Private Thomas F. O’Neal of the Seventh Cavalry rode into the valley of the Little Big Horn on June 25, 1876, as part of Major Marcus Reno’s battalion. By nightfall, the battalion had been shattered, General George Armstrong Custer and five companies had vanished behind a bluff, and O’Neal was lying hidden in thick brush on the battlefield, cut off from his command, certain he would die before morning. He was twenty-one years old and had already watched his horse collapse under him, ridden through a gauntlet of Indian fire, and seen comrades fall around him.
The battle that would become known as Custer’s Last Stand was only hours old, and O’Neal’s war had just begun. The Seventh Cavalry had marched for days up the Rosebud River, following fresh Indian signs that grew heavier with every mile. On the night of June 23, the regiment encamped, only to receive orders at ten o’clock to saddle up and undertake a night march. They rode until four in the morning, halted briefly to brew coffee, and resumed the trail at six.
By the time they crossed the divide between the Rosebud and the Little Big Horn, the signs were unmistakable: an Indian trail nearly a quarter of a mile wide in places, showing that large bodies of warriors had recently passed in the same direction. When the command was about ten miles from the river, Captain Frederick Benteen was ordered to the left with three companies to reconnoiter and rejoin if he found no Indians. The main column continued on alone. As Reno’s men approached the river, they surprised a small encampment of Indians, who fled toward the larger village, leaving cooking utensils on their fires and a single tipi standing.
From that point the column took to the gallop. They arrived at a lofty bank overlooking the Little Big Horn. Downriver, on the opposite bank, the Indian camp stretched along the river bottom, partially hidden by a bend in the stream. Indians appeared at the edge of the village in great numbers, mounted and running about in agitation.
It was at this moment that Custer ordered Reno to take his battalion of three troops across the stream and attack the camp, saying he would support him. Reno’s battalion crossed the Little Big Horn, the water reaching the horses’ bellies. On the opposite bank they formed in fours and galloped toward the village. About seven hundred yards out they formed a line of battle across the river bottom.
At roughly five hundred yards the Indians opened fire, and it became clear that the 130 or 140 men of the battalion could not possibly charge through such a superior force. The officers decided on a defensive stand. Three of every four men dismounted while the fourth held the horses, and the line formed with the horses six or seven yards to the rear. As the fighting began, Custer’s command was on the opposite bank, roughly a mile and a half away.
O’Neal watched Custer and his five companies disappear behind a lofty bluff, moving toward the lower end of the Indian village. It was the last any of Reno’s men would ever see of Custer or his command alive. From their position, Reno’s men could see the village, which appeared to be over two miles long, with tipis densely covering the river bottom. The Indians began to close in on the left flank, which was not as well protected.
Reno ordered the line to wheel about, putting their backs to the river and their right flank toward the village. The men lay down on the edge of a low bank and kept up a constant fire while their horses were led behind them. Twenty men, including O’Neal, were ordered under Lieutenant Charles DeRudio to scout the brush behind the line. They found dense undergrowth and a deep washout but no Indians, and reported accordingly.
The fighting grew more intense. The Indians charged up to the line with great audacity, fired their weapons, wheeled their ponies about, and retreated to reload. But they were massing on the left flank, and the officers concluded they were preparing to charge. A brief consultation convinced them they had to fall back to a more defensible position.
Reno gave the order: “Get to your horses, men! ” As the troopers moved to mount, their fire diminished and nearly ceased, emboldening the Indians, who pressed in with renewed vigor and increasing numbers. Each man drew his pistol, loaded his carbine, and held it at the ready. The men emerged from the thicket in pairs, the right flank firing to their side, the left to theirs.
Before them stretched nearly three-quarters of a mile of perfectly level ground, then a steep bank to climb to reach the bluffs, all of it under a merciless fire. As they emerged, a thunderous war whoop burst from a thousand throats. It was a race for life. The Indians pressed in on both sides, firing, and the troopers returned fire.
It became a hand-to-hand struggle, with men on both sides trying to pull each other from their horses. O’Neal saw six or seven of his comrades fall, struck by bullets. One man near him was shot in the body, fell to the ground, and received a second shot through the head. Before O’Neal had ridden two hundred yards, his horse collapsed under him, killed by an Indian bullet.
He was left dismounted among the Indians, watching his comrades draw away. For a moment he was paralyzed with fear. He thought of running after the command, but saw that was folly. He turned instead and dashed for the thicket they had just left, expecting each moment to be his last.
Many of the Indians, intent on pursuing the mounted men, passed him without notice. Others pointed guns at him and fired but missed. He pointed his carbine at those who came close and saw one fall. As he reached the thicket, he came face to face with Lieutenant DeRudio, whose horse had also been shot from under him.
