25th. Terry, who had come through Custer’s battlefield, ordered Reno to take all his picks and shovels and bury the dead of Custer’s command. Terry took charge of Reno’s wounded while Reno traced Custer’s dead. The bodies suggested a running fight.
No photographer had been with the regiment, and the correspondent had been killed. Only a sketch could be given by the men who buried the dead. It seemed Custer’s men never crossed the river. A trail went down into the water, but no trail was found on the other side, suggesting Custer was repulsed before he could cross.
The first bodies were found on the ridge. On a small knoll lay the chief trumpeter with three arrows in his head and one in his right shoulder. About fifty yards away lay Mark Kellogg, the New York reporter, his body pierced only by arrows. First came a single horse, then ten or twelve horses with their riders, most of them mutilated and nearly all pinned with arrows.
Further up the ridge lay scattered soldiers and horses. Thomas Tweed of L Troop, a young man Glenn had enlisted with, was cut open and his left leg thrown over his left shoulder, with three arrows in his face. He had not been scalped. There had not been time to scalp all of the dead.
About 280 men were killed on the ridge. At the head of the ridge, Captain Benteen rode ahead, looked into a ravine, turned to Reno, and said, “Here is the whole headquarters. ” They found part of C Troop and part of E Troop, along with General Custer, Captain Tom Custer, Captain Keogh, Captain Calhoun, Custer’s brother-in-law, and Captain Yates. Lieutenant Sturgis’s trousers were found, but his body was not recovered at that time.
Custer’s nephew, about eighteen years old, was among the dead. The troops with Custer were C, E, F, I, and L. Captain Keogh and Lieutenant Sturgis belonged to M Troop but were with E Troop when they were killed. Lieutenant DeRudio, an Italian officer holding a commission in the Seventh Cavalry, escaped from Custer’s command.
He must have crossed the river, for he came up from the timber to Reno’s position on the 26th. After burying Custer’s men, the command crossed the river where the Indian village had stood. They found two severed heads of men captured from Reno’s command during the charge on the 25th. One was identified as John E.
Armstrong of A Troop, recognized by Captain Moylan. The heads were buried, and the column moved up the river to General Terry’s camp. There they prepared stretchers from Indian lodge poles and timber and loaded the wounded aboard the steamer Far West. The Seventh Infantry marched alongside the stretchers to keep them steady.
The march to the mouth of the Little Bighorn took nearly all night, and some of the wounded died on the way. After the wounded were aboard, the command moved to the mouth of the Bighorn River, where they waited for word from General Crook. News came that Crook was on Rosebud Creek. Terry packed up at once, moved to Crook’s camp, and held council.
They decided not to follow the Indian trail but to march to Powder River, where the Seventh Cavalry had left its wagon train. On arriving, they found the wagons destroyed, the grain scattered across the ground, and the escorts all killed. After burying the dead, Terry and Crook separated. Terry returned to Fort Lincoln to recruit replacements for the five troops lost on the 25th of June 1876.
Crook went to the lower agencies to disarm the Indians. After the Seventh Cavalry was filled up, they went down the river to the Standing Rock Agency to disarm the Indians on that reservation. They went through the lodges, cut up the lariats, broke up the saddles, and drove off the ponies. Then they returned to Fort Lincoln.
Custer was severely criticized for the campaign’s failure, and it seemed to Glenn justly so. He had disobeyed orders by not sending word to Terry when he located the village. He brought on the battle on the 25th instead of the 26th. He did not take the Gatling guns or the four troops of the Second Cavalry as ordered.
The plan had been for Custer to move up the Rosebud, Terry up the Little Bighorn, and Crook to come in the rear of the Indians, all connected together. If it had been done, Glenn believed the day would have been theirs.