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

Cautiously, Pourier and Grouard crept farther into the ravine and waited. Then waited some more, listening as muffled voices argued. More long, interminable minutes. At last a tall warrior inched forward stoically, one arm clutched at his middle, a bloody sash tied around his lower belly, and his other arm slung over the shoulders of a younger warrior.

Bat exclaimed, “You are wounded.”

The tall one pulled part of the damp sash from his belly, showing the half-breeds his terrible wound. He had been shot in the abdomen, and part of his intestine was already protruding from the gaping wound.

As the older one replaced the sash around his wound, the young warrior looked at the two scouts and asked, “You are the traders’ sons?”

“Yes,” Pourier replied. “What is your name?”

“I am Charging Bear.”

Unable to take his eyes off the older man for long, Big Bat turned back to the tall warrior, marveling at his immense courage. “Are the others coming?” he asked in Lakota.

“Only two,” Charging Bear responded.

Again Pourier looked into the older man’s eyes, the warrior’s face ashen with agony—with each flush of pain,grinding down on that small stick shoved between his teeth. “And you—your name—who are you?”

Slowly the handsome warrior dragged the stick from his mouth and drew himself up proudly. “I am American Horse. Chief of the Miniconjou.”

As Seamus watched, American Horse gave his rifle to the soldier chief with solemn dignity. Through the half-breed interpreters the Sioux leader told Crook he would surrender if the lives of the last two warriors in the ravine would be spared.

Amid angry shouts of “No quarter!” from the soldiers looking on, Crook gave his guarantee, and American Horse called to the holdouts. When the younger warrior attending the chief was turned over to Colonel Chambers’s guard detail, Surgeon Clements and his stewards took charge of the wounded American Horse.

Slowly the doctor pulled back the bloody sash from the sticky wound. More of the intestine escaped the hole. Gritting on the stick between his teeth, the chief immediately poked and shoved the best he could, pushing the bowel back into the ragged hole in his belly. But it was no use.

“I’m sorry, General,” Clements told Crook. “The wound is mortal.”

Crook turned to Grouard and said, “Tell the chief he will die before morning.”

American Horse made- no reply when told. His face registered nothing more than the pain already visited upon him. Clements led the chief away, hobbling slowly toward the small fire nearby, where the rest of the captives warmed their cold hands and feet. The chief settled among the women and children, his teeth still clamped on the stick. The surgeon left to return to his hospital tent, explaining that there was nothing else he could do for one so seriously wounded. It was but a matter of time.

Charging Bear stayed with Crook for a few minutes,talking to the soldier chief through the half-breed interpreters.

“Very soon Crazy Horse will come to free our village,” the warrior warned the general. He went on to express convincingly his belief that word of the attack had already reached the other villages in the surrounding countryside, and a great fighting force was then on its way, likely to arrive before nightfall.

Crook said, “You tell this man that’s just what I’ve hoped. I’ve prayed for nothing less than a good fight with Crazy Horse for a long, long time.” Then he had the infantry guards take Charging Bear away.

It did not take long before the last two warriors appeared from the tangle of brush farther up the ravine. One of them wore a corporal’s tunic, taken from Custer’s own L Company. He was eager to shake hands all around with the scouts and the officers—in fact, with any soldier who would shake hands as he grinned, relief washing over his face.

With the surrender of those last two warriors, Frank Grouard counted what the holdouts had left in ammunition. Six cartridges each. When the prisoners were escorted from the scene, Sergeant Von Moll of the Third Cavalry brought in a squad of his soldiers from Private Wenzel’s own A company to claim the body, the rifle still gripped in the dead man’s cold hands. Two empty cartridges lay near his right side, a live round still in his carbine, cocked and ready to fire.

As the angry troopers carried away their comrade, Donegan followed the half-breed scouts into the ravine. They found the walls of the coulee riddled, tracked, and scarred with the paths of thousands of bullets. Twisting, brushy yards from the entrance they discovered five bodies: three women, a warrior shot in the head, and an infant.