When Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer’s troops approached the Little Bighorn in June 1876, Chief Gall had only hours of warning. A battle-hardened warrior of 36, Gall had earned his standing as one of the most skilled Hunkpapa Sioux fighters through years of combat. His importance to the tribe was such that Sitting Bull had made him a younger brother and considered him one of his most trusted friends and counselors. Gall did not know this confrontation would be unlike any other.
It was a day he would recall and recount for the rest of his life. He became among the first Native Americans to ever relate the battle from their perspective, and his account would reshape the narrative of the Little Bighorn and Custer’s final actions. On the morning of June 25, 1876, Sioux scouts discovered ration boxes a few miles from the village, dropped by Custer’s troops. American soldiers saw the scouts and frightened them off, but Custer understood they would return and alert Sitting Bull of his presence.
He believed he must strike swiftly before Sitting Bull could flee. Sitting Bull dispatched scouts to follow the Americans’ movements while he called a council to plan their response. The scouts soon reported that the Americans had divided their forces. Custer took five companies to march across the bluffs and assault the village from the north.
A second group of three companies accompanied Major Marcus Reno to strike from the south. A third force of three companies under Captain Frederick Benteen intended to cross far to the south and encircle the village from the west. Sitting Bull and the other leaders agreed the best course was to break camp and flee before the enemy attacked. However, they misjudged the Seventh Cavalry’s speed.
Before they could relocate, Reno’s men were observed crossing the river and charging through the timber. “Sitting Bull and I were at the place where Reno attacked,” Gall stated later. The Hunkpapa Sioux portion of the village was on the southern edge, directly in the path of Reno’s forces. Gunfire ripped through the tents and scattered the people inside.
The warriors rushed for their horses while the women and children ran south away from Reno’s men. Gall’s initial concern was for his family. He hurried to locate his two wives and three children amid the turmoil. He did not need to search for very long.
Gall’s two wives and three children were dead when he found them. “They were slain there by the pale-faced warriors, and it made my heart bad. ” For the Sioux, this phrase described grief, hopelessness, and a desire for vengeance. “After that, I killed all my enemies with the hatchet.
” To discard the gun and employ a hatchet was to accept death in return for greater brutality upon a foe. It was the decision of a warrior filled with fury who valued his enemy’s agony more than his own life. Reno’s men had tied their horses in the timber and advanced on foot within several hundred feet of the camp, where they formed a line and opened fire. Gall joined the warriors resisting the assault.
Although Sitting Bull’s name is most famously linked to the battle, he did not actually participate in the fighting. He stayed in camp to make medicine for the men who did fight. It was men like Gall and the Oglala Sioux warrior Crazy Horse who led the warriors in combat. The Sioux warriors responded with a cavalry charge.
Reno’s men totaled only about 150, compared to the hundreds of Sioux warriors rushing to defend the village. Among Reno’s troops were a small number of Native American scouts from the Crow and Arikara peoples, enemies of the Sioux. When the Sioux saw them aiding the foe, they targeted them specifically. This included Custer’s chief scout and friend named Bloody Knife.
Bloody Knife was half Arikara and half Hunkpapa Sioux, the same tribe as Gall and Sitting Bull. Gall and Bloody Knife had grown up together and harbored a profound hatred for each other. Gall had never trusted Bloody Knife due to his half-Arikara background, and Gall’s behavior toward him finally caused Bloody Knife to leave the tribe and join the Americans. The two men became sworn enemies, with Gall eventually assaulting and killing Bloody Knife’s brothers and one of his sons.
Bloody Knife was on his horse beside Major Reno as the attack developed when he was suddenly shot in the head. Since Gall had no rifle, it was not him. But one of the other Sioux must certainly have recognized him and finished Gall’s old enemy for him. The death of Bloody Knife right before his eyes terrified Reno and was the final event that made him command the retreat.
Reno’s men started to pull back into the timber where their horses were tied, then attempted to flee back across the river. The retreat was disorderly and lethal. Gall and the other Sioux pursued them, pulling men from their horses to hack them apart or shooting them in the back as they rode for the river. At least 32 Americans died before the survivors could scramble to safety up the hills on the far side of the river.
Gall was keen to chase them, but the panicked cries of his fellow Sioux stopped them. The second American force was preparing to attack in the south. If they entered the village, they would capture the women and children and it would be completely over. According to Gall, what followed was totally different from what people believed.
Gall hurried off north with three fellow warriors to meet Custer’s advance. In his version of events, he and his scouts halted on a hill some 600 yards from Custer’s men, simply watching them and determining their next move. One officer rode out ahead of the others, scouting the path ahead with his binoculars. Custer had cut his famous long golden hair short for this battle, so it was no surprise that Gall did not recognize the man known to the Sioux as Long Hair.
Only later did he realize who he must have been. “No, no one knew,” he said later when asked if anyone knew it was Custer on that battlefield. “No one knew him from anyone else, and we could not tell him from any other. ”
In Gall’s story, Custer became hesitant when he saw the village and stopped to wait for the rest of his command.
Gall thought this was the instant where Custer realized he had taken on more than he could handle. According to Gall, it was the Native Americans who attacked him first, charging him as he crossed the bluffs about three-quarters of a mile from the river. Custer’s final battle was not a failed attack, but a failed defense. Other Sioux warriors like Lazy White Bull said that Custer’s attack began almost immediately after Reno’s men were driven back.
The reason Gall didn’t think Custer made it to the river was probably because the Cheyenne had fought the Americans back by the time Gall got there. Given the time frame, it is unlikely that Gall could have scouted Custer before his attack. Gall probably arrived to find Custer’s men already forced into a retreat up the hills on the east bank of the river and mistook it for the start of the battle. It was not an organized withdrawal.
