From Iman's book,
"These "Tales of the Trail" are based upon actual facts which came under
the personal observation of the author, whose reputation as a writer
of the frontier is national. His other works have met with phenomenal
success, and these sketches, which have appeared from time to time in
the current literature of the United States. Some of the characters around which are woven the thrilling incidents of these "Tales" were men of world-wide reputation; they have long since joined the "choir invisible," but their names as pioneers in the genesis of great States which then formed the theater of their exploits will live as long as the United States exists as a great nation."
-JAMES L. KING, State Librarian TOPEKA, KANSAS, March 1, 1898
A THEORY AS TO GEN. CUSTER'S DEATH.
DID HE COMMIT SUICIDE?
The Theory explained by Colonel Henry Inman
Little is known of the origin of scalp-taking, and that, vague and
indefinite: nearly every tribe has some wild, weird legend to account
for the custom, but these traditions vary widely as to the cause. That
"raising the hair" of an enemy is of great antiquity, there is no
doubt, as in the Bible it is related how the soldiers tore the skin
from the heads of their whipped foes. All, (sic) or at least all Indian
tribes with which I am acquainted, scalp their enemies killed in battle.
With the Indian there appears to be some close affiliation between the
departed spirit and his hair. I have questioned many a blood-begrimed
warrior why he should want a dead man's hair, and invariably there
have been assigned a number of reasons, three of which are most
prominent: First, it is an evidence to his people that he has triumphed
over an enemy; second, the scalps are employed very prominently in the
incantations of the "medicine lodge"--a part of their religious rites;
third, the savage believes there is a wonderfully inherent power in
the scalp of an enemy. All the excellent qualities of the victim go
with his hair the moment it is wrenched from his head. If it be that of
a renowned warrior, so much the more are they anxious to procure his
scalp, for the fortunate possessor then inherits all the bravery and
prowess of its original owner.
I have known of but one instance in all my experience among the
Indians, where a white man taken prisoner in battle escaped death.
It was a great many years ago; the party, a dear friend, still
living, was a grand old mountaineer,--but the homeliest man on earth,
probably. He was red-faced, wrinkled, and pockmarked, with a mouth as
large and full of teeth as a gorilla's, and there was no more hair
on any part of his head than there is on the head of a cane. He was
captured in a prolonged fight and taken to the village of the tribe
where the principal chief resided. The latter gave one look at the
prisoner, shook his head, and said he was "bad medicine"; that if he
was not the "evil spirit" himself, he was closely allied to him. He
then ordered his subordinates to furnish him with a pony, loaded him
with provisions, provided him with a rifle, and told him to go to his
people. This incident, which is a fact, shows that you cannot account
for the occasional vagaries of the North-American savage.
The Indians of the Plains and Rocky Mountains would rather, for the
reason last above stated, take one scalp of a famous scout or army
officer who has successfully chastised them, like Custer, Sully, and
Crook, than a dozen of those of ordinary white men.
Twenty-six years ago next November I was camping on the high "divide"
between the Arkansas river and the Beaver, with a party of Government
Indian scouts, members of three friendly tribes,--Osages, Pawnees,
and Kaws,--employed by order of Gen. Sheridan in his winter campaign
against the hostile Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Kiowas. It was a terribly
gusty day, one of those so characteristic of our Plains region at
certain times of the year. As with closely wrapped blankets we huddled
around our little fire of buffalo-chips, the dust and ashes would rise
in miniature whirlwinds and go dancing over the prairies until they
exhausted themselves.
I asked a venerable chief of the Osages who was present, "Little
River," nearly eighty years old, what those fitful spirals indicated,
in order to draw from his savage mind his ideas of the forces of
nature. He replied: "They are the spirits of some southern Indians,
killed and scalped up north, going back to the lodges of their people."
I thought that if he had substituted the word "matter" for
"spirit"--for everywhere we tread upon the dust of a lost
civilization--probably he would have been nearer the truth than in the
statement of one of the superstitions of his race.
Sitting Bull from Inman's book
Among the many myths of the American savage, the disposition of the
soul after its separation from the body, and its close connection with
its scalp, vary according to the religion of the tribe. With some,
the "journey to the happy hunting-grounds" begins immediately; with
others, the spirit remains near the grave. Again, if an Indian dies
away from the lodges of his people, the spirit returns at once to them,
where it hovers, as if reluctant to leave. Among the "upper-river
tribes" it is believed that before the spirit finally departs from
those who have died of wounds received in battle, "it floats toward a
great cliff overhanging the Missouri, and carves upon the wall of rock
a picture showing the manner of death." It is believed by most Plains
tribes that the soul attaches itself to the scalp; that the soul of a
person scalped does not suffer from the wounds inflicted on the body,
but that the converse is the case where the scalp is not torn off.
