Legends of the Old West - LITTLE BIGHORN Ep. 2 | “Battle of the Rosebud”

Episode Date: September 15, 2021

Three army columns are in the field and the campaign is underway. The Montana column is the first to discover the enormous Native American village, but it’s slow to react. Sitting Bull participates in the Sun Dance ritual and receives his second vision about a battle with U.S. troops. While he recovers, hundreds of warriors engage the Wyoming Column in the first action of the campaign, the Battle of the Rosebud. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This show is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please visit AirwaveMedia.com to check out other great podcasts like Ben Franklin’s World, Once Upon A Crime, and many more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. The legend of Sitting Bull really began when he was 25 years old. He and a group of Lakota warriors went on a horse-stealing raid against their hated enemies, the crows. Oftentimes, the raids turned into battles, and this one looked like it might be headed in that direction, but then the two sides settled into a tense standoff. Sitting Bull stepped forward from the line of Lakota warriors. He had a musket in one hand and a buffalo hide shield in the other. He shouted across the gap

to the Crows and challenged their chief to one-on-one combat. The chief stepped forward and accepted the challenge. Both men charged at each other. As Sitting Bull ran, he sang a warrior song about bravery in battle. The crow dropped to one knee. He flipped his musket up to his shoulder and fired at Sitting Bull. The ball slammed into Sitting Bull's shield and ricocheted down toward his left foot. It tore into his foot behind his big toe and exited below his heel. But now it was Sitting Bull's turn to shoot. He dropped to a knee, raised his musket, and fired.

Through the cloud of black powder smoke, everyone watched the crow chief topple to the ground. Sitting Bull limped over to the fallen man, took out his knife, and stabbed the chief in the heart. After that powerful display, the crows turned and ran, and Sitting Bull was now a warrior of unquestioned courage. That was 20 years before the events of 1876, and during the interval, Sitting Bull led his people in clashes against other Native tribes, white travelers, and white army soldiers. While Red Cloud conducted his war in Wyoming, Sitting Bull fought a four-year campaign in Minnesota and Dakota. Wyoming, Sitting Bull fought a four-year campaign in Minnesota and Dakota. Sitting Bull refused to sign the Fort Laramie Treaty that ended Red Cloud's war, and when Red Cloud retired to a reservation,

the Sioux held an unprecedented meeting. Thousands of Lakota gathered to elect a head chief, a supreme leader who would guide the people. That went against hundreds of years of tradition where individual freedom was valued above almost everything else. Up until that time, any respected warrior could lead a war party. In larger battles, warriors often valued their personal accomplishments above the needs of the group, which led to problems. But now, in the late 1860s, Sitting Bull was named Supreme Chief of the Lakota.

When he said it was time to go to war, they went to war. When he said it was time for peace, they made peace. That was the theory anyway. But warriors couldn't just brush aside centuries of tradition, as Sitting Bull learned in mid-June 1876. He was still weak from a punishing sun dance ritual when warriors in his camp decided they couldn't wait any longer. There were white soldiers in the area, and the warriors were going to attack whether Sitting Bull liked it or not. whether Sitting Bull liked it or not.

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at shopify.com slash realm, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash r-e-a-l-m now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com slash realm. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. And this is a six-part series about one of the defining events of American history. The Battle of the Little Bighorn.

This is Episode 2, The Battle of the Rose Bowl. General John Gibbons' Montana Column was the first to begin the Great Campaign in the spring of 1876. In the first half of May, while Custer was traveling from Washington to Dakota Territory and pleading with the president for reinstatement, Gibbon led 480 soldiers and scouts out of Fort Ellis near Bozeman, Montana. They traveled east along the Yellowstone River, following the old Bozeman Trail that was so hotly contested ten years earlier during Red Cloud's war. After a couple days of marching, the column reached a proverbial fork in the road. The Bozeman Trail turned south toward Wyoming, and the Yellowstone River turned north toward Dakota Territory.

The column stayed with the Yellowstone and rode north. General Crook's Wyoming column would be coming up the Bozeman Trail from the south, so it didn't make much sense for the two forces to meet on the same road. If the Native American camps were somewhere in southern Montana, they would be trapped between Gibbon's column in the north and Crook's column in the south. And then, in theory, Custer would swoop in from the east, and they would all join together in a glorious victory. But of course, that didn't happen.

