"Too Long Neglected"

The Seventh United States Cavalry "Too Long Neglected" 7th Cavalry Regimental Coat of Arms Compiled and written by EUGENE McAULIFFE •ii, M D 58501 , i / > , l v - jpnTii;y>, :';?.i, . ,1f. i',\[,T1r1 iPiWim i 33105 00071 5209 Th. Seventh United States Cavalry "Too Long Heglected" 7th Cavalry Regimental Coat of Arms North Dakota State Library Bismarek. NO 58501 Compiled and written by EUGENE McAULIFFE DESIGNED BY DR. AVARD FAIRBANKS, SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH Sculptor's tentative scale model of Bronze Equestrian Statue of Major General George Armstrong Custer. Height of statue to be 13', height of granite base 10'. The names of 263 officers, troopers, scouts and civilians who died in General Custer's command will be set forth on separate bronze tablets with Regimental insignia, etc. I The Seventh United States Cavalry Too Long Neglected By EUGENE McAULIFFE Trie erection of an adequate memorial to commemorate the death of two hundred sixty-three gallant officers, troopers, scouts and civilians, including the Commander of the Seventh Regiment, United Slates Cavalry, Lieutenant Colonel (Brevet Major General) George Armstrong Custer, in The Battle of The Little Big Horn. Montana, on 25-26 June 1876, has been loo ions; neglected. More than eighty years have passed since thai memorable Sunday, the 25th of June L876, when five companies of the Seventh Cavalry, totaling some two hundred men, died under a merciless, screaming, avalanche of Indian warriors, outnumbering General Custer's handful of gallant men by a force variously estimated as numbering from fifteen hundred to as high as five thousand, many of whom carried repeating rifles. II evidence' of the vastly superior number of Indians engaged is required, there remains two compelling facts: A. The five companies commanded by General Custer were all destroyed within the space of between one and at the most two hours. B. No evidence was found by General Terry, Chief in Command of the Expedition, or by Colonel (Brevet Major General) John Gibbon, who arrived at the Battlefield on Tuesday morning, 27 June, that an extraordinary number of Indians had been killed in the two days battle, the total Indian deaths not exceeding forty. We repeal that the sacrifices made in The Battle of The Little Big Horn have not. in the lour score years that have passed, been properly honored. In 1876 there was no National Park Service, the War Departmenl having general control over a wild, unmapped region, approximately twice as large as New York stall.', railroads, military roads, telegraph and telephone lines and accurate maps non existent. This is where "Custer's Last Battle" was fought. Except in and about a few mining camps, the immigrant trails, crude at the best, over which the oxen-drawn covered wagons creaked their long, tedious, toilsome way were the only arteries of commerce. These trails were guarded by a thin sprinkling ol soldiers, cavalry men and infantrymen, who were paid $13.00 a month, without any of the perquisites soldiers now enjoy, tuch as modern rations, clothing and medical attention. A college education ai Government expense when their service was concluded was not as yet in evidence. Two hundred and sixty-three men died in the Battle of The Little Big Horn and, while the commissioned officers' bodies, that could lie found, (three were never identified) were buried deepl) enough in avert the ravages ol wolves and coyotes, the bodies of the non-commissioned men were hastily covered with a thin blanket ol dry. soluble dust, mixed with grass ami sagebrush leaves, the first heavy rain ol consequence leaving exposed to ghoulish birds antl beasts, the naked remains of once gallant men. Il must not be forgotten that, with a very, very few exceptions, the bodies of the men who died under the direct command of General Custer, were totally divested of all their clothing, watches, money and other personal effects by the Indian squaws immedi ately after their deaths, making identification very difficult. Again, the weight of evidence shows thai, with very few exceptions, such as General Custer, Captain Myles W. Keogh and the newspaper correspondent, Mark H. Kellogg;, the bodies of the dead were brutally mutilated. This, again, was the work of the horde of squaws and Indian boys, who came in to clean up alter the last soldie r was fatally wounded or killed. The immediate care of the wounded men, lying in the shadow of an innumerable army of savages flushed with victory, as well as the lack of picks, spades and shovels no doubt justified the hasty initial burial of the dead, however, both the succeeding reinterments, in 1877 and again 1879, were tragically casual, representing a mere scattering of another thin layer of dry, powdery earth mixed with sagebrush and other like vegetation, insufficient to meet the erosive action of heavy spring and fall rains. In a report made by Captain G. K. Sanderson, of the Eleventh If. S. Infantry, dated Fort Custer, Montana, April 7, 1879, he said in part: "I went to Custer Battlefield to carry out orders in regard to graves at that point. 