Trumpet on the Land: The Aftermath of Custer's Massacre, 1876

While the Montana and Dakota columns set up their tents and cots, Brussels carpets, and rocking chairs on the west bank of the Powder, the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition made their miserable camp in the mud on the east bank with nothing more than what they had with them the day they marched away from Camp Cloud Peak. While Terry’s men eagerly cut open tins of meats, vegetables, and canned peaches, Crook’s impoverished soldiers had to relish the same old fare of salt pork, hard bread, and coffee. Why, Terry’s men even shaved at marble-topped washstands with mirrors!

With no tents to shelter them, the Wyoming column could only build bonfires around which they dried their stinking blankets and campaign coats like bands of ragged, wretched thieves. For the horses of the Second, Third, and Fifth cavalries, however, their lot had improved. Not only did the animals now feed on some sixty thousand pounds of grain, but in addition the horses and mules reveled in the abundant and luxurious buffalo grass found at the mouth of the Powder. The hostiles hadn’t been there to torch their backtrail.

Several hours after they had reached the Yellowstone, Bill Cody and Seamus Donegan watched a rescue party of Crow scouts return from upstream. Alfred Terry had been late in learning that Private Eshleman, an officer’s cook with the Ninth Infantry, had thrown in the towel and given himself up for dead.

“I may be forced to abandon or shoot some horses,” Terry grumbled. “But I won’t allow myself to lose one more man if I can help it.”

As soon as he became aware of Eshleman’s plight, the general had dispatched a half dozen of Gibbon’s Crow to backtrack up the Powder and find the lost soldier. Eshleman was nearly crazed when the Indians brought him in, trussed up hand and foot like a Christmas turkey and lashed atop one of the barebacked ponies.

“As mad as a March hare,” was how Seamus Donegan put it when together they watched the surgeon’s stewards pull the raving soldier down from that pony, screaming and snapping at his handlers.

“He might well be one of the fortunate ones,” Cody groaned, seeing how they lashed the soldier down to a hospital cot to keep him from injuring himself in all his thrashing.

“I’ll never understand the workings of humankind,” Donegan said quietly. “Either him or you: for saying a madman may well be more fortunate than those of us who made it here whole.”

Bill turned to the Irishman. “Are we really whole, Seamus? Oh, we may appear to be, despite our ordeal. But are we really whole?”

In addition to the deranged cook, a few of the officers and more than a handful of soldiers had been so incapacitated by the grueling march, their constitutions weakened beyond repair by diarrhea, acute dysentery, and inflammatory rheumatism, that the surgeons ordered those cases put aboard the Far West as soon as it arrived, to be transported on the steamer’s next scheduled run downriver to Fort Buford at the mouth of the Yellowstone. In addition, there were others who were going to leave of their own volition—some of the newspapermen who had decided days back that there simply wasn’t going to be a Sioux campaign that year, and to trudge overland with Terry or Crook in a fruitless and exhaustive search for the hostiles would be nothing short of sheer lunacy.

The noisy appearance of the Far West at five o’clock that afternoon of the seventeenth brought out every one of Washakie’s warriors. Wide-eyed, some with their hands clamped over their mouths, they stared and gaped as the stern-wheeler heaved around the far bend in the river and chugged toward the mouth of the Powder, putting in against the north bank of the Yellowstone. This had to be the most wondrous sight to the Shoshone, who had never before seen a river steamer in their part of the west. That day and for many days to come, the mighty “smoking house that walked on water” would be the sole topic of discussion in the Snake’s camp, and upon their return to the Wind River Reservation.

The Shoshone were not the only warriors excited to see the steamer. Nearly four thousand soldiers crowded the banks to view this singular reminder of civilization brought here to the wilderness. Captain Grant Marsh’s cabin girl, a Negress named Dinah, had modestly covered her eyes or diverted them as the steamer drew in sight of the camp, what with so many naked soldiers frolicking in the sunlit river after all those days of rain and gloom.

