George Armstrong Custer was not found the way the public was told he was. When his body was discovered on the battlefield, he was stripped to his socks, leaning against fallen soldiers as if resting. He had been shot in the chest and head. His brother Tom lay nearby, disemboweled and scalped.
The official story insisted Custer died heroically, untouched by the horrors around him. That was a lie, one told to protect his widow and mislead the nation. What actually happened to the bodies on that battlefield became a carefully hidden narrative. After the Lakota and Cheyenne secured their victory, the first priority was looting the dead.
The soldiers carried valuable possessions—weapons, uniforms, badges, jewelry—and these became spoils of war. Even abandoned horses were taken. Lakota warrior Brave Bear later described the scene: “There was much commotion and disputes over the horses and guns that were captured. Indians were telling one another, I acquired some tobacco.
I obtained coffee. I have a good gun. ”
For the warriors, the plunder was a rightful reward. For the dead, the process was brutal.
Nearly every soldier was stripped of clothing and left exposed under the sun. In some cases, feet were severed to make removing boots easier. Scalping was traditional practice for the Lakota and Cheyenne, and this battlefield saw hours of it as warriors claimed trophies. Women also took part in the desecration.
Cheyenne women later said they drove nails into Custer’s ears. Years later, another detail emerged: someone had forced an arrow into a humiliating area of Custer’s body. The army concealed this to shield his widow, Elizabeth “Libby” Custer. There were also reports that some of Custer’s men feigned death during the looting.
Lakota warrior Iron Hawk recalled seeing two elderly women strip a soldier who suddenly sprang up and fought them off. They quickly killed him. Iron Hawk admitted the image of a naked man battling two old women struck him as oddly amusing. Not everyone found humor in the aftermath.
Sitting Bull was reportedly disturbed. His visions had foretold victory but warned of a curse if the dead were disturbed. Whether he genuinely opposed the mutilations is unclear—accounts of his statements surfaced years later, and he may have been distancing himself from actions outsiders condemned. The battle was not yet over when the looting began.
A significant portion of the Seventh Cavalry had survived under Major Marcus Reno and Captain Frederick Benteen, who were entrenched on what became known as Reno Hill. Sitting Bull’s warriors harassed them through the night of June 25 and into June 26, breaking off only on the morning of June 27 when scouts reported U. S. reinforcements approaching.
Reno and Benteen had been too focused on their desperate defense to know what had happened to Custer. It was General Alfred Terry and Colonel John Gibbon’s forces who revealed the scale of the disaster. Scouts first found bloodied U. S.
officer uniforms abandoned in an empty camp, leftover spoils from Sitting Bull’s retreat. Then another scout delivered graver news: he had counted 197 dead bodies lying in the hills. Asked if they were white men, he answered, “Yes, white men. ” Terry and Gibbon understood immediately that catastrophe had struck.
They feared the entire Seventh Cavalry had been annihilated, but their scouts soon located Reno and Benteen’s survivors—battered but alive. Benteen and part of his men were dispatched to find Custer. What they encountered was horrific. Two days in the Montana heat had left the bodies decaying.
They first found the remains of Company L, commanded by Custer’s brother-in-law Lieutenant James Calhoun, still positioned in their defensive line where they had died at Calhoun Hill. Elsewhere, bodies were scattered, either killed in panic or moved after death. Another group of corpses lay on the slope that would later be called Last Stand Hill. Private Jacob Adams was the first to identify the fallen commander.
He alerted Captain Benteen, who confirmed, “By God, that’s him. ” Custer’s body was near the summit, about 20 feet from his brother Tom. Like the others, he was naked except for his socks. Unlike Tom, he had not been scalped.
His body appeared seated against fellow soldiers, his expression eerily calm, almost as if he were sleeping. Lieutenant James Bradley later reported that roughly 200 additional bodies from Custer’s command were scattered between the hills and the river near Sitting Bull’s abandoned camp. In a letter, he assured the public that the fallen had not been mistreated and that mutilations were minimal. That assertion was untrue.