Here's what did happen. On May 16th, the day before Custer's column departed departed, a young lieutenant from the Montana Column made an important discovery. As the Montana Column marched along the Yellowstone, General Gibbons sent scouts down some smaller rivers to try to find Native American villages. If the villages were down there, then the plan could work. The villages would be stuck between Gibbons' Montana Column and Crook's Wyoming Column. The names of those rivers will quickly become familiar. The Bighorn, with its tributary the Little Bighorn, the Rosebud, the Tongue, and the Powder River. While Custer finished preparations in Dakota Territory, Gibbon waited along the Yellowstone River for a report from his scouts.

On May 16th, his scouts lay on a bluff staring at an encampment in the distance. It was an enormous Native American village. The scouts didn't know it yet, but that was the village of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and an army of warriors that was swelling to nearly a thousand. Lieutenant James Bradley and his scouts were the first men to see the village, and they would be the only ones to see it for another five weeks. The scouts quietly retreated from the bluff and jumped on their horses. They galloped back to the Montana Columns camp on the Yellowstone. They told General Gibbon about the village. Gibbon was excited. It was only a day's march from their position. But there was a problem, and it was one of those problems that seems unbelievable from today's perspective.

But it was a serious issue in 1876. The Montana Column was stationed on the north bank of the Yellowstone River. To get to the village, the column had to cross to the south bank. In mid-May, the water was high and moving fast because it was being fed by melting snow in the mountains. The column had small boats, but after an hour of trying to cross the river, only a few men and ten horses made it successfully. And four more horses drowned in the attempt, and Gibbon stopped the crossing. And as the Montana Column experienced its first major setback, it realized it had an even bigger problem than the Yellowstone River. A group of Lakota warriors watched the soldiers flounder in their attempt to cross. The warriors sat on their horses high on the bluffs on the south side of the river. The element of surprise, if it had been there at all, was gone. Over the next few days,

the warriors occasionally swam across the river and stole army horses, and they killed and scalped three soldiers. Then, 11 days after the scouts first saw the village, they returned to the same lookout spot. They saw the village again, but this time it was closer and bigger. The scouts estimated there were 500 lodges in the camp. That could mean there were more than a thousand warriors, more than double the number of soldiers in the Montana column. The scouts raced back to General Gibbon with another report. After hearing the numbers and factoring in the fast-flowing river and the harassment from the small Lakota raiding party, Gibbon chose not to attempt an attack. Instead, he sent a report to General

Terry with the Dakota Column, which was almost 200 miles away. The report was odd. The whole reason for the expedition was to find the native village or villages and attack as soon as possible. Gibbon had done the first part, he'd found the village. But making the discovery was not the focal point of his report. He added it at the bottom almost as an afterthought, which probably reduced its importance. Gibbon wrote, P.S. A camp some distance up the Rosebud was reported this morning by our scouts. If this proves true, I may not start down the Yellowstone so soon. It took a week for General Gibbons' couriers

to ride to General Terry's location with a report about the village on the Rosebud River. By that time, June 3rd, it had been a full three weeks since Gibbons' Montana column had first spotted the village. When the riders reached Custer and Terry, the Dakota column had just restarted its march. The 1,200 men and 1,600 horses had fought their way through terrible weather for the first 10 days of the trip.

When the worst of it passed, they reached the Little Missouri River, right on the border of Dakota Territory and Montana Territory. General Terry hoped a village would be on the Little Missouri. If so, it would be a short campaign. But Terry's hopes were dashed. After two weeks on the trail, they'd seen no sign of the Sioux, so they continued marching west. Right after they crossed into Montana Territory, they got hit by a freak blizzard that forced them to stop for three days.

When they resumed their march on June 3rd, they met General Gibbons' couriers, who informed them that the village they were searching for was actually 200 miles away, and it kept moving and growing, moving and growing. By early June, there were three American armies in the field, but none of them saw the hundreds or thousands of people who streamed into Sitting Bull's village from reservations. the hundreds or thousands of people who streamed into Sitting Bull's village from reservations. The new additions came for a variety of reasons. For some, it was simple hatred of white people. For others, it was to avoid starving on reservations where the promised supplies never arrived or were rotten, rancid, or unusable. For still others, it was patriotism. or unusable. For still others, it was patriotism. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse had sworn to defend their people and protect their land to the death, and that was a powerful motivator.