1 found it impossible to obtain rock within a distance of five miles. I accordingly built a mound on! of cordwood, filled in the center will) all tint horse bones f could find, in the center of the mound, I dug a grave and interred all the human bones that could be found, including parts of four or five officers' bodies. This grave was then built up with the wood for four feet above the ground, well-covered, and the mound, built over and around it. The mound ten feet square and about eleven feet high is built on the highest point immedi ately in the rear of where General Custer's body was found." This was the first attempt in nearly three years to cover the whitened, dismembered bones of the Men of the "Seventh" — a shameful! record. Il was not until the spring and summer of 1881, live years after the Battle, that a reasonably decent job of interring the surface scattered remains of the non-commis sioned officers and men was given effect. While stationed at Fort Custer, Montana, in February 1881 Lieutenant Charles Francis Roe was assigned the task of decently reinterring and monumenting the remains of some two hundred troopers, scouts and civilians in a deep trench. This was located ten feet from and surrounding the present marker, or "monument," as il is called, constructed from three large pieces of stone, weighing 14,000, 12,000 and 10,000 pounds (totaling eighteen tons), quarried from the banks of The Big Horn River in Montana. This marker is surrounded by an iron fence without gale. The two hundred and sixty-one names carved on the weathered blackened stones, presumably intended to cover all who died in the two day battle, are not readily readable from outside of the iron fence by those who visit the Battlefield. Again, the list of names carved on the marker include the men, 11) whose remains were removed in 1877 from temporary graves (2) men who, like Lieutenant John J. Crittenden, 20th U. S. Infantry, are now resting in the nearby National Cemetery and (3) the men whose bodies were never found. The writer has no hesitation in saying that all America is forgetful of the great service done in the work of opening up the West after the close of the Civil War by the United States Army. At the present moment all eyes are centered on "nuclear" weapons and their inseperable adjunct, the jet-driven airplane. This is just another transition. Just as the Cavalryman has been separated from his horse by the gasoline-powered engine the atomic and hydrogen bomb will give way to sheet lighting, or some more devasling form of destruction, bill the need for courage, vision and physical stamina will yet remain. What the world wants Is Peace, From history of the "Wagon Box" fight, where thirty-two soldiers entrenched behind some wagon boxes, fought oil three thousand Indians until relief came, on August 2. 1867, the author, F. A. Brininstool, said of the western soldiers: "As one sits at ease in a palatial Pullman car, or is whisked across country by auto, through what, seventy-five years ago, was known as 'the Plains country,' he little realizes the tremendous sacrifice of life, the unparalleled suffering, the terrible privation, exposure and hardships endured by 'the men who made the West'." The author refers more especially to the men of the old Regular Army, who, for a mere pittance, marched, fought and bivouacked over the Great American Plains and Desert, established forts in the face of almost certain death; fought the hordes of savage warriors in their own country; protected the slow-crawling prairie schooners and emigrant trains and kept the line of travel open for the Overland stages. It was the "Regular Army Man" who bore the brunt of the advance of civilization. All honor to those men! Let the memory ol their brave deeds and gallant sacrifices be never forgotten, but kept constantly before the minds of the rising generation of school children, who know — alas, too little of the history of the winning of the West. The year 1866 was known as the "bloody year on the Plains." The savages were almost constantly on the warpath; stage travel was, for a time, completely at a standstill. The Indians were seeking to prevent the encroachment of the whites into their favorite hunting grounds, or the establishment of ranches in the fertile valleys of the many beautiful streams in the present slates of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.

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