Pre-fight Premonitions: Prelude to the Little Bighorn

Pre-Fight Premonitions

Among the many coincidences that surround the Little Bighorn battle are instances of premonition before the fight. Some can simply be attributed to the fact that 7^th Cavalry scouts understood the overwhelming numbers they would face. In other cases, as with Custer himself, something extraordinary appeared present.

While many, if not most of us, put little stock in coincidence and feelings, sometimes “gut feelings” coincide with reality in ways their possessors could not foresee. Those who have hunted or stalked wildlife with a camera have at times experienced what we refer to as a “sixth sense.” Whether based on reality or an unusual sixth sense, several premonitions preceded Custer’s last battle at the Little Bighorn.

Lt. Godfrey later gave two accounts involving Custer himself. Examples of his scouts also bear mention. Most of those occurred the morning of June 25^th when Custer joined them at the promontory called the Crow’s Nest. Smoke from the huge village of combined off-reservation tribes, along with its immense horse herd had been spotted. They bode ill for Custer’s attacking force.

Custer maintained he had been unable to see the village; he said more than once he did not believe it was really there. The scouts spotted signs of the village at first light, when the sun’s rays were low and direct on it. It has been postulated that by the time Custer reached their vantage point around 10 a.m., heat waves, increasing haze or other atmospheric conditions might have made it less visible from his location 15 to 20 miles off.

Custer would likely have proceeded the same way even if he’s seen the camp. Godfrey recorded that Custer estimated they would not meet more than 1,500 warriors. He had based his expectation on a count of lodge fires at an abandoned camp site on Rosebud Creek. He supplemented that figure with reports from agents regarding numbers of enrolled Indians who had left the reservations. Based on past experience, Custer was confident his regiment of roughly 700 troopers could readily handle twice its strength in “hostiles.”

Godfrey, though, described an ominous officers’ meeting at Custer’s ‘headquarters tent” the night of June 22. “This ‘talk’ of his, as we called it, was considered extraordinary for General Custer, for it was not his habit to unbosom himself to his officers. In it he showed concessions and a reliance on others; there was an indefiniable something that was not Custer. His manner and tone, usually brusque and aggressive, or somewhat curt, was on this occasion conciliating and subdued. There was something akin to an appeal, as if depressed, that made a deep impression on all present. . .”

Godfrey added, “Lieutenants McIntosh, Wallace . . . and myself walked to our bivouac, for some distance in silence, when Wallace remarked: ‘Godfrey, I believe General Custer is going to be killed.’ ‘Why? Wallace,’ I replied, ‘what makes you think so?’ ‘Because,’ said he, ‘I have never heard Custer talk in that way before.’”

Three more old village sites were passed by the command on June 23^rd, but on the 24^th the column halted at the Sun Dance site used less than two weeks prior. (A white man’s scalp, not yet dried, was found there.) Custer again called a meeting of his officers.

Godfrey described another occurrence that would seem ominous. He wrote, “. . . as we were about to separate, the General’s headquarters flag was blown down, falling toward our rear. Being near the flag I picked it up and stuck the staff in the ground, but it again fell to the rear. I then bored the staff into the ground where it would have the support of a sagebrush.”

“This circumstance mad no impression on me at the time,” Godfrey went on, “but after the battle an officer, Lieutenant Wallace, asked me if I remembered the incident. He had observed, and regarded the fact of the falling to the rear as a bad omen, and felt sure we would suffer a defeat.”

After a rest halt at sundown on the 24^th, Custer called another officers’ meeting before starting a night march as planned. He stated he intended to camp in a concealed place the 25^th and then make a surprise attack at dawn June 26^th. He halted the column at 2 a.m. the 25^th. His well-laid plans would soon go awry, however.

When Custer’s scouts spotted signs of the Sioux and Cheyenne village at daylight on June 25^th, they knew how formidable its overwhelming numbers would be. They warned Custer and tried to dissuade him from attacking with his regiment alone. Too confident, Custer would not be deterred.

When that was realized, the scouts had their own premonitions and prepared accordingly. Crow scouts began donning their finest garb. Custer asked, through interpreter Mitch Bouyer, why they were doing so. Their leader, Half Yellow Face, replied that when a warrior entered the afterlife he wanted to look his best.

The leader of Custer’s Arikara, or “Ree,” scouts had brought soil from their homeland in Dakota Territory. He began rubbing it on each of his fellow tribesmen, apparently to symbolize their return to the earth.

Bloody Knife, Custer’s favorite scout, had tried at least twice to get Custer to understand what he would go up against. He told Custer they would find enough hostiles to keep them fighting two or three days. He also said they would find more warriors than the soldiers had bullets. Back to his usual form, Custer overconfidently brushed the warnings off.

After his 2 a.m. halt, Custer was seen by Godfrey talking with his Crow and Ree scouts. He was jolted from what Godfrey described as his “reverie” in which he “wore a serious expression and was apparently abstracted” as the interpreter conveyed Bloody Knife’s “two or three days” warning. Godfrey also stated the other scouts appeared “nervous and disturbed.” Custer just chuckled and said, “I guess we’ll get through with them in one day.”

It is reported that when Custer insisted at the Crow’s Nest on moving forward with just his regiment, many of the scouts began singing their “death songs.” That is when Bloody Knife made his warning about warriors outnumbering the soldier’s cartridges. When Custer persisted, Bloody Knife looked toward the sun, bidding it a final farewell. He is said to have told Custer they would both be going home “by a road that is not familiar.”

The white scout Lonesome Charley Reynolds had experienced a painful infection in one hand. He was given the option to remain at the command’s base on the Yellowstone River but chose to go with the regiment anyway. The choice proved fateful. However, as with the various Indian scouts, he seemed to have a premonition at the Crow’s Nest. It is said that at that point he began giving away all his possessions. He died, apparently heroically, during or after Reno’s headlong retreat at the village’s south end.

Those of us who are not the least superstitious still find intriguing coincidence in much that surrounded the Little Bighorn fight. Some of the outcome looked pretty predictable to scouts who savvied overwhelming odds. Circumstances and premonitions, or “gut feelings,” like those described above seem extraordinary though. In hindsight, they did indeed prove ominous at the Little Bighorn.