Soon After Little Bighorn, Major Reno Brazenly Blames Custer: For "Some Unaccountable Reason... [He] Rode into an Ambuscade of at Least 2000 Warriors"

Background

The most famous defeat in U.S. military history took place on Sunday, June 25, 1876, amid the hilly terrain along the Little Bighorn River in south central Montana, at about 4:30 in the afternoon. Start to finish, it lasted, most likely, under an hour. Custer and five 7th Cavalry companies were hurried into position on two adjoining hilltops above an Indian village in a valley below. It's been estimated that at least 1,000 warriors, firing at least 5,000 bullets and 10,000 arrows, rushed up and flanked them, though no soldier from his command survived to tell.

Two days later, General Alfred Terry and Colonel John Gibbon arrived with hundreds of cavalrymen, or most likely as many as 1,500, according to the original strategic plan that they had worked out with Custer on June 21, 1876. However, upon their arrival, with the legendary Custer discovered dead, along with every man in his seemingly invincible command of five doomed companies, C, E, F, I and L, Terry’s and Gibbon’s forces had become, in essence, a burial party. Ten days later, a shocked nation wanted to know how such a reversal of fortune could have occurred. And although that question has been answered, seemingly non-stop, by every generation since, there is amid all the melee, mystery and legend, one note of consensus: Major Marcus Reno, the highest-ranking officer serving under Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, bore the blame.

Reno’s orders were simple enough. He was to lead the charge into the Indian village in the valley; then, from the bluffs above, Custer and his command would make their way down to the rear of the village. Between them, with Reno at one end and Custer at the other, and with Benteen rushing in behind Reno with reinforcements and ammunition, the village would be destroyed. The charge, then, was first, and key. Reno began his move, but, a quarter of a mile away from the village, he stopped. Most likely, he was met by a handful of warriors or, as he claimed, a horde, and panicked. Maybe it was the dust obscuring his vision; maybe it was that he had never led a frontal assault against hostile Plains Indians; maybe he was a coward.

Whatever his reason, he halted the charge, abandoned control of his troops, and frantically retreated to the adjacent high bluffs with the remnants of his command. He survived, as did many in his command, after two days of holding the Indians at bay, who retreated down to their village on June 27th. But this sequence of events may have cost Custer and, at least 268 other soldiers and officers, their lives. It also cost Reno, in a way, his reputation.

Branded by an outraged public as an incompetent at best, and a coward at worst, Reno spent the rest of his life denying responsibility for Custer’s defeat at the Little Bighorn.

Here, just five weeks after the controversial defeat, Reno takes up what would be his official line. He was outnumbered, he was unsupported, and the blame for all of this was Custer’s, who “from some unaccountable reason perhaps never to be explained... rode into an ambuscade of at least 2000 warriors.”

That note of desperation would grow ever more urgent, as he told and re-told, and tried to sell the tale of how he, the only surviving officer of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, was the victim, really, of Custer’s vanity and hubris. When he died, cashiered and alcoholic, Reno was still blaming Custer for the Little Bighorn – even as he himself was, and is now, blamed for the “Custer Massacre.” This account is, perhaps, his earliest defense:

I was the advance guard, & had 3 Cos. instead of 7. I was ordered to cross and charge & I would be supported. I did cross & advanced, fighting & driving the indians about 2½ miles, which brought me within about 200 yards of the village. My right flank was towards the river and as I was getting near their tepees, they came out in swarms … I saw there were but one chance … & that was to get to the bluff across that river

… I never had any support.

When the remaining 4 Cos of the Regt came up [Cpt. Benteen], arriving separately & some 1 ½ hours after I had first attacked they saw this plain covered with Indians & rightly concluded they were not in strong enough form to tackle them, & so made for these bluffs and arrived on the cut about the time I did. They then came towards my Command & I assumed command of the entire seven Cos, and at once went in the direction of Custer’s trail & to see what had become of him - but I think by this time that he had been killed, for they showed in my front more than 10 times my strength. I at once dismounted & turned my horses and pack mules in a herd & was closely besieged for over 36 hours.

Physical Description

Autograph Letter Signed ("M. A. Reno"), as Major, 7^th Cavalry. 3 pages, octavo, recto and verso, Headquarters, 7th Cavalry, In the Field, 5 August 1876. To Ernest Heth in Richmond, Virginia. Extremely rare of this date.