Private Charles Windolf later confessed that Bradley’s statements were meant to protect grieving families. The reality was far worse. Some corpses were disfigured beyond recognition. Isaiah Dorman, a Black scout, had been so severely desecrated that a kettle of his blood was left beside him as an insult.
Most soldiers had been scalped, pierced with arrows, or struck with axes and war clubs after death. Custer’s body officially showed two gunshot wounds—one to the chest, one to the head—either of which could have been fatal, plus a knife wound in his thigh. The more humiliating details, including the arrow violation, were deliberately omitted from records to spare Libby Custer. Tom Custer endured a worse fate.
He was scalped, his skull crushed, and his body disemboweled. He could only be identified by a tattoo on his arm. After two days in the summer heat, decomposition had set in, and the stench was unbearable. Colonel Gibbon acknowledged the scene was overwhelming, and survivors never forgot it.
Some later claimed everyone on Last Stand Hill had died before reinforcements arrived. But Private Adams remembered differently. Amid the corpses, he and others heard a faint sound. It came from a survivor, but not a man—a horse.
The animal was Comanche, a gelding owned by Captain Miles Keogh, who lay wounded yet alive beside his dead rider. Hit by numerous bullets and arrows, parched and exhausted, the horse had gone days without care yet remained near Keogh’s body. Soldiers quickly attended to him. Though other horses survived the battle, Comanche’s suffering and solitary presence on Last Stand Hill made him a symbol.
He recovered and became the mascot of the Seventh Cavalry, living until 1891 and receiving a full military funeral. On June 27, soldiers counted and tried to identify the dead. Many could not be identified with certainty. Nineteen bodies were never recovered.
Over the years, more remains were found in the hills, evidence that some soldiers fled only to be hunted down later. The next morning, June 28, burials began. Benteen counted 208 dead; Bradley counted 206. Time was short and danger remained.
Fearing another attack, soldiers dug shallow mass graves or buried men where they fell. Custer and Tom were interred side by side in a makeshift grave at the base of the hill, wrapped in canvas with stones placed to deter scavengers. Who dug the grave remains debated, with several men later claiming the honor. By evening, the burials were done.
General Terry was eager to withdraw—50 wounded needed urgent care, and news of the disaster had to reach command. The column marched toward the Big Horn River, where the steamer Far West waited. More men died along the way. The psychological toll on survivors was profound.
Major Reno turned to alcohol, buying 11 gallons of whiskey within weeks of returning. Captain Benteen also resorted to drinking, and later became embroiled in a dispute with Captain Thomas Weir, who accused him of abandoning Custer. Benteen challenged Weir to a duel, which Weir refused. Overcome with guilt, Weir died later that year in his New York hotel room.
The Far West raced up the Missouri River carrying 38 wounded men and the devastating news. In less than three days, it covered 710 miles back to Fort Abraham Lincoln, setting speed records. At dawn on July 6, Libby Custer was awakened by the ship’s arrival. Hours later, officers told her and her sister-in-law Maggie what had happened.
Both women collapsed in despair. Libby had been married to George for 12 years; he was her childhood sweetheart. Officers recalled the moment as unbearable, their sobs offering no comfort. Yet Libby quickly turned to duty, accompanying them to comfort the 26 other widows at the fort.
For the rest of her life, Libby Custer championed her husband’s legacy, holding Reno and Benteen responsible for the catastrophe until her death in 1933. The public first learned of the defeat on July 7, just three days after celebrating America’s centennial. The news shocked the nation and sparked fierce debate over who was to blame—Custer’s recklessness, the failures of Reno and Benteen, or some combination of both. The tragedy lies not only in the hundreds of men who died that day, but in how their deaths were quickly reshaped into legend.
Their suffering was softened to protect families and preserve reputations. The uncomfortable truth is that one of the U. S. Army’s greatest defeats was buried beneath carefully constructed falsehoods.
Whether Custer was a genuine hero or manufactured into one remains a question history still struggles to answer.