Sergeant Daniel Canipe turned his horse away from the gunfire as smoke rose over the Little Bighorn, unaware that nearly every comrade he had ever fought beside was about to die. He did not simply survive the massacre that followed. He carried away with him the final words of a doomed commander, and his long-forgotten testimony would later challenge the official record of what happened that day. The march that led to disaster began on May 17, 1876, when the Seventh Cavalry moved toward the Yellowstone River.
After making camp beside the Big Horn River, the command pushed forward, and by June 10 the column reached the Powder River. Half of the twelve companies were sent on reconnaissance, loaded with ten days of rations packed onto mules. Following traces of an Indian trail along the Rosebud, the men rode through the night sustained only by coffee and determination. By the next morning, supplies were nearly gone, and General Reno ordered a retreat back down the Rosebud.
There the force reunited with the remaining six companies under General George Armstrong Custer and General Terry, the department commander. At the time, Custer was said to be under arrest for challenging corrupt post traders who were exploiting the troops, a scandal that reached back into President Grant’s administration. Despite the tension, Custer soon regained command. The men were resupplied from the steamboat Far West, which carried fifteen days of provisions.
None of them could have imagined they were only days from catastrophe. Custer had two Gatling guns and a pair of Rodman cannons available, but he handed them over to General Gibbon, confident he would not need them. In hindsight, that decision proved fatal. Even a single Rodman cannon might have changed everything.
With one Gatling gun, the disaster that followed might never have happened at all. The command broke camp and marched all day on June 22. That night, Custer issued strict orders: no bugle calls, only hand signals, and fires just large enough to make coffee. The next morning they rode out again, marching until dusk.
By June 24, they reached a site where the Indians had recently held a sun dance. The earth was trampled flat, and the remains of cottonwood huts showed where thousands had gathered. The Crow scouts, sworn enemies of the Sioux they were pursuing, soon discovered a chilling sign: the scalp of a white soldier from Gibbon’s command hanging from a willow branch. Overcome with fury, the scouts danced, shouted, and waved the scalp in the air before bringing it to Custer.
He examined it and passed it around. It eventually came into the possession of Sergeant Finley from Canipe’s company, who still carried it in his saddlebag when he was killed. That night, around ten o’clock, the scouts returned with more reports. Though it was dark, the long summer twilight still gave enough light to read by.
The men were ordered to pack up and ride. Through the night they advanced toward the junction of the Little Bighorn and Rosebud rivers. Custer led them into a concealed gully, a perfect place to remain hidden, but during the march Quartermaster Sergeant Hurst lost some of the hardtack from the pack train. When Custer heard about it, he sent Hurst back to recover it.
Hurst found two Indians already gathering the dropped bread, and when they spotted his approach, they fled. Hurst returned and reported what he saw. Custer immediately ordered the men to saddle up, and since their presence was already known, he decided to strike that very night. After climbing the divide, the command halted while Custer rode ahead with two scouts and Chief Trumpeter Henry Voss.
Two hours later he returned and divided the regiment into three detachments. Major Reno was assigned Companies A, M, and G. Captain Benteen commanded H, K, and D. Captain McDougall was placed in charge of the pack train with Company B.
Custer retained Companies C, E, I, and F for himself. Reno took the left, with Benteen positioned farther out. The plan was clear: a three-pronged assault on the Indian village while McDougall’s pack train followed along the main trail. The command followed what is now known as Benteen’s Creek and soon came upon a recently deserted Indian camp.
Fires still smoldered, and inside one tipi lay a dead warrior. Custer ordered it burned. When Reno arrived, he was instructed to cross the creek while Custer pressed forward with his own command. As the column neared the point where Benteen’s Creek meets the Little Bighorn, Canipe spotted Indians watching from the ridges.
He reported it to First Sergeant Bobo, who relayed it to Custer. At once, Custer directed Companies C, I, and F to move up the bluffs, with Captain Tom Custer, the general’s brother, leading Canipe’s company. They rode hard up the slope, but by the time they reached the crest, the Indians had vanished. Across the wide valley below, they could see the immense encampment, rows of teepees stretching for miles.
Some of the Crow scouts tried slipping down to steal ponies, but a burst of gunfire sent them scrambling back. Bloody Knife, Curley, and Chief Scout Mitch Bouyer stayed on the bluffs as the men prepared for the coming attack. The men were tense and restless, shouting when they finally caught sight of the vast village below. Canipe stood beside Captain Tom Custer and Sergeant Finckle, who admitted he was near his breaking point.
Finckle’s horse was struggling to keep pace, and Canipe called out to him, telling him to stay with the column, but he was falling behind. Just then, Captain Tom Custer gave Canipe a direct order to find Captain McDougall and the pack train and deliver urgent instructions from General Custer himself. Tell McDougall to move the packs onto the high ground, he said. If they come loose, don’t stop to fix them.
