Red Devils -15 - the last farewell of the Custers

March 2nd

My last letter from Mrs. Custer came today. I intend to write to her again, when I have finished my project, but I dare say, she might not want to know me, if my story gets published in the paper and she finds out that I am saying nice things about the Indians who killed her husband.

March 1st, 1880

Dear Miss Kellogg,

Here is what I expect will be my last letter to you, as it takes the story up to the death of my dear husband, and your dear father. God rest their souls.

Our women's hearts fell when the fiat went forth that there was to be a summer campaign, with probably actual fighting with Indians. Sitting Bull refused to make a treaty with the Government, and would not come in to live on a reservation. Besides his constant attacks on the white settlers, driving back even the most adventurous, he was incessantly invading and stealing from the land assigned to the peaceable Crows.

They appealed for help to the Government that had promised to shield them. The preparations for the expedition were completed before my husband returned from the East, whither he had been ordered.  As soon as the general returned we left home and went into camp. The morning for the start came only too soon. My husband was to take my sister Margaret and me out for the first day's march, so I rode beside him out of camp.

The column that followed seemed unending.  There were pack-mules, the ponies already laden, and cavalry, artillery, and infantry followed, the cavalry being in advance of all. The number of men, citizens, employees, Indian scouts, and soldiers was about twelve hundred. There were nearly seventeen hundred animals in all.

After we had passed the Indian quarters we came near Laundress Row, and there my heart entirely failed me. The wives and children of the soldiers lined the road. Mothers, with streaming eyes, held their little ones out at arm's-length for one last look at the departing father. The toddlers among the children, unnoticed by their elders, had made a mimic column of their own. With their handkerchiefs tied to sticks in lieu of flags, and beating old tin pans for drums, they strode lustily back and forth in imitation of the advancing soldiers. 

 At every bend of the road, as the column wound its way round and round the low hills, my husband glanced back to admire his men, and could not refrain from constantly calling my attention to their grand appearance. The soldiers, inured to many years of hardship, were the perfection of physical manhood. Their brawny limbs and lithe, well-poised bodies gave proof of the training their out-door life had given. Their resolute faces, brave and confident, inspired one with a feeling that they were going out aware of the momentous hours awaiting them, but inwardly assured of their capability to meet them.

My husband was sanguine that but a few weeks would elapse before I could go and join in on the steamer and used this argument to animate me with courage to meet our separation. We made our camp the first night on a small river a few miles beyond the post. There the paymaster made his disbursements, in order that the debts of the soldiers might be liquidated with the sutler.

In the morning the farewell was said, and the paymaster took sister and me back to the post. With my husband's departure my last happy days in garrison were ended, as a premonition of disaster that I had never known before weighed me down.  

There was unquestionable proof that Indians  came into the trading-posts far above us and bought the newest and most efficient guns, while our own brave 7th Cavalry troopers were sent out with only the short-range carbines that grew foul after the second firing. While we waited in untold suspense for some hopeful news, the garrison was suddenly thrown into a state of excitement by important dispatches that were sent from Division Headquarters in the East.

We women knew that eventful news had come, and could hardly restrain our curiosity, for it was of vital import to us. Indian scouts were sent with the greatest dispatch, and given instructions to make the utmost speed they could in reaching my husband and his comrades. After their departure, when there was no longer any need for secrecy, we were told that the expedition which had started from the  Platte river had encountered the hostile Indians on the head-waters of the Rosebud, had been compelled to retreat.

All those victorious Indians had gone to join Sitting Bull, and it was to warn our regiment so that precautions might be taken against encountering so large a number of the enemy. The news of the failure of the other campaign was a death-knell to our hopes. We felt that we had nothing to expect but that our troops would be overwhelmed with numbers, for it seemed to us an impossibility, as it really proved to be, that our Indian scouts should cross that vast extent of country in time to make the warning of use.

The first steamer that returned from the Yellowstone brought letters from my husband and permission for me to join him using the next steamer. I counted the hours, until the second steamer was ready. They were obliged, after loading, to cover the pilot-house and other vulnerable portions of the upper deck with sheet-iron to repel attacks. Then sand-bags were placed around the guards as protection, and other precautions taken for the safety of those on board.

All these delays and preparations made me inexpressibly impatient, and it seemed as if the time would never come for the steamer to depart. Meanwhile our own post was constantly surrounded by hostiles, and the outer pickets were continually subjected to attacks. It was no unusual sound to hear the long-roll calling out the infantry before dawn to defend the garrison. We saw the faces of the officers blanch, brave as they were, when the savages grew so bold as to make a day-time sortie upon our outer guards. 

On Sunday afternoon, the 25th of June, our little group of saddened women, borne down with one common weight of anxiety, sought solace in gathering together in our house. We tried to find some slight surcease from trouble in the old hymns: some of them dated back to our childhood's days, when our mothers rocked us to sleep to their soothing strains.   At that very hour the fears that our tortured minds had portrayed in imagination were realities, and the souls of those we thought upon were ascending to meet their Maker.

On the 5th of July - for it took that time for the news to come - the sun rose on a beautiful world, but with its earliest beams came the first knell of disaster. A steamer came down the river bearing the wounded from the battle of the Little Big Horn. This battle wrecked the lives of twenty-six women at Fort Lincoln, and orphaned children of officers and soldiers joined their cry to that of their bereaved mothers.

Although I cannot write any more about the tragedy, I can send by separate post, copies of some of the letters that the General sent me in those weeks before the engagement.

I wish you luck with your essay.

Yours sincerely,

Libbie B. Custer