Duane Schultz - Coming Through Fire: George Armstrong Custer and Chief Black Kettle

COMING THROUGH FIRE

GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER AND CHIEF BLACK KETTLE

DUANE SCHULTZ

Facing title page: Desperate battle between the Cheyennes and Company C Seventh U.S. Cavalry near Fort Wallace, June 26, 1867. (Library of Congress)

2012 Duane Schultz

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ISBN: 978-1-59416-554-2

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CONTENTS

ONE
They Will Keep Coming

TWO
A Model Young Officer

THREE
A Civilized and Enlightened People

FOUR
The Best Cavalry General in the World

FIVE
We Took No Prisoners

SIX
Dreams of Glory

SEVEN
We Shall Have War

EIGHT
Hancock the Superb

NINE
War at Its Most Savage

TEN
The Time Has Come That I Must Go

ELEVEN
War Is Surely Upon Us

TWELVE
The Star of the Washita

THIRTEEN
Here Goes for a Brevet or a Coffin

FOURTEEN
Things Were Going Terribly Wrong

FIFTEEN
He Died a Soldiers Death

SIXTEEN
You and Your Soldiers Will Go to Dust

PROLOGUE

AND THE BAND PLAYED GARRY OWEN

Camp Supply, Indian Territory

December 1, 1868

The Osage scouts led the colorful procession down the hill. They were dressed as though they were going to war, and their faces were painted in bright colors and menacing designs. They galloped in circles, chanting war songs and yelling battle cries. They fired their rifles into the air as they made their way to join the blue-clad US troopers lined up at the bottom of the hill, waiting for the victory celebration to begin.

Colorful shields were slung over the warriors shoulders, along with bows and quivers of arrows. Scalps lifted four days before, the blood dried and matted, hung from the tips of their spears. More scalps dangled from their saddles, along with strips of red and blue flannel torn from the blankets of their enemies, the Cheyenne. The scouts long hair locks, swaying as the men rode, were decorated with silver ornaments taken from the bodies of their victims.

Only one man rode silently. Chief Little Beaver sat on his horse with dignity, heading in a straight line for the troops at the bottom of the hill while the others continued to ride in circles around him. He neither yelled nor fired his rifle; only for one brief moment did his expression become animated. They call us Americans, he shouted. We are Osages.

His warriors cheered in agreement. One of them, Koom-la-Manche, called Trotter by the white man, held up a scalp that was decorated more prominently than any other. He said he took it from the head of their greatest enemy, Black Kettle, chief of the Cheyenne.

It was ten oclock on a bright Tuesday morning. And the band played Garry Owen.

California Joe came next, leading the white scouts. A great bear of a man, he puffed on a pipe that jutted out from flaming red whiskers. A large-rimmed sombrero hung low over his eyes, and pieces of straw, dried leaves, and blades of grass littered his beard from the previous nights sleep on the bare ground. Old Joe was not the most fastidious of men, but he had spent the last forty years out West and could track an animal or an Indian better than just about anyone.

Of course he drank a lot and sometimes kept the others awake at night with his drunken yelling and cursing. And he gambled away most of his pay on pokerat least what was left after buying rotgut. But in spite of his hard living, he was a crack shot and seemed to know every trail, mountain pass, and watering hole as far south as Mexico. On he came down the hill, riding a mule, unfazed by the Osage scouts yelling and firing their rifles. Nothing much bothered California Joe. And the band played Garry Owen.

The general came next, riding a prancing black stallion at the head of his staff. He had a beard and wore a fringed buckskin jacket and overshoes made from the hide of a buffalo with the hair on the inside for added warmth. At twenty-eight, he carried himself with a dashing, magisterial air. He was five feet ten inches tall and kept himself a trim 160 pounds, with broad shoulders, narrow waist, powerful arms and legs, and an expansive chest. His usual shoulder-length, wavy, bright blond hair was cut short today, but he remained an extremely handsome man. When he was in his late teens and teaching school, one of his female students said, What a pretty girl he would have made.

George Armstrong Custer had always exhibited great flair and flamboyance in his appearance and manner, and he had about him something of an imperial bearing, which was certainly the way he felt that morning. And no wonder. He had once again achieved his lifelong ambition: to attain glory and fame.

In years long numbered with the past, he wrote the year before the Battle of the Washita River in 1868, when I was merging upon manhood, my every thought was ambitiousnot to be wealthy, not to be learned, but to be great.

One year earlier, he had suffered the embarrassment of a dismal failure in his first campaign against the Indians. And then he was court-martialed and suspended from active duty for a year. Now, after his victory over Chief Black Kettle on the banks of the Washita River four days ago, he would again become the national hero he had been during the Civil War. Now he would be known as the greatest Indian fighter of them all. He had inflicted a major defeat on the Cheyenne, which had stunned all the other tribes. He had attacked the village of a major Indian chief, catching it by surprise in winter, something the tribes thought whites could never do. The defeat that the Cheyenne suffered demoralized all the other Indians of the Great Plains.

Custer had destroyed the entire wealth of the villageeverything the people had acquired so diligently to last them through the long winter. He had slaughtered over seven hundred of their horses, ponies, and mules, and put to the torch everything they owned.

The Cheyenne who escaped the battle alive were destitute. They had nothing left but the meager clothes they had been wearing when the opening notes of Garry Owen woke them up that awful morning.

We destroyed everything of value to the Indians, Custer wrote in his official report. Unofficially, he told his commanding officer, We have cleaned Black Kettle and his band out so thoroughly that they can neither fight, dress, sleep, eat or ride without sponging upon their friends. He was not exaggerating. It was an unparalleled victory.

Custer emerged from the Washita campaign a new man. Fame... had touched him again, feeding his hungry ego and giving him renewed purpose in life. Military success [at Washita], contrasting with his sorry performance in 1867, allowed the general to regain mastery.... Now he had a new identity and a new public persona, one firmly locked to the frontier West rather than the Civil War East: shrewd and skilled Indian fighter, mighty hunter, and master plainsman. And he owed it all to the man waiting for him at the bottom of the hill, the man who had given him a second chance at glory, General Philip Sheridan.