The Mintage | Page 5

and horsemen by nature. They traveled and moved about with great freedom. If restrained or interfered with they grew irritable and then hostile.
Now they were full of fight. The Whites had ruined the hunting-grounds; besides that, white soldiers had fought them if they moved to their old haunts, sacred for their use and bequeathed to them by their ancestors. In dead of Winter, when the snows lay deep and they were in their teepees, crouching around the scanty fire, soldiers had charged on horseback through the villages, shooting into the teepees, killing women and children.
At the head of these soldiers was a white chief, whom they called Yellow Hair. He was a smashing, dashing, fearless soldier who understood the Indian ways and haunts, and then used this knowledge for the undoing of the Red Men.
Yellow Hair wanted to keep them in one little place all the time, and desired that they should raise corn like cowardly Crows, when what they wanted was to be free and hunt!
They feared Yellow Hair--and hated him.
Custer was a man of intelligence--nervous, energetic, proud. His honesty and sincerity were beyond dispute. He was a natural Indian fighter. He could pull his belt one hole tighter and go three whole days without food. He could ride like the wind, or crawl in the grass, and knew how to strike, quickly and unexpectedly, as the first streak of dawn came into the East. Like Napoleon, he knew the value of time, and, in fact, he had somewhat of the dash and daring, not to mention the vanity, of the Corsican. His men believed in him and loved him, for he marched them to victory, and with odds of five to one had won again and again.
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But Custer had the defect of his qualities; and to use the Lincoln phrase, sometimes took counsel of his ambition.
He had fought in the Civil War in places where no prisoners were taken, and where there was no commissary. And this wild, free life had bred in him a habit of unrest--a chafing at discipline and all rules of modern warfare.
Results were the only things he cared for, and power was his Deity.
When the Indians grew restless in the Spring of Seventy-six, Custer was called to Washington for consultation. President Grant was not satisfied with our Indian policy--he thought that in some ways the Whites were the real savages. The Indians he considered as children, not as criminals.
Custer tried to tell him differently. Custer knew the bloodthirsty character of the Sioux, their treachery and cunning--he showed scars by way of proof!
The authorities at Washington needed Custer. However, his view of the case did not mean theirs. Custer believed in the mailed hand, and if given the power he declared he would settle the Indian Question in America once and forever. His confidence and assumption and what Senator Dawes called swagger were not to their liking. Anyway, Custer was attracting altogether too much attention--the people followed him on Pennsylvania Avenue whenever he appeared.
General Terry was chosen to head the expedition against the hostile Sioux, and Custer was to go as second in command.
Terry was older than Custer, but Custer had seen more service on the plains. Custer demurred--threatened to resign--and wrote a note to the President asking for a personal interview and requesting a review of the situation.
President Grant refused to see Custer, and reminded him that the first duty of a soldier was obedience.
Custer left Washington, glum and sullen--grieved. But he was a soldier, and so he reported at Fort Lincoln, as ordered, to serve under a man who knew less about Indian fighting than did he.
The force of a thousand men embarked on six boats at Bismarck. There a banquet was given in honor of Terry and Custer. "You will hear from us by courier before July Fourth," said Custer.
He was still moody and depressed, but declared his willingness to do his duty.
Terry did not like his attitude and told him so. Poor Custer was stung by the reprimand.
He was only a boy, thirty-seven years old, to be sure, but with the whimsical, daring, ambitious and jealous quality of the center-rush. Custer at times had his eye on the White House--why not! Had not Grant been a soldier?
Women worshiped Custer, and men who knew him, never doubted his earnestness and honesty. He lacked humor.
He was both sincere and serious.
The expedition moved on up the tortuous Missouri, tying up at night to avoid the treacherous sandbars that lay in wait.
They had reached the Yellowstone River, and were getting into the Indian Country.
To lighten the boats, Terry divided his force into two parts. Custer disembarked on the morning of the Twenty-fifth of June, with four hundred forty-three men, besides a dozen who looked after the pack-train.
Scouts reported that the hostile Sioux were camped