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While holding the surrounding warriors at bay, the 7th Cavalry
burned everything of value in the village, and completed their
destruction by approximately 2 in the afternoon. They rounded up
around 875 ponies, and the slaughtering of most of them took until
around 4 in the afternoon. With the village and herd destroyed and
many of the women and children captive, Custer considered himself
victorious and formulated a plan to secure their withdrawal. He had his
men conduct a feint against the other villages as darkness approached
and kept an eye out for any sign of Elliott’s detachment. The feint sent
the warriors on the defensive back towards their villages, and the 7th
Cavalry withdrew in the night.
Custer wrote that as they withdrew from the Washita, they were
“still surrounded by a superior but badly defeated force of Indians.”
He initially claimed he and his men killed 103 warriors and then later
revised the number upward even further. Other sources, including the
surviving Cheyenne, indicated there were less than 20 warriors killed.
General Sheridan reported: “Thirteen Cheyennes, two Sioux, and one
Arapaho chief were killed, making 16 in all.” Colonel Benjamin H.
Grierson of the 10th Cavalry made an even gloomier comment in a
letter on April 6, 1869: “You must not believe all you have heard or
read in the papers about this Indian war. Instead of a grand success, it
has been like most other Indian war – a grand ‘fizzle’ – and has cost
the Government over $200,000 for every Indian killed. More soldiers
have been killed than Indians, leaving out the women and children of
the latter. Custer’s fight was a big thing on paper. The 102 warriors he
reported killed has dwindled down, according to Indian count, to just
eighteen, and he reported more material captured and destroyed than
all the hostile Indians had put together.” Precisely how many women,
children, and elders were killed remains unknown, but their deaths
outnumbered the warriors.
Custer and the 7th Cavalry did not learn the number of men they
lost until the following month when he returned to the Washita
as part of a larger force of 1,700 men and found the remains of Elliott
and his detachment. Their deaths brought the 7th Cavalry’s losses to
twenty-two men killed. Sheridan later wrote they “pushed across the
river where Elliott had crossed. Moving directly to the south, we had
not gone far before we struck his trail, and soon the whole story was
made plain by our finding, on an open level space about two miles from
the destroyed village, the dead and frozen bodies of the entire party.
The poor fellows were all lying within a circle not more than fifteen or
twenty paces in diameter, and the little piles of empty cartridge shells
near each body showed plainly that every man had made a brave fight.”
Though Elliott had struck out on his own far from the rest of the men,
many in the 7th Cavalry blamed Custer for their loss. Captain Frederick
Benteen in particular faulted Custer for “abandoning” Elliott when they
withdrew. Benteen had known Elliott since the Civil War when they
served together in the Union cavalry, including when Elliott had been
left for dead after being shot through the lungs at White’s Station under
Benteen’s command. Many have claimed this grudge played a role eight
years later at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876.
At the Little Bighorn, Custer again hastily pursued a Native
American village leaving behind his pack train with additional
ammunition and supplies and divided his force for the attack. This
time, his target was a combined village of the Northern Cheyenne,
Northern Arapaho, and Lakota. He placed Captain Benteen in charge
of one battalion, Major Marcus Reno in charge of another, and led the
third himself while Lieutenant Edward G. Mathey was left in charge of
the pack train and Company B. As had been the case at the Washita,
Custer did not conduct a thorough reconnaissance and did not know
the number of potential warriors in the area. This time, it was Custer
and his battalion that rode off never to be seen again. Unlike Elliott and
his men who were quietly forgotten by most Americans, Custer’s men
became legends for their “last stand” against the vastly superior number
of native warriors.
After making contact, Custer sent John Martin as a messenger
carrying a note reading “Benteen. Come on, Big Village, Be quick.
Bring packs. P.S. Bring Packs.” Despite receiving this message, Benteen
did not hurry off to locate and reinforce Custer. Instead, his battalion
remained with Reno’s men who had suffered heavy losses in their initial
engagement with the warriors from the village, and they dug in to
fight off the ongoing attacks by warriors from the village. Like Custer,
Benteen did send a detachment forward in search, but it was beaten
back. Once the warriors had finished off Custer’s men, they turned their
efforts towards the other battalions before withdrawing the following
day. Benteen and the survivors waited for reinforcements from General
Terry’s column which brought news that Custer and his men had been
entirely wiped out. Benteen inspected Custer’s body. He later officially
reported: “I went over the battlefield carefully with a view to determine
how the battle was fought. I arrived at the conclusion then, as I have
now, that it was a rout, a panic, until the last man was killed...” Custer
had not learned to respect the power of large numbers of plains warriors
defending their villages until it was too late.
"The Last Stand" by Remington (1890)