And now, with the U.S. Army converging on the river valleys of southern Montana from three directions, Sitting Bull was starting to see the signs. He knew there were soldiers to the west, General Gibbon's Montana column. He'd heard reports about soldiers to the south, General Crook's Wyoming column, and he'd had a dream about soldiers attacking from the east. Clearly, the forces were aligning for a major event. So, toward the end of the first week of June, Sitting Bull participated in the most sacred ritual of his people, the Sundance. The Lakota selected a site along the Rosebud River. Sitting Bull stripped off his shirt and sat at the base of a tall tree that had been chosen for the ritual. The tree had been cut down, moved to this spot, shorn of its branches, and driven deep into a hole.

Sitting Bull vowed to give Wakantanka, the Great Spirit, an offering that was called a Scarlet Blanket. It was 50 small pieces of flesh from each arm. His adopted brother punctured his left arm 50 times and removed pieces of skin, and then repeated the process to the right arm. It took half an hour, and when it was finished, blood streamed down Sitting Bull's arms. He rose to his feet, put a wreath of sage around his head, and began to sing and dance. During the day, the sun beat down on him. During the night, the temperature plummeted.

He didn't drink, he didn't eat, he didn't sleep, and he didn't stop singing or dancing. For 24 hours, he sang and danced around the pole and pushed his mind and body to the limit. Then, around the 24-hour mark, he started to stagger. Several Lakota rushed to him and helped him down to the ground before he collapsed. In Sitting Bull's semi-delirious state, he started to whisper. He said that he had looked up at the blinding sun and he'd had a vision. He saw a large number of soldiers and horses, and some of his own people, falling upside down into a village. The soldiers, he said, did not have ears. That was the Lakota way of saying the white invaders had been warned, but they did not listen. The falling soldiers meant the Lakota and their allies would

have a great victory over the white army, which Sitting Bull said would come from the east. The village rejoiced at the vision, and the soldiers did come from the east, eventually. But first, they came from the south. Two weeks after Sitting Bull's Sundance, warriors and soldiers fought the fiercest battle ever seen on the northern plains. But it was just the undercard before the main event. In the days that followed the Sundance ceremonies, Sitting Bull's village moved four times. It settled on a little creek that ran between the Rosebud River and a river that they called the Greasy Grass, but the whites called the Little Bighorn. Reports came in about soldiers to the south.

Warriors who were out hunting saw smoke from the fires of the army column. Lakota and Cheyenne who had left the reservations passed the soldiers on the way to the village. Then on June 16th, Cheyenne hunters rushed into the camp and reported a verified sighting. A huge army column was less than 50 miles away. All the chiefs of all the bands convened a council. The chiefs advised a wait-and-see approach, but the young warriors, as always, wanted to attack, and the young warriors, as always, wanted to attack. And the young warriors won

the debate. That evening, at least 700 warriors prepared themselves for battle. Each man dressed in his own personal uniform. They packed weapons and extra ammunition. Then they jumped on their ponies and rode toward the soldiers. And Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse rode with them. Sitting Bull was still recovering from the punishing ordeal of the Sundance, but if his people were going to battle, he would go with them. He was too weak to fight, but he could motivate. During the day, while the chiefs and warriors debated how to handle the soldiers in the south,

the soldiers kept marching north. That night, while hundreds of warriors rode toward them, the Wyoming column camped just a few miles away from the Rosebud River. The next morning, June 17th, General Crook resumed the march. After about an hour, they spotted the Rosebud, which was only a thin stream in the grass at that point. Crook paused the march to take a break. The stream flowed into a canyon, and Crook thought the Sioux camp was at the other end of the canyon, maybe about eight miles away. The soldiers unsaddled their horses and started to relax. Some put up little tents to block the sun.

Crook and some of his officers played a game to pass the time. Some of the native scouts held pony races, as if they were out on the high plains with no one around for miles. And less than an hour later, they heard gunshots. The scouts who were out in front of the column galloped back into camp and yelled that the Lakota were coming. In fact, the Lakota were almost right behind them. The scouts led the warriors straight into Cook's position. 700 Sioux and Cheyenne, dressed in their finest battle attire, screamed toward the camp. There was no coordinated plan. They simply swarmed the area.