DeRudio told him two other men had been left behind as well: Billy Jackson, a mixed-blood scout, and Fred Gerard, an interpreter. The four men lay in a depression surrounded by thick underbrush, hidden from the Indians who rode back and forth on the plain before them, mere feet away. DeRudio ordered them not to fire until discovered. It was not long before several women approached, gathering their own dead and wounded.
Their lamentations were pitiful, wailing and crying as they tended to the fallen. Then they stripped the bodies of the dead troopers and mutilated them with knives. O’Neal watched some of these atrocities, feeling faint and sickened, resolving that if discovered he would fight to the last. Hours passed, one, two, three, without any attempt to find them.
They lay there until darkness fell. DeRudio whispered that the Indians never fought at night, and that if they stayed together and followed his orders, they would reach the command alive. They had heard heavy firing both up and down the river, and feared heavy losses. Custer’s firing had ceased around five o’clock, and Reno’s men continued to exchange fire at intervals before going quiet around dark.
They decided to abandon their hiding place. It was a perilous move, but staying until dawn was too risky. They had gone all day without food or drink; O’Neal, having suffered a bleeding nose after a fall on the skirmish line, was nearly overcome by thirst. Gerard and Jackson were mounted on ponies they had hidden in the brush, while DeRudio and O’Neal went on foot.
They advanced only a short distance before encountering the place where their command had been overrun in the retreat, with dead troopers lying stripped and mutilated. They followed the trail of dead men and horses toward the river. Near the stream they saw a group of mounted Indians about a hundred yards away, but the Indians fled in the opposite direction. Reaching the river where the command had crossed, they tested the water and found it nearly neck-deep with a strong current.
They pulled themselves out and, for the first time in many hours, drank deeply from the stream, filling O’Neal’s slouch hat and passing it around. They all agreed it was the sweetest water they had ever tasted. Through the night they moved upstream, looking for a ford, seeing the glow of Indian war dances around burning piles of wood and hearing their yells echo through the valley. They later learned the Indians had the heads of three of their comrades, partly burned in the fires.
Crossing back down the river, they came to what they thought was the other bank, only to discover they were on an island, nearly a mile long and several hundred yards wide, thick with blueberry bushes and tall grass. While moving cautiously, a startled voice hailed them in guttural Indian tones. Gerard and Jackson wheeled their ponies and galloped away, the last O’Neal saw of them until the next night. DeRudio and O’Neal knelt in the tall grass.
When nothing more came, they rose. DeRudio fired two shots from his revolver, and O’Neal sent a bullet after the Indians, who crossed the river in haste and confusion. It was around two in the morning. Wandering the island, unable to find a ford, O’Neal was so exhausted he begged DeRudio to stop so he could wring out his soaked clothing.
As dawn broke, they heard hoofbeats and voices. A column of mounted men passed about two or three hundred yards away. DeRudio saw one man in a buckskin suit he took to be Captain Tom Custer, who had worn such an outfit on the expedition. DeRudio stepped boldly out on the riverbank and shouted, “Hey, Tom Custer!
Tom Custer! ”
The riders stopped, looked in their direction, and the war whoop sounded. A volley of at least fifty shots cut through the brush around them. The riders were all Sioux, dressed in uniforms taken from Custer’s men the previous afternoon, riding captured Seventh Cavalry horses.
DeRudio and O’Neal escaped by running low through the grass to another clump of brush, where they ran nearly head-on into another party of six or seven mounted Indians. The sudden appearance frightened the ponies, and the Indians had all they could do to stay mounted. While they were in confusion, DeRudio and O’Neal poured eight shots into them. Two riders fell, and three ponies galloped away riderless.
Running again, they came to a spot on the island where old cottonwood stumps and fallen logs formed a natural breastwork. They crawled in among the debris, perfectly protected, and shook hands, declaring they could not run another step. O’Neal had twenty-five rounds for his carbine and twelve for his pistol; he gave DeRudio his pistol and ammunition, keeping the carbine. All through that day they heard fierce musketry as the Indians repeatedly attacked Reno’s position on the bluffs.
Each charge was repulsed, the troopers countercharging the warriors who gained the top. The last charge, around three in the afternoon, was the most desperate, but by five o’clock the shooting had entirely ceased. O’Neal crawled out to reconnoiter and spotted fifteen Indians sitting in a circle near the river, then crept back to DeRudio. As dusk came on, they decided to follow the trail back toward the Rosebud and the Yellowstone.
Then, climbing a hill to look for campfires, they heard a mule braying in the direction of Reno’s position. They changed their plans and crept toward the sound, lying on their stomachs and inching along until they heard voices. Finally, a man exclaimed in a loud voice, “Bring that horse here! ” O’Neal recognized the voice of Sergeant McVey of A Troop and called out to him.
Several voices shouted “Come on in! ” and they did, in double-quick time. They were in the hands of their comrades at last. That night they had much to relate before they snatched a little sleep.
The fight on the Little Big Horn had destroyed Custer’s command and severely crippled Reno’s, and O’Neal had come through the valley of death to tell the story.