The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-12-11
GENERAL CusrEH.s LAST BATTLE
Brave stand Made Against an Over whe'minS Force. and None survived to

A brave stand M3le Against an Over
 whe'lning Force, and None survived to
 Tell the Tale.
 Fort Custer (Montana) Letter to the Chicago Inter- Oeeau]
 The best history of the last battle of General Custer on the Little Big Horn is the field itself, with it's white marble slabs, its little wooden cross in the center and the granite monument behind and above these, bearing the names of every soldier who marched out with Custer on that fatal June 25, 1876. The Indians who overcanno the gallant Seventh Cavalry on the Little Big Horn will not talk of their part in it. The little marble slabs, numbering 262, and tEey account for every man | who answered for roll-call when Custer led his five troops Of cavalry into the fight, Not man escaped All died fighting, and they literally died in line | of battle, if Scout Campbers theory of the line of march is correct. And yet it was not a massacre, nor even an am bush. as the soldiers at Fort Custer l viewed it. It was a battle, the most | tragic and the most desperate in the annals of war Custer may not have | been well informed as to the position and number of the enemy. He may | have been hot-headed and more anx- iouss to distinguish himself in battle 1 than to conquer the Indians without endangering his own command, but no one can look at this field, with these white slabs clustering about the cross which marks the spot where Custer fell, and not see in them that military discipline which was not broken, even | in death, and feel that Custer fought his last battle according to military l tactics.
 l The Custer battlefield is in southeast ern Montana, about sixty miles from | Billings Congress has set it apart for a national cemetery, where old soldiers who died in the Indian wars of the west shall be buried, and the bodies are be- | ing removed from Wyoming, the Da- kotas, and other points in Montana, to find fitting burial on consecrated ground
 These graves are on a part of the field, where they will not interfere with the alignment of the white stones marking where Clusters men fell
 The line of Clusters march from | Fort Abraham Lincoln to the Little l Big Horn is almost the line now follow ed by the Northern Pacific, from Man dan to Miles City, and on down the | Yellowstone river to the mouth of the | Rosebud river, up which Custer march ed to the Wolf mountain, which he crossed to the Little Big Horn, where he met the Indians and fought his last battle.
 The battle was of Clusters own se- lection whether he chose the field or not He may have designed to strike the village in the valley. The Indians did not allow him to reach the village. The battle was fought on the l brow of high hill, which commands a view not only of the river where the Indian village was, but on beyond, talk
 ing in the whole valley of the Little Big Horn and the slopes rising from it to the Big Horn mountains, forty or fifty miles to the west. How could there be an ambush on d field that stands out the most prominent and con- spicuous in the whole valley, without a tree or a shrub, without high grass or weeds to conceal an enemy. The soldiers at Fort Custer do not call it a ma assacre. They speak of it as a battle, as I believe any one must who stands on the field and surveys it and the surrounding country.
 The bodies were mutilated by the In dians, all except that of General Custer Scout Campbell says that there was not mark on the generals body except the bullet wounds that caused death The Indians respected the Yellow Hair ed Chief for his bravery in battle, and they had a superstitious fear of him even in death.
 Here lies the body of Lieutenant John J. Crittendsn, the only officer bur jed on the field" says Scout Campbell as he lays his hand on the monument erected to the young soldier. "All the others have been removed. Custer an6 his brother to West Point, the other officers to their homes or to other mili. tary cemeteries, and the privates are buried on the top of the hill around the granite monument. But Lieuten. ant Crittenden lies where he fell. Hi; father, General Crittenden, telegrapheo that a soldiers grave should be on ths field where he gave his life to duty"
 Had the friends of these dead sol diers then foreseen what has now come to pass, none of the bodies would have been removed, and all would have beer buried where they fell.
 The only man who went into this