The 1,300 soldiers saddled their horses as fast as possible and braced for the onslaught. The Battle of the Rosebud flowed in waves over meadows, hills, and ravines. The warriors charged and retreated, then regrouped and swept in from a different direction. The Wyoming column fought the same way. Soldiers and scouts attacked, retreated, pivoted to a new position, then attacked again. The battle raged back and forth for six hours, which was nearly unheard of in that part of the country. Typically, a Native American attack was focused on one massive assault, Typically, a Native American attack was focused on one massive assault, and if that didn't get the job done right away,

then the warriors retreated and lived to fight another day. But this was different. The Lakota warriors under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and the Cheyenne warriors like the fabled Dog Soldiers stayed in constant contact with their enemy. The battle was a seemingly endless series of small engagements spread over a wide area, many of which were conducted at the speed of galloping horses, so it must have felt like a medieval joust in the middle of a maelstrom of chaos. The native ponies were smaller and faster than the army horses, and they swerved through the

soldiers with incredible agility. General Crook set up a command post on a nearby hill and tried to bring some organization to the battle. He rightly assumed that the village was close. That was why the warriors were fighting so fiercely without retreating. Crook ordered half his cavalry to disengage and rush up the rosebud to find the village. But that made them an easy target. Warriors shifted their focus to the cavalry and moved in. Only Crook's Shoshone scouts kept it from being a route. The cavalry disentangled itself from the mass of warriors and returned to the main body of troops. After the warriors successfully stopped the soldiers moving toward the village, they decided the day's work was done.

They had ridden all night to strike the army, and they had prevailed. They were tired and hungry, and their horses needed rest. They rode back toward the village, already composing songs of their great victory in their heads. At the army camp, Crook wanted to pursue the warriors, but his scouts said no. If the village was back in the canyon, as Crook suspected, then the entrance to the canyon would be the perfect place for an ambush. The Crow Scouts said they weren't going to ride into a trap. Reluctantly, Crook agreed to stay where they were for the night. As the soldiers made camp, they buried their dead. Crook officially reported 10 killed and 20

wounded. He estimated about 100 casualties on the Native American side, but he also estimated that his men fired 25,000 rounds to inflict those 100 casualties. If it was going to take 250 bullets to kill or injure one warrior, then his troops couldn't continue the march. His wagon train with the bulk of his food and ammunition was at yesterday's base camp, 35 miles away, so we had to go back. The next day, Crook's column returned to its base camp on Goose Creek in northern Wyoming. A few days later, Crook lost most of his 200 Crow and Shoshone scouts. They were disgusted by the Army's performance at the Battle of the Rosebud, and they went home. The soldiers camped at Goose Creek for six weeks, during which time they missed the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Crook claimed he needed more supplies and reinforcements before he could proceed. When they didn't arrive, he led his Wyoming column back to its home base at Fort Fetterman. The Battle of the Rosebud happened June 17, 1876. On that day, General Crook had a really good idea of the location of the village that was the target of the three American armies in the field, but he said nothing to the other commanders for three weeks. His report about the battle finally reached General Terry on July 9th, 13 days after the Battle of the Little Bighorn. But rest assured, news of the Battle of the Rosebuds spread rapidly through Native American society. If people had been streaming into Sitting Bull's camp before the battle, they flooded in now. The village mourned

its dead and celebrated its victory for four days. Sitting Bull's medicine with his people was stronger than ever. Their numbers grew every day and their confidence was sky high. The villagers knew there were more soldiers out there somewhere, but if the soldiers were crazy enough to pick another fight, the warriors would be ready. Up on the Yellowstone River, three days after the Battle of the Rosebud, the Dakota Column was finally back together in one place, and General Terry and Lieutenant Colonel Custer were mad at Major Marcus Reno. Of course, none of them had any idea a battle

had happened less than a hundred miles away, so their focus was still on their own movements and Major Reno. Custer was usually mad at Reno anyway. They basically hated each other. Custer was usually mad at Reno anyway. They basically hated each other. But this time, Custer thought he had the chance to essentially accuse Reno of cowardice, or if not cowardice, then dereliction of duty. Terry was mad at Reno because Reno disobeyed orders. But, ironically, by doing so, Reno gained at least some of the knowledge he'd been sent to find. The whole

