| OCR Text |
554 WESTERN WILDS. night fell upon all these brave officers and three hundred men, lying dead upon the field. The full history of the battle is not yet known. This I say, despite the fact that military reports have been made by the commanders, and published by authority. But they leave much unknown. In a quiet way there has been much crimination and recrimination; one party has accused Reno and Benteen of cowardice or disobe-dience; the other, including General Grant, has charged that Cus-ter exceeded his orders and sacrificed his command. Without adopt-ing the extreme view of either side, this would seem to a civilian about the correct state of the case: The regiment attacked a force of Indians outnumbering the soldiers two or three to one, and well armed, ready for fight, well posted, in broad day, when men and animals were fatigued, and so insured defeat; then Reno and Ben-teen, seeing that retreat was a certainty, thought best to keep out of the fight, perhaps supposing that Custer would, in like manner, retreat after a brief skirmish. I can not see that victory would have been possible in any event no matter if the whole force had at-tacked at once, as originally intended. This disaster, of course, spoiled the original plan. General Gibbon came up with reinforcements, and the Indians moved. Successive minor battles and skirmishes followed, by which, though no one great victory was gained, the hostiles were slowly worn out and scattered. Many of the braves made their way back to the agencies, others retreated to less accessible positions in the mountains, and Sitting Bull, with a remnant, retreated into British America, whence he has ' since, with much pow- wow and flourish, returned. The war in that section soon died out, but a few words additional may be appro-priate of the Indians in general. A glance at the map of Aborginal America will show that very few of the Indian nations have retained their original locations; but it must not be judged therefrom that numerous tribes have become extinct. The Indian population of this country at the landing of Columbus has been greatly exaggerated. It is demonstrable that all that part of the United States east of the Mississippi never contained half a million ^ Indians ; some authorities say a quarter of a million. It is apparent at a glance that a country like Ohio will sustain four hundred times as many people in the civ-ilized as in the savage state. When men live upon game and the spontaneous products of the earth, it must be a fertile land indeed which will sustain an average of one person to the square mile. When we pass to the Indian of the plains the original population was |
