Battle of Honsinger Bluff | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Part of the Yellowstone Expedition of 1873 | |||||||
| |||||||
Belligerents | |||||||
Lakota | ![]() | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Rain in the Face | ![]() | ||||||
Units involved | |||||||
7th United States Cavalry | |||||||
Strength | |||||||
~200 Warriors | ~91 Soldiers, 4 Civilians | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
3 wounded | 3 killed, 1 wounded |
The Battle of Honsinger Bluff was a conflict between the United States Army and the Sioux people on August 4, 1873 along the Yellowstone River near present-day Miles City, Montana. This was U.S. territory acquired from the Crows in 1868. The main combatants were units of the U.S. 7th Cavalry under Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, and Native Americans from the village of the Hunkpapa medicine man, Sitting Bull, many of whom would clash with Custer again approximately three years later at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in the Crow Indian Reservation. [2]
The Battle of Honsinger Bluff took place at a point approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) east of the confluence of the Tongue River and Yellowstone River. The battlefield, on a floodplain of the Yellowstone River, is dominated by a massive gravelly hill to the northeast, often referenced as the "Big Hill" in historical accounts of the battle, but referenced locally as "Yellowstone Hill". This hill is nearly 13 miles (21 km) long and between 1 and 3 miles (4.8 km) wide with steep slopes of 200 to 300 feet (91 m). It is the present location of the Miles City Airport. To the east and south lies the Yellowstone River. The floodplain, varying between 1 and 3 miles (4.8 km) in width, extends westerly upstream along the Yellowstone for nearly 13 miles (21 km) until it meets Locke Bluff near Hathaway, Montana. Key positions involved a bluff, Honsinger Bluff, on the southwesterly face of Yellowstone Hill, and two large groves of cottonwood trees on old channels of the Yellowstone, one approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) westerly of Yellowstone Hill and the second approximately 4 miles (6.4 km) westerly.
In 1851, the site of the future battlefield came to be a locale in a treaty territory for the first time. The Treaty of Fort Laramie defines the area as Crow Indian country. The Lakota tribe recognized this. [5] Nearly all the battles in the mid-1860s and the 1870s "between the army and the Dakota [Lakota] were on lands those Indians had taken from other tribes since 1851." [6] [7] When the Crows accepted to live in a smaller reservation on May 7, 1868, all the 1851 Crow treaty land north of the Yellowstone - including the future Honsinger Bluff - became U.S. territory. [8] [9]
Custer and units of the 7th Cavalry were part of the military column commanded by Col. David S. Stanley accompanying the 1873 Northern Pacific Railway survey party surveying the north side of the Yellowstone River west of the Powder River in eastern Montana. Stanley's column consisted of a 1,300 man force of cavalry, infantry, and two artillery pieces (3" rifled Rodman guns). It traveled with 275 mule-drawn wagons and 353 civilians involved in the survey. 27 Indian and mixed-blood scouts supported the column. [10]
The Native American forces were from the lodge of Sitting Bull, situated near Locke Bluff to the west, estimated at anywhere from 400 to 500 lodges. [11] It included Hunkpapa Sioux under Gall accompanied by the warchief Rain in the Face, Oglala Sioux under Crazy Horse, and Miniconjou and Cheyenne.
On Sunday, August 3, 1873, Stanley's column camped near the mouth of Sunday Creek, a tributary to the Yellowstone on the northeasterly end of Yellowstone Hill. Early on the morning of August 4, the column moved up the northwest side of the hill along the south fork of Sunday Creek. Capt. George W. Yates with a troop of cavalry accompanied the surveyors along the southeast side of the hill along the Yellowstone River. Custer, with Companies A and B of the 7th Cavalry under the command of Capt. Myles Moylan scouted to the west ahead of the Stanley column. Custer's group consisted of 86 men, 5 officers and Indian scouts. Custer's brother, Lt. Tom Custer, and his brother-in-law, Lt. James Calhoun, accompanied him. [12]
Custer's troops traveled along the top of Yellowstone Hill and then descended a steep buffalo trail on its northwesterly end on to the broad, grass covered flood plain. Custer spotted a wooded area along the Yellowstone, about 2 miles (3.2 km) to the West that would be a suitable location for the Stanley column to camp that evening. He dismounted his men in the woods, where they napped and fished in the river. Their horses grazed on the grassy floodplain. Having a premonition of danger, Custer set out two four-man guard patrols.