Lines of American bodies found after the battle tell the story of a chaotic retreat as men fell every few meters. Their Springfield carbines tended to jam under intense use, and Gall saw many men throw down their jammed rifles to draw their revolvers instead. Gall claimed many soldiers ran out of ammunition mid-fight and were easily run down by warriors like him with nothing but hatchets. The Native Americans did everything in their power to create chaos in the American ranks.
Using blankets and loud shouting, they frightened loose horses into the American lines and made the soldiers’ mounts bolt in terror. The charging horses panicked the Americans and stole their only chance of escape. “It was a slaughter. We took no prisoners.
Our hearts were bad, and we cut and shot them all to pieces. ”
According to Gall, Custer’s remaining men were driven back towards the top of the bluffs where they split into at least two groups. What remained of C and E companies stayed with Custer and his brother Tom as they withdrew towards the peak of what is now called Custer Hill. Gall did not see Custer’s last moments.
Unlike so many other warriors from that day, he never claimed to be the one who killed the infamous Long Hair. Also unlike other accounts, Gall believed that Custer’s group were not the last men standing. He said warriors pursued Custer’s men up the hill, while another group overtook them and quickly surrounded them at the top of Custer Hill, where they cut the Americans down in minutes. According to Gall, the actual last stand happened to the southeast of Custer Hill, where a second group under Custer’s brother-in-law, Lieutenant James Calhoun, with his L Company, and Captain Miles Keogh with I Company had gone after splitting from Custer.
Gall insisted that these men were actually the last ones standing. “They never broke, but retired step by step all the way up the hill. ” When they realized they were surrounded, Calhoun’s men dismounted and fought on foot to the last man. Captain Keogh and the remainder of his men apparently tried to link up with Custer by traveling along Battle Ridge between the two hills, but Keogh was shot off his horse en route, and his men were soon overwhelmed.
The bodies of his company were found piled together nearby, having fought side by side until the bitter end. “They fought strong,” Gall later said of Custer’s men, “but it did not save them. ”
The Custer fight didn’t last an hour, but the battle itself was far from over. Gall turned his horse southward to finish off Reno and avenge his slain family.
After their initial attack, Reno’s men had retreated to a hill to the southeast. There they awaited reinforcements from Captain Benteen, who arrived around 4:00 p. m. With the combined force of the seven remaining companies of the Seventh Cavalry, they began their march towards Custer’s last known position.
But Gall confirmed that Custer’s men were already dead by the time Reno and Benteen headed out. After finishing off Custer’s men, the Sioux and Cheyenne rallied to finish the job with Reno. They rode over the bluffs and found the Americans on the move towards them. When the Americans spotted the swarm of enemies shouting and shooting in their direction, they chose to retreat back to their hill and dig in for a defensive fight.
Numbering over 400 men, Reno and Benteen’s troops established a defensive circle on Reno Hill. For the next several hours, the Native Americans charged and probed the American troops, but failed to break through their defense before nightfall. Gall and Crazy Horse ordered the warriors not to continue their attacks through the night, as that would only get people killed. They would keep the Americans awake with sniper fire while the Sioux and Cheyenne warriors rested.
“Time would do the work for them,” they told the warriors. “It will fall into our hands when the thirst burns in their throats and make them mad for a drink. ”
Indeed, the water situation on Reno Hill was dire. The summer heat and the dehydration of the wounded men consumed the American water supplies quickly, and they were all out by the morning of the 26th.
Gall posted snipers on the hills across the Little Bighorn the next morning to shoot at the American water parties who tried to fetch water down the nearby ravine. Eventually, the Americans posted their own shooters to suppress Gall’s snipers and secured a safe route, a feat that earned several men Medals of Honor. Later in the afternoon of the 26th, Sioux scouts spotted dust clouds kicked up by an approaching American force. This was General Alfred Terry and General John Gibbon arriving for their planned rendezvous with Custer.
Gall called it “the big dust” and agreed it was a sign to leave. The Native Americans broke off their attack on Reno and packed up their lodges for a hasty withdrawal. By sunset on the 26th, Sitting Bull’s village had packed up and escaped west towards the Bighorn Mountains. It was a tremendous victory for the Sioux, but it wouldn’t last for long.
The Americans renewed their campaign against the Sioux in the following months and ultimately forced them to surrender. Gall, Sitting Bull, and many of the other Sioux fled north to Canada. Eventually, Gall and Sitting Bull fell out, and Gall chose to take his followers and return to U. S.
territory. Gall settled at the Standing Rock Reservation, converted to Christianity, and came to befriend the American officials running the reservation. In 1886, they managed to convince Gall to attend a 10th anniversary ceremony at the Little Bighorn. Gall’s presence was a surprising but celebrated feature, which allowed him to meet survivors of the battle.
America had only ever heard about the battle from the perspective of its soldiers. But at the event, Gall provided one of the first ever accounts from the other side of the fight. Using a mix of Lakota, English, and sign language, he did his best to tell his story and answer American questions. There are multiple versions of Gall’s story from different sources.
The version published on June 26, 1886 in Chicago differs from an account published one month later in the St. Paul Pioneer Press with many changes. In the St. Paul version, Gall was at the north end of the village at the start of the battle and never fought Reno’s men, only Custer’s.
In another account from 1890, he was in both fights again but made no mention of his dead family. Whether the warrior was changing his account for different interviewers, or whether the interviewers were misunderstanding or falsifying Gall’s words, has been a debate for historians for almost 140 years. No matter which version of Gall’s story you believe, it was one of the first times that the American media tried to listen to the voices of the other side of the battle.
Even if some details are disputed, Gall’s accounts are still worth hearing to get a full picture of what happened in one of the most famous battles of American history.