At about ten o’clock on the morning of June 25, 1876, Lieutenant Edgerly of the Seventh Cavalry stood with the rest of the regiment roughly fifteen miles from a large Indian village on the Little Bighorn River. The entire command had gathered at that spot when General George Armstrong Custer, accompanied by his Crow and Ree scouts, climbed a nearby ridge to survey the village below. When Custer came down, he called his officers together. The news was not good.
The command had been discovered. His scouts had chased a small party of Indians they had spotted, but the Indians had gotten away and were making straight for the village. There was no possibility of the surprise attack Custer had planned for the following day. Instead, he announced, they would move forward quickly, and if feasible, fight the Indians in their village.
Custer believed the Indians could not resist an entire cavalry regiment and would likely try to escape once they learned the cavalry was advancing. The troop commanders mounted their men and reported readiness within a minute. Custer and his adjutant, Lieutenant William W. Cook, divided the regiment into four battalions of three troops each, placing the senior officers Reno, Benteen, Keogh, and Yates in command.
Major Reno was directed to advance straight down the valley toward the village and begin an attack, with support promised. Colonel Frederick Benteen was ordered to turn left at an angle of about forty-five degrees from Reno’s course and attack any Indians he encountered. The expectation was that the Indians would run either to the right or left. Captain McDougall and his troop were appointed as rear guard to protect the pack train.
The precise orders given to Colonel Keogh and Captain Yates were not known to Edgerly, but Custer went with them, five companies totaling roughly 250 to 300 men, advancing in a direction parallel to Reno’s. That was the last time Edgerly saw Custer alive, moving off in that direction. Benteen followed his orders and soon came upon a chain of high bluffs. He sent Lieutenant Gibson to climb several of them and look for signs of Indians along their path.
Gibson returned again and again, reporting no Indians in view. Benteen then turned right, and after riding five or six miles, the battalion struck Reno’s trail and followed it. After several miles, an orderly trumpeter sent from Custer arrived with a message: “We have found a big village. Move quickly.
Bring the packs. ”
They pressed on. When they were still about three miles from the village, they saw evidence of fighting in the valley. Soon they spotted a party of more than a hundred men running toward the bluffs on the east side of the Little Bighorn River.
The men crossed the stream and disappeared among the bluffs. At the time, Benteen’s battalion was on the right bank, a good distance from the river. Because the orderly had said the village had been taken by surprise and Reno was driving the Indians before him, Edgerly assumed the running figures were Indians being chased by their own men. They hurried toward the ford Reno had used, meaning to rush to his aid.
But as they approached the ford, a Crow scout named Half Yellowface appeared on their right and signaled for them to join him on the bluff. Without hesitation, they turned and climbed. At the top, they found Reno and his battalion, along with several wounded men in urgent need of water. To their astonishment, they learned Reno had been compelled to withdraw from the valley.
A few Indians were hiding among the rocks and hillsides, shooting at them. A skirmish line was quickly formed and the Indians were driven off within minutes. Then Edgerly heard heavy gunfire coming from the direction where the remains of Custer’s command would later be found. He saw clouds of dust and horsemen moving back and forth on the far side of the river, about four miles away.
Captain Weir, Edgerly’s commander, asked what he thought they should do. Edgerly said he believed it essential to hurry to Custer’s assistance at once. Weir agreed, and so did the first sergeant. Weir asked Edgerly whether he would go with him with only the troop if he could get permission.
Edgerly said yes. Weir went to Reno and Benteen, then returned, mounted his horse with an orderly, and rode off toward the direction of the firing, which by then had mostly stopped. Edgerly assumed Weir had received approval to take the troop forward. Weir later told him he had not, and had not even asked.
Edgerly mounted the troop and followed. After advancing a few hundred yards, he turned right into a small valley, likely the same one Custer had used or a route nearly parallel to it. They moved directly toward the large party of Indians they had seen from higher ground. Weir, who had ridden onto a bluff to the left, saw a large group of Indians approaching and signaled Edgerly to redirect the troop.
Edgerly did so at once, and at the bluff he found Benteen, Captain French, and Lieutenant Godfrey approaching with their troops. They moved along the bluff only a short distance before the Indians opened fire. The troops dismounted, formed a line on the summit, and returned fire. The shooting lasted about thirty minutes until Reno ordered the men to fall back to their original position.
During the withdrawal, one man was killed and one horse was lost. Back at Reno’s position, the other troops were arranged along the crest of the hill. Weir’s troop and Godfrey’s troop aligned side by side, extending the existing line. Soon the Indians advanced and opened fire.
Though the firing was heavy, most of the shots went over their heads, and only a few men were killed. The exchange continued for more than an hour, until about thirty minutes after dark, ending the day’s fighting. Just before dawn the next morning, heavy gunfire broke out again from hills 500 to 800 yards away and lasted until about ten o’clock. After that, the firing declined, though small parties of Indians could still be seen on the ridges.
That afternoon, the Indians on the far side of the river struck their lodges, and around four o’clock they all left. The command had suffered very few casualties while holding its position. The next morning, Lieutenant Bradley, commanding scouts from General Terry’s column, arrived with news that Custer and his entire command had been killed. Shortly afterward, Terry arrived with his forces.
The regiment was sent to bury the dead. Edgerly went out with enlisted men from L Troop. The first dead troops they encountered were those of Lieutenants Calhoun and Crittenden. Their men lay in a regular skirmish line, and the officers’ bodies lay directly behind their troops, where they belonged.
Crittenden’s body was covered with arrow wounds. Farther on, they found Colonel Keogh and his troop, who seemed to have been retreating toward the ravine where Custer’s body was found, fighting as they withdrew. The other men showed no sign of regular formation. Their bodies were scattered over the ground, most heading toward the same ravine.
On the ravine, they found the bodies of General Custer, Colonel Cook, Lieutenant William W. Cook, Colonel Tom Custer, the adjutant, a number of enlisted men, and a number of horses. Around the base of the ravine lay Lieutenant Riley, Captain Yates, several enlisted soldiers, and more horses. Boston Custer, the general’s brother, and Reed, his nephew, lay about a hundred yards from the general’s body.
The only mutilated officers’ bodies Edgerly saw were those of Colonel Tom Custer and Colonel Cook. All the bodies had been stripped, most of the men entirely naked, though a few still wore undershirts, socks, and drawers. The dead lay below the main village on the east bank, about four miles from Reno’s position. When Edgerly had ridden out with the troop on the afternoon of the twenty-fifth, he had seen many Indians riding back and forth across that same ground, shooting at objects lying on the earth.
The command later crossed the river and buried Reno’s dead, about forty men. During the search they found two Indian lodges, one containing six bodies and the other five. The fallen warriors were finely dressed and tied to a pole at the center of each tepee. Chief Crow said this was an honorable way of treating those who died bravely in battle, leaving their bodies for the enemy to take.
Near the lodges lay as many dead ponies as there were dead men, arranged in a circle facing the tepees. From what he saw, Edgerly estimated the Indian force at about 7,000 warriors, comparing it to the size of Terry’s column of about 500 men, which he knew well. Terry’s force seemed greatly outnumbered. Custer’s trail showed he had followed the river, only fifteen or twenty yards wide at that point, along the east bank.
Reno, by contrast, had crossed and attacked from the west. The bluffs were steep and difficult to descend until a point a little more than three miles from Reno’s hilltop position. There Custer found a ford, and it was generally believed he attempted to cross but was driven back to the ravine where his body was found. Along the route from the ford to that ravine, dead bodies lay scattered.
Custer, who usually wore his hair long, had cut it short before the march. His body was stripped of clothing but bore no signs of mutilation.