Scouts from Sitting Bull's village traveled along the Yellowstone west of Yellowstone Hill but did not appear to be aware of the presence of the Stanley column. They did, however, spot Custer's group resting in the woods. Reinforcements were obtained from Sitting Bull's village and by noon somewhere between 100 and 300 Indians were hiding in the second wooded area 2 miles (3.2 km) west of Custer's location. [13] [14] [15]
A small band of Indians approached the cavalry's grazing horse from the West. They were spotted by the guard units, who alerted the other troops. Custer ordered his men to saddle up and he began to pursue the Indian riders in the company of his orderly and Lt. Calhoun. Tom Custer followed with a group of approximately 20 troopers. Myles Moylan led the remainder of the unit behind Tom Custer. George Custer halted his pursuit and the Indian riders also halted. When he would proceed, they would proceed. They were headed toward the wooded area along the river about 2 miles (3.2 km) from where Custer's troops were located. This was a similar tactic used by the Indians in the Fetterman Massacre near Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming in December 1866. [16] As he approached the wooded area, the force of Indians hidden in the woods, estimated as anywhere from 100 to 300, broke out in pursuit of Custer.
Custer retreated through a skirmish line formed by Tom Custer's men. The volley from the skirmish line distracted the pursuing Indians enough to halt their charge. Custer had Moylan pull back to the wooded area previously occupied by his troops. [17]
After reaching the wooded area, the cavalry troops dismounted, forming a semicircular perimeter along a former channel of the Yellowstone. The usual configuration for dismounted cavalry was every fourth man holding horses, however, due to the length of the semicircular perimeter, every eighth man held horses. [18] The bank of the dry channel served as a natural parapet.
The Indian forces laid siege to the cavalry troops, but with little effect. About an hour into the battle, a force of nearly 50 warriors attempted to flank the cavalry's perimeter by traveling down along the river. They were hidden by the high bank, however a scout accompanying them was spotted and drew fire. The group, thinking they had been discovered, retreated. [19]
The flanking tactic having failed, the Indians set fire to the grass hoping to use the smoke as a screen to approach the cavalry perimeter. However, Custer's troops likewise used the smoke as a screen to move closer to the Indian forces and the tactic did not favor either side. [20]
The siege continued for about three hours in reported 110 °F (43 °C) heat. [21]
The 7th Cavalry's senior veterinary surgeon, Dr. John Honsinger, rode with Stanley's column, along with the suttler,[ spelling? ] Augustus Baliran. Honsinger was a German native who, in 1869, was appointed as the first veterinary surgeon for the post-Civil War 7th cavalry. [22]
New York Tribune correspondent Samuel J. Barrows, with the Stanley column, had ridden with Dr. Honsinger earlier in the day and described him as "a fine-looking, portly man, about 55 years of age, dressed in a blue coat and buckskin pantaloons, mounted on his fine blooded horse.... No man of the regiment took more care of his horse than he. It was an extra-professional care—a love of the horse for his own sake" [23]
Around 2:00 p.m., oblivious to the battle raging 2 to 3 miles (3.2 to 4.8 km) from them, Honsinger and Baliran left the Stanley column to ride down to the river in order to water their horses and possibly hunt for agates. [24] A Ree scout with the Stanley column, who did not speak English, attempted to stop Honsinger by grabbing the reins of his horse, pointing to the West and saying "Indians, Indians". Honsinger, hearing sporadic shooting in that direction and believing it was Custer's men hunting game, corrected the scout by stating "Cavalry, Cavalry" and rode on. [25]
At approximately the same time, Privates John H. Ball and M. Brown, who were part of Lt. Yates' troops guarding the surveyors along the river, slipped away from their company and headed for the river to cool off and nap. Ball spotted Honsinger and Baliran and rode to join them. [26]
At the same time, Rain in the Face and five of his warriors headed to the westerly base of Yellowstone Hill, now called Honsinger Bluff, to serve as an early warning against any approaching cavalry forces. The Indians spotted Honsinger and Baliran approaching and hid amid the rocks and scrub brush at the base of Honsinger Bluff. So successful was the concealment of the Indians that they were able to grab the reins of Honsinger's horse as he rode by, pulling him from the horse and shooting him as he fell. [25] Baliran and Ball were also quickly dispatched by Rain in the Face and his men.
