News and Notes

News and Commentary from the Who2 Staff

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Comanche Was (Not) the Sole Survivor of Custer's Last Stand

Our biography of the noble horse Comanche has stated for several years that he was the only U.S. Army survivor of the Battle of Little Big Horn -- more popularly known as "Custer's Last Stand."

But now, having researched the point after a query from our friends at Answers.com, we must report that it's not so. Comanche survived the battle, yes -- but he probably wasn't the SOLE survivor.

Turns out there's been quite a bit of scholarship on the topic, which is now practically its own subset of Custer studies. Some of the arguments are pretty direct, some rely on how you define terms like "survivor" and "U.S. Army."

Some are also a little silly. We'll dispense with those who point out that thousands of Native Americans survived the battle. (Duh: they won.) In a similar vein, we'll ignore those who point out that U.S. Army soldiers under Captain Benteen and Major Reno also survived the day. Yes, yes, they were part of Custer's Seventh Cavalry, but we're talking about the last stand, here, man: the actual hillside battle where Custer and his force of 210 (or so) men were entirely wiped out.

With those stipulations, let's look at the details.

Everyone seems to agree that several horses survived Custer's Last Stand. A few were taken by the Indians or ran wild, and some wounded ones were destroyed on the battlefield by the rest of the Seventh Cavalry when they arrived, a little late, after the fight was over.

(If a wounded horse survived the battle long enough to be found by U.S. Army soldiers, who then shot him out of mercy, you can decide for yourself whether that counts as being a "survivor of Custer's Last Stand." Some nitpickers feel it does.)

Some writers also say there were surviving horses that were then unsaddled by soldiers and turned loose to take their chances on the prairie. (It's not clear why this would be done with valuable goods like horses, but oh, well.)

Then there were various humans who survived the events around the battle, or claimed to have. The most notable was Curley, a Native American scout riding with Custer who escaped before the battle took place and tried to alert other Seventh Cavalry soldiers. (A tale grew up that Curley escaped during the battle by covering himself with a Native blanket and stealing away. This seems to be false.)

Human nature being what it is, many other soldiers popped up in America's public squares (and bars) in the years after the battle, claiming to be survivors. Historians don't credit them much.

Back to Comanche: He was wounded but wasn't captured or destroyed, for unknown reasons. (Evan Connell, in his 1984 Custer biography Son of the Morning Star, recounts a story that Comanche's master, Miles Keogh, died with the reins still clutched in his hands, "a fact which may have prevented Indians from taking his horse.") Even the discovery of the horse is a matter of dispute and confusion: As Connell notes, various soldiers later took credit for finding Comanche alive on the battlefield, in a ravine, or in a nearby clump of trees.

Seven wounds is the traditional number that Comanche is said to have received in the fray. Some said more or less at the time, but seven has been generally accepted as the number.

At least we do know what happened to Comanche after the Last Stand. He was taken care of by the soldiers and shipped back to Kansas, where he died at Fort Riley 15 years later, in 1891. By that point the legend of Comanche as the sole (or "last living") survivor of Custer's Last Stand had become firmly entrenched.

So there's a grain of truth there: he does seem to be the one soldier or horse from the hillside who made it back to U.S. territory to "tell the tale," as it were. If only he could talk, etc.

A fine book was written about Comanche in 1989: His Very Silence Speaks: Comanche, The Horse Who Survived Custer's Last Stand. The author, Elizabeth Lawrence, has a whole chapter on the "sole survivor" topic and concludes that Comanche clearly wasn't the only survivor. By boiling down the various arguments and known facts, and being scrupulously literal about the meanings of all the words, she works it out that Comanche COULD fairly be called this:

"The only equine member of the federal cavalry forces in Custer's immediate command who was known to have left the battlefield in the hands of the military and whose life can be generally chronicled from that time until his death."

Which is good enough for us.

If you happen to be in the Midwest, you can still see Comanche today: His mounted hide is at the Natural History Museum of the University of Kansas.