VIC AT THE LITTLE BIGHORN

Shortly before noon on Sunday, June 25, 1876, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer changed horses. Custer, commanding 12 companies of the 7th U.S. Cavalry, had assumed the privilege of rank and brought two horses on the 40-day march from Fort Abraham Lincoln, Dakota Territory, to this spot in southeastern Montana Territory some 15 miles from a sprawling village of mostly Sioux and Cheyenne lodges. While officers were generally allowed two horses each, the 600-plus troopers and attached civilians of Custer’s column were limited to one. A few spare horses made the march, though nowhere near enough for most troopers to switch mounts.

It’s uncertain why Custer made the change from his favorite warhorse, a mixed-breed remount named Dandy, to a Kentucky Thoroughbred with the birth name Victory. (The colonel had shortened the sorrel’s name to Vic on acquiring him three years earlier.) Custer’s orderly, Private John Burkman, later recalled he and the colonel had discussed retiring Dandy from active service after the campaign. “Dandy’s age is beginning to tell on him a little,” Custer told Burkman as they left Fort Lincoln. “I’ll baby him some on this expedition.”

In truth Dandy was no older than Vic and perhaps a year or so younger. Custer had estimated Dandy’s age as 3 when he acquired the horse from an Army consignment in 1868. If the estimate was right—and Custer was an experienced horseman—Dandy was around 11 and Vic 12 in 1876. Though far from young, neither was too old for battle.

More likely Colonel Custer switched to Vic simply because he wanted a fresh mount. He’d ridden Dandy during a nighttime march and then back and forth from a vantage point known today as the Crow’s Nest, from which the colonel and his Crow scouts had spotted the Indian village on the Little Bighorn River. Dandy, he may have thought, was spent. Back with the packtrain by the