The prolonged siege by the Indian forces, lasting nearly three hours, was remarkably unusual, as clashes normally were much briefer and rarely involved sustained, in-place fighting. Custer's troops had nearly exhausted the 100 rounds per man ammunition cache and sent to the horse holders for their ammunition supplies. Toward the end of the battle, due to heat exhaustion of both the cavalry troops and Indian warriors, the shooting had become very sporadic. At this point, Custer ordered his men to mount up, and the bugler sounded the charge. [27]
Pvt. Brown, napping at the base of Honsinger's Bluff, awakened to witness the ambush of Honsinger and Baliran and the shooting of the fleeing Pvt. Ball. Brown mounted his horse without a saddle and rode wildly toward the Stanley column. Stanley heard shooting, probably the shots from Rain in the Face's scouting party, and at about the same time saw Pvt. Brown approaching at a gallop yelling "All down there are killed". [28] Fearing a repeat of the Fetterman Massacre, Stanley ordered the entire remaining 7th Cavalry forward, the advance unit being led by 2nd Lt. Charles Braden. Arriving at the brow of Honsinger Bluff, Braden's troop had to dismount and lead their horses down the steep slope. As they remounted, Rain in the Face's party passed within 100 yards of them, riding back toward the main Indian force. [29]
Custer's mounted troopers burst from their wood position in a charge that scattered the Indian forces, who fell back upriver with Custer's troops in pursuit. They pursued them for nearly four miles but were never able to close on them sufficiently to engage them.
Historians still debate whether Custer charged independently of the approaching forces under Braden, or whether he had spotted Braden's approach and coordinated his charge with the arrival of the reinforcements. [30]
While Custer's 7th Cavalry forces suffered 1 man wounded and two horses killed according to Custer's post-battle report or possibly 11 dead, [31] the 7th Cavalry lost its senior veterinarian surgeon, Dr. John Honsinger, its suttler[ spelling? ], Augustus Baliran, as well as Pvt. Ball. While Honsinger and Baliran were found the day of the battle, Ball's body was not located until September 1873. [32]
Although no bodies were recovered on the battlefield, Native American casualties were estimated to number 5 dead, with numerous other warriors and horses wounded. [33]
Rain in the Face retained Honsinger's gold watch and later bragged about killing Honsinger and Balitran. [34] Custer learned of Rain in the Face's claims and dispatched his brother, Tom, to the Standing Rock Reservation to arrest him for the murder of Honsinger and Balitran. He was apprehended and jailed on December 13, 1874. Rain in the Face escaped from custody a few months later and vowed to cut out the heart of Tom Custer and eat it. [35]
Lt. Braden was critically wounded a week later, on August 11, 1873, in another clash with Sitting Bull's forces upriver near the mouth of the Big Horn River. His thigh was shattered by an Indian bullet and he remained on permanent sick leave until his retirement from the Army in 1878. George Custer, Tom Custer and James Calhoun, along with Capt. George Yates, all perished at the Little Big Horn on June 25, 1876. Myles Moylan and Charles Varnum survived the battle on Reno Hill. Moylan, four years later, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for conspicuous bravery at the September 30, 1877, Battle of Bear Paw where Lt. Col. Nelson A. Miles forces captured the Nez Perce band of Chief Joseph at Snake Creek near Havre, Montana. [36] Sitting Bull, Gall, Crazy Horse and Rain in the Face all participated in the Little Big Horn battle. Rain in the Face in later years claimed to have cut the heart out of Tom Custer at Little Big Horn and taken a bite out of it. [37]
Veterinarian John Honsinger was buried along the Yellowstone River at the base of Honsinger Bluff. Some authorities claim that Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, happened along that evening, and oversaw the burial. De Smet was rumored to have baptized Sitting Bull earlier. [38] However, Fr. De Smet died in St. Louis on May 23, 1873, over two months prior to the battle.
U.S. Army troops occupied this area again on June 6 and 7, 1876, prior to the battle on the Little Big Horn. The Montana column, consisting of the 2nd Cavalry and 7th Infantry under the command of Col. John Gibbon, camped in "a beautiful cottonwood grove on splendid sod" a few miles west of Honsinger Bluff. [39] This was likely either the grove in which Sitting Bull's ambush force hid, or the one occupied by Custer's troops during the battle.
