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Background
In one way, at least, the most controversial 19th century American miliary catastrophe, is easily understood. Mrs. Ellen T. Roche Reily Johnson put it simply: “I am entirely surrounded by pictures - three in bed room - look where may - my poor boy's sad face meets me.” Human loss, at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, was the sum of all attained. There, famously, an entire command was slaughtered to a man. 268 soldiers of the 7th Cavalry - including its illustrious leader, Colonel George Armstrong Custer, and his cadre of decorated officers – died following a fight of less than two hours. Almost all of them were, by their Native American victors, immediately stripped, scalped, and mutilated. Second Lt. “Willie” Reily, age 22 and with the 7th Cavalry for merely a few months, was one of those men. His body, shot full of arrows, was found near Custer’s.
The commander of the 7th Cavalry, Samuel Davis Sturges – who also lost a son at the Little Bighorn – recalled in 1885 that, in his judgment, the Army “did not contain a more honorable or more gallant and promising young soldier” than Lt. Reily. [Shapell Manuscript Collection, April 20, 1885; #2103.] His remains were exhumed from Last Stand Hill in 1877, and he was reinterred in Washington D.C. Also recovered that year, from a surrendering Cheyenne warrior, was a signet ring worn by Lt. Reily. It was returned to his mother, and is today in the Smithsonian Institution.