Even Lieutenant Adolphus H. Von Luettwitz, E Troop, Third Cavalry, was caught unawares of the power of the stern-wheeler as he was laundering some of his clothing at the edge of the water. The steamer’s powerful wakes tumbled one right after the other against the bank and caused the lieutenant to topple into the river, shouting his untranslatable German oaths as he sputtered up from the choppy Yellowstone, having lost half his uniform to the mighty river’s current.

That following morning, Friday, the eighteenth of August, the sky dawned clear and mercifully blue as Crook’s men went aboard the Far West to unload two days of forage and very little rations for two large armies. It wasn’t long before the men began to spread the rumor that they might well be resuming their chase of the hostiles at any moment—rumors seemingly given official credence in dispatches brought up from Fort Buford. General Sheridan was instructing his two field commanders to construct stockades in the heart of the hostiles’ hunting ground.

Sheridan wrote:

The [congressional] bill for increasing the company strength of [regiments of] cavalry in the field passed Congress …

I will give orders to General Terry today to establish a cantonment for the winter at Tongue River and will send supplies there for 1500 men, cavalry and infantry. I think also of establishing a cantonment for the winter at Goose Creek, or some other point on your line, for a force of 1000 men. I will send you 100 of the best Pawnee scouts under Major [Frank] North, regularly enlisted, as Congress has increased the number to one thousand.

We must hold the country you and Terry have been operating in this winter, or else every Indian at the agencies will go out as soon as we commence dismounting and disarming them …

“At first light Terry’s Rees come back from scouting those trails scattering to the east of the Rosebud and found the grass burned off,” Donegan told Bill that Friday afternoon. “Only thing that means is the hostiles moved through this country at least a week ago.”

Nodding, Cody replied, “Right. Shows the Sioux crossed over that ground before these heavy rains started.”

“So tell me what Crook and Terry hope to learn by sending you down the Yellowstone on that riverboat.”

“Crook doesn’t want any part of this,” Cody stated, blowing on his tin of coffee. “He only wants that boat to go up to the Rosebud and get his supplies.”

“But Terry has the rank,” Seamus said. “And even more important: it’s Terry’s boat, and Terry’s supplies—so Crook’s got to go along with everything Terry wants.”

“Including Terry’s idea to send me and Louie Reshaw down to the mouth of Glendive Creek to see if we can figure out what the hostiles are planning to do.”

“Mr. Cody!”

They both turned to find one of Terry’s staff hailing them, hurrying their way. Bill flung the lukewarm dregs of his coffee at the fire. “Looks like they’re ready to give me a ride on that goddamned boat.”

“Watch out, Bill. See for yourself all the bullet scars in that iron they riveted up around the pilothouse.”

Cody held out his hand and shook the Irishman’s. “I didn’t come back out here to scout for the army just to be killed while taking a lark of a ride on some goddamned riverboat. I intend to make it back home to Lulu and the children.”

“Sounds like you’ve made up your mind to cash in your chips and go back east.”

Pulling on his fringed gloves, Cody said, “Just as soon as this ride on the river is damned well over.”

Sioux Attacking Steamboats—Terry Falling Back

ST. PAUL, August 7—A Bismarck special to-day to the Pioneer Press and Tribune, says the steamer Carroll arrived this morning from General Terry’s camp, having on board General Forsythe and twenty sick and wounded soldiers. The Carroll on her way up, when near the mouth of the Powder river, found the Indians on both sides of the river, and for two and a half hours they kept up a running fire upon the boat, only wounding one soldier slightly. The steamer Far West, after leaving Fort Buford for Terry’s camp found her load too heavy and discharged part of her cargo, principally grain. At this same point the Indians attacked the Far West … The Indians stood on both banks of the river and with oaths dared Col. Moore with his troops to leave the boat and land. A few shells were fired from a twelve-pounder which scattered the Indians and they disappeared from the south bank.

Dave Campbell, pilot of the Far West with two Ree scouts, then landed and went