The legend of Rain in the Face cutting out Tom Custer's heart is immortalized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "Revenge of Rain in the Face".
The Battle of the Little Bighorn, known to the Lakota and other Plains Indians as the Battle of the Greasy Grass, and commonly referred to as Custer's Last Stand, was an armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes and the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army. The battle, which resulted in the defeat of U.S. forces, was the most significant action of the Great Sioux War of 1876. It took place on June 25–26, 1876, along the Little Bighorn River in the Crow Indian Reservation in southeastern Montana Territory.
George Armstrong Custer was a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars.
The 7th Cavalry Regiment is a United States Army cavalry regiment formed in 1866. Its official nickname is "Garryowen", after the Irish air "Garryowen" that was adopted as its march tune. The regiment participated in some of the largest battles of the Indian Wars, including its famous defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn, where its commander Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer was killed. The regiment also committed the Wounded Knee Massacre, where more than 250 men, women and children of the Lakota were killed.
The Tongue River is a tributary of the Yellowstone River, approximately 265 mi (426 km) long, in the U.S. states of Wyoming and Montana. The Tongue rises in Wyoming in the Big Horn Mountains, flows generally northeast through northern Wyoming and southeastern Montana, and empties into the Yellowstone River at Miles City, Montana. Most of the course of the river is through the beautiful and varied landscapes of eastern Montana, including the Tongue River Canyon, the Tongue River breaks, the pine hills of southern Montana, and the buttes and grasslands that were formerly the home of vast migratory herds of American bison.
Thomas Ward Custer was a United States Army officer and two-time recipient of the Medal of Honor for bravery during the American Civil War. A younger brother of George Armstrong Custer, he served as his aide at the Battle of Little Bighorn against the Lakota and Cheyenne in the Montana Territory. The two of them, along with their younger brother, Boston Custer, were killed in the overwhelming defeat of United States forces.
The Sioux Wars were a series of conflicts between the United States and various subgroups of the Sioux people which occurred in the later half of the 19th century. The earliest conflict came in 1854 when a fight broke out at Fort Laramie in Wyoming, when Sioux warriors killed 31 American soldiers in the Grattan Fight, and the final came in 1890 during the Ghost Dance War.
Frederick William Benteen was a military officer who first fought during the American Civil War. He was appointed to commanding ranks during the Indian Campaigns and Great Sioux War against the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne. Benteen is best known for being in command of a battalion of the 7th U. S. Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in late June, 1876.
Rain-in-the-Face was a warchief of the Lakota tribe of Native Americans. His mother was a Dakota related to the band of famous Chief Inkpaduta. He participated in 1876 in the Battle of Little Big Horn that defeated the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment under Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer.
The Hunkpapa are a Native American group, one of the seven council fires of the Lakota tribe. The name Húŋkpapȟa is a Lakota word, meaning "Head of the Circle". By tradition, the Húŋkpapȟa set up their lodges at the entryway to the circle of the Great Council when the Sioux met in convocation. They speak Lakȟóta, one of the three dialects of the Sioux language.
Henry Moore Harrington was a military officer in the 7th United States Cavalry Regiment who went Missing in action during the Battle of Little Big Horn in Montana Territory.
Fort Keogh is a former United States Army post located at the western edge of modern Miles City, in the U.S. state of Montana. It is situated on the south bank of the Yellowstone River, at the mouth of the Tongue River.
The Great Sioux War of 1876, also known as the Black Hills War, was a series of battles and negotiations that occurred in 1876 and 1877 in an alliance of Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne against the United States. The cause of the war was the desire of the US government to obtain ownership of the Black Hills. Gold had been discovered in the Black Hills, settlers began to encroach onto Native American lands, and the Sioux and the Cheyenne refused to cede ownership. Traditionally, American military and historians place the Lakota at the center of the story, especially because of their numbers, but some Native Americans believe the Cheyenne were the primary target of the American campaign.
Thomas Mower McDougall was an officer in the United States Army. The salient point in his military career occurred when he took part in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, surviving because he and his unit was not with George Armstrong Custer and the main body of the 7th Cavalry Regiment. Early on the day of battle, McDougall's Company B was assigned to escort the regiment's pack train, but the mules were not used to carrying packs and lagged far behind the other three detachments under Custer, Reno, and Benteen as they went into combat. After viewing the Indian village, and being surprised by its size, Custer sent two urgent orders to bring the mules with the ammunition packs to his detachment of five companies, but by the time these messengers reached Captain McDougall the distance between the pack train and Custer made this order difficult if not impossible to comply with, though a debate on this topic remains to this day.
