Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer

7th Cavalry Regiment

Goat of the Class of June, 1861

Excerpt from Last in Their Class on Custer's death:

George Custer was found naked and unmutilated, with two wounds, in his left breast and left temple. He was propped in an angle formed by two of his men laying across each other, his arm across the top of them, the small of his back touching the ground, his head laying in his right hand as if in thought, smiling. Pat Coleman wrote of Custer’s group, “Every one of them were scalped and otherwise mutilated but the General he lay with a smile on his face. The Indians even respected the great Chief.” Low Dog explained that “the wise men and chiefs of our nation gave out to our people not to mutilate the dead white chief, for he was a brave warrior and died a brave man, and his remains should be respected.” It was not clear that the Indians knew it was Custer, just that he had led and fought bravely (implying he survived well into the attack). Hunkpapa chief Crow King stated, “No warrior knew Custer in the fight. We did not know him, dead or alive. When the fight was over the chiefs gave orders to look for the long-haired chief among the dead, but no chief with long hair could be found.” Low Dog concurred: “I did not see General Custer. I do not know who killed him. We did not know till the fight was over that he was the white chief.” Sergeant Kanipe said that only the wounded were mutilated, that the squaws would not mutilate a corpse. It was a form of torture that was wasted on the dead.

According to Sitting Bull, Custer fought bravely to the end. He gave his admittedly second-hand account in an 1877 interview:

Sitting Bull: "Well, I have understood that there were a great many brave men in that fight, and that from time to time, while it was going on, they were shot down like pigs. They could not help themselves. One by one the officers fell..... Any way it was said that up there where the last fight took place, where the last stand was made, the Long Hair stood like a sheaf of corn with all the ears fallen around him."

Interviewer: "How many stood by him?"

Sitting Bull: "A few."

Interviewer: "When did he fall?"

Sitting Bull: "He killed a man when he fell. He laughed."

Interviewer: "You mean he cried out."

Sitting Bull: "No, he laughed; he had fired his last shot."

An old trapper who had known Custer and lived among the Indians talked to the Sioux after the battle, and stated that while he thought Custer went down fighting like a “little devil,” he was only speculating, and everyone else was too. “I do not believe there is a man living, red or white,” he wrote, “who knows how Custer died.” Frederick Benteen, standing over Custer’s body, made the definitive statement. “There he is, God damn him, he will never fight any more.”

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