They Rode with Custer

By Bernie Keating

Why a book now about the Battle of the Little Bighorn, 140 years later? Because the full story has never been told due to prejudices against Indians at the time, media frenzy, and embarrassment about the loss of a national hero, General Custer.

This relates the adventures of two Irish immigrants who joined the cavalry because they needed a job, and they became caught up in the disaster at the Little Bighorn.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524601256

Bernie Keating

Bernie Keating’s was raised in Buffalo Gap, South Dakota, served as a naval officer during the Korean War, completed graduate school at U.C. Berkeley, and then began a fifty-year career as executive, becoming Manager of Quality Assurance for the world’s largest packaging company. As an avocation during his long working career, he also wrote books and the current one is his twenty-second. He and his wife live on a ranch in the Sierra Mountains near Sonora, California.

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© 2016 Bernie Keating. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 03/30/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-0126-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-0127-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-0125-6 (e)

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Prologue

1   Two Irish Misfits

2   Departing Fort Lincoln

3   Trudging across  the Dakota Prairie

4   Reno’s Scouting Mission

5   Getting Ready For Battle

6   Up the Rosebud Valley

7   Down to the Little Bighorn

8   Beseiged on the Bluff

9   After the Battle

Bibliography

Prologue

T he Battle of the Little Bighorn is one of the most famous conflicts in American History; interest is worldwide.

I have a special connection to this 1876 battle, because as a boy living in Buffalo Gap during the 1930’s my friends included elderly Indians who as young men had fought in that battle against General Custer: Percy Kills-a-Warrior; High Eagle; Comes Again; John Sitting Bull, and No-Water. The grandson of No-Water was my summer playmate when his father left the nearby Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to work on the ranch of my neighbor, Bill Sewright. His family came in a wagon and pitched a canvas teepee alongside Beaver Creek.

I have read every book and the court martial accounts and know the proceedings well. The presence of two Irish immigrants as troopers is an embellishment that draws a parallel between Oliver Cromwell and English suppression of the Irish people with that of the Lakota Indian by the U.S. Cavalry.

Why a book one hundred forty years later? The full story has never been told due to prejudices at the time, media frenzy, and embarrassment about the loss of a national hero.

In the aftermath of the battle, the Indians were forced onto the eight reservations of South Dakota in the most desolate and poverty stricken regions of our nation, and then were forgotten.

Bernie Keating

1

Two Irish Misfits

T he fierce battle was fought in the greasy grass among teepees on a June day. The cup of many a wild flower was filled high with blood, insects crawling among harmless leaves were stained by dying men, the butterfly took blood into the air upon the edges of its wings, and the Little Bighorn River ran red. Trodden ground became a quagmire with sullen ponds collected in the prints of human feet and horse hoofs; the all-pervading red hue still shimmered at the sun.

The moon coming up beyond the black line of distant rising ground rose into the sky and beheld the littered hillside strewn with upturned faces that had once sought mother’s eyes. Many a star kept mournful watch upon it.

Such is life that great events cannot be foretold to actors who are destined to perform in the crucible of the living stage. Two recently incarcerated young Irish men who had absconded with a trifling sum from a local merchant in Ballingarry, county of Kilkenny, Republic of Ireland, lounged in the local detention enjoying their days of enforced leisure. They decided to amble out the unlocked doors when they heard a work assignment would soon be forthcoming. The local elders could ill afford to feed hungry and glutinous local pests so made escape not only possible but promoted; in-so-far as the wretched forever left the county and relieved the local coffers.

Duffy, said Rory O’Connor interrupting a song by his partner, The sun is getting low. It is time we should be walking out the jail door and putting a mile or two behind us.

Nay, Pat Duffy responded, I have not yet done with my pipes, and continued to blow the melody of an Irish ballad.

O’Connor shook his head, Why does every Irish ballad have to become like a funeral dirge. Yeah, everyone knows we were mistreated by Oliver Cromwell and the damn English but why do we have to belabor it with every thought and song?

Duffy angrily laid his pipe aside. What is so wrong with that? We can never forget that English tyrant, Oliver Cromwell. Our songs are melancholy because he made us that way – the songs tell how the Irish feel.

There’s nothing wrong with it, but it is over-and-over-and-over again. How many times must we refight those battles?

For as long as there is an Ireland! Cromwell invaded our lands, massacred our people – over four thousand at Dragheda - that’s where my ancestors lived. He enslaved our people and stationed soldiers everywhere. Every Irishman hates Cromwell and the damn English.

O’Connor made no reply already thinking ahead on how to climb through the open door and onto a train headed east to Dublin seaport where they could catch passage overseas; anywhere but Ireland would be fine.

They learned to eat stolen bran cake fed to shackled cows in the bilges of a cattle ship after they smuggled aboard. They stepped on the wharf in New York to find themselves in long lines of job seekers in the post-Civil War recession. Unemployed were everywhere including hundreds of Europeans who fled to avoid military conscription in the Franco-Prussian war. There were no jobs in New York, Philadelphia, or anywhere else as they headed west.

So, you want to join the army? asked Sergeant Murphy who sat at the enlistment desk in St Louis, the jumping-off point for anyone headed into the wilds of the Western Territories. It is a hard life you’ll be living in the army. Are you up to it?

Yay, that we be, responded O’Connor. We be with a hard life behind so that ahead can be no worse.

What can I write concerning you previous work? inquired the sergeant. Any time aboard horses?

That it be, quickly responded O’Connor with a reassuring voice. They were desperate for a job, having been unemployed since arriving on the wharf in New York and here in St Louis it seemed the cavalry may be their last chance for three square meals and a bed to sleep in.

We’ve spent a lot of time with horses, added Duffy. Growing up in Ireland we did everything on a horse, failing to mention it was only with a neighbor’s work nag used for digging up potatoes at harvest time.

Well, whether true or not, it is no matter. You will learn soon enough if you get assigned to the cavalry, said the sergeant as he signed their enlistment papers. The army was in need