month of June up to that point had been a hell of an adventure. It had started with a blizzard right after they crossed into Montana Territory. Then came news that Gibbon had spotted a village on the Rosebud River. But the report was so short and so vague that Terry ordered a scout of the two rivers that came before the Rosebud, just in case. Terry split the Dakota Column into the left wing and the right wing. The right wing would scout down the Powder River and the Tongue River and then meet at the junction of the Yellowstone and the Tongue. Meanwhile, the left wing would ride leisurely down the Yellowstone and camp at the junction and wait for the scouting party. Naturally, Custer assumed he would be given command of the right wing.

He was the highest-ranking officer beneath Terry, he was the most experienced field commander, and he was America's number one Indian fighter. So he was mad when Terry gave the assignment to Major Reno, who was subordinate to Custer. Reno had been begging for a chance to prove himself, and Terry was already irked by Custer's unstoppable need to freelance when he went out on a scout. There was no telling where Custer would go or what he'd do. Reno led his detachment down the Powder River for two days. They saw no sign of a camp, so they headed west for the next three days. They crossed a series of smaller waterways until they reached their stopping point at the Tongue River. But instead of turning north to go back to the Yellowstone,

they rode west for one more day until they reached the Rosebud. They camped on the banks of the Rosebud on the night of June 16th, the same night that Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and 700 warriors rode toward General Crook's Column. When Reno and his men awoke the next morning, they saw a huge tract of torn up ground across the river. It was a clear sign that a massive village had recently moved through the area. When the Battle of the Rosebud started that morning, Reno and his troops were 50 miles north of the fighting, and they had no idea it was happening. They were examining the trail of the village. It went west toward the Valley of the Little Bighorn. Reno felt good. He'd completed his mission. He'd finally found hard evidence of the village,

even though he'd gone farther than he was supposed to. He led his men up the rosebud to the Yellowstone and found General Gibbon's Montana Column camped on the other side of the river. Reno sent a message to Terry about his new position. Custer brought the left wing of the Dakota Column to Reno's camp, and Terry cruised down the Yellowstone on the paddle steamer, the Far West. The Far West was one of two paddle steamers that supported the campaign by shuttling men and supplies from place to place. And it was now General Terry's floating headquarters, for which he was eternally grateful because it kept him out of the saddle and away from the hot sun. And now that they were all back together,

Terry yelled at Reno for disobeying orders and scouting farther than he was supposed to. And Custer yelled at Reno for not attacking the village when he'd had the chance. Reno just couldn't win. He'd found the information he'd been sent to find, but he'd had to disobey orders to do it. And if he'd attacked the village like Custer would have, which would have been crazy because he would have been wildly outnumbered, he would have been disobeying orders.

After heated words were exchanged, Terry kicked everybody out of his headquarters on the far west. He needed to sit down with his maps and figure out a new plan. The following afternoon, June 21st, he called his officers back for a briefing. On paper, the strategy was simple. Custer would get everything he wanted. He would lead the 7th Cavalry by himself. He would take the Dakota Column, made up of the 7th Cavalry, and ride down the Rosebud River. His larger, faster strike force would drive the Indians toward General Gibbons'

smaller, slower blocking force of the Montana Column. The hostiles would be caught between the two armies and destroyed. Everyone should pack enough provisions and ammunition for a 15-day campaign, but the goal was for the two columns to meet in five days, on June 26th, in the Valley of the Little Bighorn. Next time on Legends of the Old West, roughly a thousand soldiers ride toward a village that is bigger than most towns in the West. Left to his own devices, Custer improvs a plan of attack that never had a chance.

The first charge of the Battle of the Little Bighorn is next week on Legends of the Old West. And members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week. They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships begin at just $5 per month. Original music by Rob Valliere. I'm your writer, host, and producer, Chris Wimmer. If you enjoyed the show, please

leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Check out our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, for more details, and join us on social media. We're at Old West Podcast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This show is part of the Airwave Podcast Network. Please visit airwavemedia.com to check out other great podcasts like Ben Franklin's World, Once Upon a Crime, and many more. Thanks for listening.

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