Cut them free and keep moving. There’s a large Indian camp ahead. Canipe took off at once. What he thought was bad luck, being sent away from the main column, ended up saving his life.
If Finckle’s horse had not faltered, he might have received the order instead, and Canipe would have shared his fate. In the distance, he could see a faint haze of dust rising from the pack train. As his company charged toward the Indian village, he rode in the opposite direction. Custer’s last words still echoed in his memory.
Hold your horses, boys. There’s plenty down there for all of us. After relaying the message to McDougall, Canipe continued on to find Captain Benteen as instructed. By then, Major Reno was already retreating from the valley, with McDougall’s men climbing the bluffs to reinforce him.
Behind them was chaos. Gunfire cracking, warriors shouting, and soldiers falling beneath a storm of bullets and arrows. Before they could reach them, the Indians were already scalping the dead. Dr.
DeWolf was struck down just as he reached the top of the hill. A few more steps and he might have survived. As Canipe rode back with Benteen, he saw riders racing toward them. He raised his weapon, ready to fire, but they turned out to be terrified scouts fleeing the battle, riding all the way to the Powder River.
He rejoined Benteen’s battalion on the ridge, where they linked up with Reno and McDougall’s forces. There was no way to reach Custer’s command. The Indians had completely cut them off. When Reno attempted to advance down the bluffs, the warriors swarmed them, forcing a retreat into skirmish formation.
Many brave men were lost before they managed to pull back. The enemy surrounded them, firing continuously until nightfall. At dawn on June 26, the warriors came again, their war cries echoing through the valley as the second day of hell began. Canipe could not say how many they killed, but it was a terrible price on both sides.
Sixty-eight of their men lay wounded, and they were cut off entirely from the river. The cries for water were unbearable. A few brave souls tried to reach the stream, but most never made it back alive. The first shot of that long siege struck the dirt near Canipe’s horse and whistled under its belly.
Lieutenants Harrington and Sturgis, along with fourteen others, were never found. Some said the Indians carried off their heads, dragging them through camp during their all-night celebration. On the hilltop, they lost fifty-six men. The fighting on the 26th raged from sunrise to sunset.
As evening came, the men saw the Indian camp beginning to break apart, women packing their belongings while warriors still fired a few last shots. When dawn came on June 27, the valley lay silent. The Indians were gone. The soldiers brewed coffee, fetched what water they could, and tended the wounded as best as possible.
Around ten that morning, Generals Gibbon and Terry arrived. The moment the men saw them, they cheered, and General Terry, overwhelmed with grief, broke down in tears. Then came the news they had all dreaded. Custer and his four companies had been completely destroyed.
Over two hundred men lay dead in the valley below. Later that afternoon, Canipe rode with Captain Benteen across the battlefield. The sight that met them was beyond words. He recognized many faces, among them Sergeants Finckle and Finley.
Finley lay beside his horse with twelve arrows in his body, still clutching the scalp he had carried from the sun dance camp. The dead had lain under the sun for two days, mutilated beyond recognition. The women and young warriors had stripped everyone bare, beating and stabbing any man who still clung to life. Not a single soldier remained in uniform.
The Indians had taken everything, weapons, boots, and nearly twenty-five thousand dollars in pay that had been issued to the men only days before at Powder River. Canipe saw the place where the last of them fell, a small cluster of bodies. Custer lay across his men, his back barely touching the ground, a bullet through his heart. Around him were his brother, Captain Tom Custer, and his brother-in-law, Lieutenant Calhoun of H Troop.
Nearly four thousand warriors took part in that final fight, part of a force estimated between twelve and fifteen thousand in all. Custer and his men never stood a chance. Not a single soldier survived to recount what happened after that final desperate stand. Only one living being remained from Custer’s command, Comanche, Captain Keogh’s horse, found alive but pierced by seven bullets.
The battlefield was strewn with the bodies of both soldiers and warriors. Around seventy-five native fighters lay dead within three teepees, and many more were carried away as the vast Indian encampment began to move. Canipe came across one fallen warrior wrapped tightly in buffalo robes. When he unwrapped him, he discovered the man carried four women’s scalps, two of them with long red hair, strung together like grim trophies.
The sight sickened him, and he dropped them at once. When the shooting finally ceased, the soldiers buried their dead and began the grim task of transporting the wounded to the steamboat Far West. The vessel steamed as far up the river as it could before turning back toward the Yellowstone. By some miracle, most of the wounded recovered, including Comanche, the lone survivor from Custer’s doomed command.
In the months that followed, the army ordered that Comanche be given a stall for the rest of his days. He became a living monument to the tragedy, cared for by a member of the Seventh Cavalry Band. During parades, he was draped in black, a silent reminder of the men who never returned. When all was said and done, the Sioux and Cheyenne simply broke camp and moved on.
Victorious, unopposed, and untouchable, they rode away from the field. The soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry were too shattered to follow. Their triumph was absolute.
And so the Battle of the Little Bighorn ended, not with heroism or glory, but with silence.