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

But while that guidon went to Mills’s care, the story is yet incomplete. Not long after the arduous campaigns of the great Sioux War, Anson Mills loaned the relic, among other “trophies,” to the Museum of the Military Service Institution on Governor’s Island, New York. Years later upon its return he was dismayed at how the museum curators had allowed moths to have their way with the flag. He promptly had it encased in glass, and after the old soldier’s death, the Mills family donated it to the Custer Battlefield National Monument (now renamed the Little Bighorn Battlefield). There visitors can see that very same guidon that flew over the heads of Myles W. Keogh’s I Company as they stood their ground along Massacre Ridge, then fell into the dust when the standard-bearer died on that hillside, and finally traveled with the victorious Sioux to Dakota Territory—there to be recaptured by the U.S. Cavalry.

There is still something of a controversy regarding these relics. Are they, in fact, a “smoking gun” proving that this band of Miniconjou were indeed at the Little Bighorn battle? Years afterward Indians on the Standing Rock Reservation claimed that Iron Plume (as American Horse was better known among his people) had not been at the Greasy Grass fight at all. They testified that the Seventh Cavalry relics were instead brought into American Horse’s camp by visiting Oglalla in those eleven weeks after the soldiers were wiped out.

Nonetheless, Jerome Greene has stated there is sufficient evidence to believe that some of the warriors who were in that camp on the morning of 9 September had also been camped beside the Little Bighorn on the afternoon of 25 June. Perhaps most compelling are the words of Miniconjou Red Horse given to Judge Eli Ricker in his statement testifying that he was at both fights.

It seems conceivable to me that both sides in this controversy are correct. It is not hard at all to believe that in American Horse’s village that September morning there were both those who had fought the Seventh Cavalry on that hot summer day eleven weeks before, and those who had joined up with Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse only in the days immediately following their great victory. The Indian populations of various warrior bands and clan groupings underwent growth and shrinkage throughout that spring, summer, and into the fall, with much coming and going as the seven great circles finally merged in the days before crushing Custer, then almost immediately began to slowly disperse and mosey off to the four winds as Crook and Terry sat on their thumbs—not knowing what to do.

Despite their hunger for a victory of some kind over the Sioux who had defeated the Seventh Cavalry, there was considerable disagreement, and outright argument, over Captain Mills’s attacking a village of unknown strength without first alerting Crook. The general himself criticized Mills for not having sent a courier back during the long night of the eighth, upon Grouard’s discovering the enemy camp. This, Crook attested, would have given him time to bring up the whole column, surrounding the camp and preventing the escape of all those “two hundred” Sioux into the nearby hills and bluffs.

Another source of heated discussion among Crook’s officers was the fact that Mills had opened up the battle with a dangerously limited supply of ammunition. All this criticism quickly made its way into the press of the day. Robert Strahorn wrote in his dispatches to the Rocky Mountain News:

Crook was very much disappointed because Mills didn’t report his discovery last night, and there was plenty of time to have got the entire command there and so effectually surrounded the village that nothing would have escaped; but the General is also pleased, all things considered.

Reuben Davenport of the New York Herald, never a fan of Crook, nonetheless took this opportunity to rebuke Mills:

All the circumstances lead to the inevitable conclusion that had Col. [Mills] reported the discovery to headquarters, instead of attempting to steal a march on the camp himself, the whole column could easily have reached and effectually surrounded the entire village before daylight … instead of this village of over 250 to 300 hostile savages getting off with whole skins, they could easily have been swooped down upon and annihilated.

How unfortunate that none of those contemporaries of Captain Anson Mills appear to have asked one simple question: what was the best information Mills operated with at the time of his discovery of the village? When he departed from the main column, pushing on with Lieutenant Bubb to secure provisions from the Black Hills settlements, Crook informed Mills and his lieutenants that he would be remaining in bivouac that next day and not moving south on Mills’s trail until the morning of the ninth.

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