Crow Scouts worked with the United States Army in several conflicts, the first in 1876 during the Great Sioux War. Because the Crow Nation was at that time at peace with the United States, the army was able to enlist Crow warriors to help them in their encroachment against the Native Americans with whom they were at war. In 1873, the Crow called for U.S. military actions against the Lakota people they reported were trespassing into the newly designated Crow reservation territories.
White Swan (c.1850—1904), or Mee-nah-tsee-us in the Crow language, was one of six Crow Scouts for George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry Regiment during the 1876 campaign against the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne. At the Battle of the Little Bighorn in the Crow Indian Reservation, White Swan went with Major Reno's detachment, and fought alongside the soldiers at the south end of the village. Of the six Crow scouts at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, White Swan stands out because he aggressively sought combat with multiple Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, and he was the only Crow Scout to be wounded in action, suffering severe wounds to his hand/wrist and leg/foot. After being disabled by his wounds, he was taken to Reno's hill entrenchments by Half Yellow Face, the pipe-bearer (leader) of the Crow scouts, which no doubt saved his life.
Half Yellow Face was the leader of the six Crow Scouts for George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry during the 1876 campaign against the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne. Half Yellow Face led the six Crow scouts as Custer advanced up the Rosebud valley and crossed the divide to the Little Bighorn valley, and then as Custer made the fateful decision to attack the large Sioux-Cheyenne camp which precipitated the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876. At this time, the other Crow Scouts witnessed a conversation between Custer and Half Yellow Face. Half Yellow Face made a statement to Custer that was poetically prophetic, at least for Custer: "You and I are going home today by a road we do not know".
The Yellowstone Expedition of 1873 was an expedition of the United States Army in the summer of 1873 in Dakota Territory and Montana Territory, to survey a route for the Northern Pacific Railroad along the Yellowstone River. The expedition was under the overall command of Colonel David S. Stanley, with Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer second in command.
The Battle of Pease Bottom, also called the Battle of the Bighorn River was a conflict between the United States Army and the Sioux on August 11, 1873, along the Yellowstone River opposite the mouth of the Bighorn River near present-day Custer, Montana. The main combatants were units of the 7th U.S. Cavalry under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, and Native Americans from the village of the Hunkpapa medicine man, Sitting Bull, many of whom would clash with Custer again approximately three years later at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in the Crow Indian Reservation.
John A. Haydon was a prominent American surveyor and civil engineer. As a self-taught civil engineer, Haydon made significant contributions to American railroading. Haydon's railroad career spanned the Baltimore and Ohio railroad expansion to the Ohio river in 1853 and several other railroads to the last transcontinental railroad, the Northern Pacific railway. Haydon led the 1872 Yellowstone River expedition, where he faced a Sioux Indian skirmish led by Sitting Bull, Red Cloud and Crazy Horse at the Battle of Pryor's Creek, Montana. He also served as a captain in the Confederate Army Corps of Engineers under Generals Tilghman and Beauregard; captured at the battle of Fort Henry, early in the Civil War in 1862, he was paroled at Aiken, South Carolina, in November 1862 to serve the rest of the war, including the Richmond–Petersburg Campaign. In the latter part of his life, he worked locating branch railroads such as the Pennsylvania railroad in Maryland and for the Western Maryland railroad.
Arikara scouts were enlisted men from the Arikara Nation serving in the U.S. Army at different frontier posts in present-day North Dakota from 1868 to 1881. The enlistment period was six months with re-enlistment possible. Each scout received a uniform, firearm and drew rations. Scout duties ranged from carrying mail between commands to tracking down traditional enemies perceived as hostile by the Army in far ranging military campaigns. Detailed to secure the horses in located enemy camps, the scouts were often the first to engage in battle. The Arikara took part when the Army protected survey crews in the Yellowstone area in the early 1870s. They participated in the Great Sioux War of 1876 and developed into Colonel George Armstrong Custer's "… most loyal and permanent scouts …".
Lubetkin, M. John, Jay Cooke's Gamble: The Northern Pacific Railroad, The Sioux, and the Panic of 1873, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma 2006 ISBN 0-8061-3740-1