There are many instances on record where men have been scalped and yet
survived the terrible ordeal, but in every case the scalper supposed
his victim dead, the latter taking good care that the foeman should not
be disabused of the supposed fact.
One who kills himself in battle, accidentally or purposely, has
positively no hereafter; he is irrevocably lost. Those who are struck
by lightning, or die by any other apparently direct operation of the
"Manitou" (the Great Spirit), are hurriedly buried where they fall,
without any ceremony, and no mound or other mark is erected over them.
If after a battle there are found corpses not scalped or their bodies
not mutilated, it is certain that those persons came to death by their
own hand, for it is part of the religion of an Indian not to scalp or
mutilate the body of an enemy who commits suicide. His superstition in
regard to persons dying by suicide or by lightning is as religiously
observed as any other of his myths.
Knowing this deep-rooted superstition as well as I do, I have been led
to believe--though the statement may provoke discussion among those who
know nothing of the Indian character--that the death of the lamented.
CUSTERS DEATH
Gen. Custer in that awfully unequal battle of the "Little Big Horn"
was not according to the accepted theory at that time, viz.: that he
was killed by the Indian chief "Rain-in-the-face." The tale (which I
regard as an idle fiction so far as the facts are concerned) as it has
been told a thousand times and copied in the newspapers of the world,
is, that one day the General's brother Tom, at one of the military
posts where the regiment to which he was attached, the famous Seventh
Cavalry (commanded by the General), was stationed, had a dispute with
Rain-in-the-face, and struck him. The savage was furious with rage,
but suppressed it, and mounting his pony rode off sullenly to his lodge.
Years after the death of Gen. Custer, Rain-in-the-face, who
unquestionably participated in the battle of the Rosebud (as the
action is sometimes called), is said to have related that he killed
Gen. Custer, thus avenging himself for the indignity put upon himself
by the General's brother Tom, so long before. In all probability the
story was made out of "whole cloth" by a certain New York newspaper
correspondent, in whose journal it first appeared. I knew him well,
and his reputation for unexaggerated truth was far from being as
orthodox as he of the cherry-tree fame. (The myth relating to George
Washington chopping down the cherry tree) Because it had a plausibility
about it, and was highly sensational, the statement was accepted by
the general public, or those who were not familiar with the methods of
the North-American savage. No doubt Rain-in-the-face did, as would all
Indians, treasure up such a grievance as that of having been insulted
by a blow from a white man; but the circumstances of the battle of the
Little Big Horn in all its horrors, so far as it is possible to know
them, preclude the possibility of Sitting Bull permitting a subordinate
chief, as was Rain-in-the-face, to arrogate to himself the right of
revenge in the case of such a noted "white warrior" as Custer. If by
any probability Rain-in-the-face did kill Custer, he certainly would
have scalped him and mutilated his body. Custer was not scalped, nor
was his person at all abused; and the reason generally given for this
immunity from the common custom of savage warfare is, that the Indians
had such a profound admiration for his wonderful bravery that they
spared the great "white warrior" that humiliation. This is the weakest
point of the whole argument--for the greater the man in the savages'
estimation, the more eager would they be to secure his scalp.
THE THEORY OF CUSTERS DEATH
My own theory is--and the fact that Custer was not scalped or mutilated
is not the only confirmation of it--that the General killed himself
to escape the horrible torture that awaited him should he be captured
alive. His capture was what Sitting Bull had undoubtedly determined
upon, the moment he saw the tide of battle unmistakably turning in his
favor.
Custer was known to all the Plains tribes; he had given them ample
cause to remember him, and these savages would never have allowed an
opportunity to capture him alive to be defeated by permitting some
aggrieved chief to kill him in order to gratify a personal revenge--the
game was too big. The Indians called Custer the "Crawling Panther,"
because he usually fell upon them with his troopers as stealthily as
does that animal upon its prey.
To those unacquainted with the methods of the American savage of the
Great Plains, the statement that suicide would be infinitely preferable
to the chances for life after having been captured by the Indians,
may seem overdrawn, and wicked to be thought of. But if they had
seen, as I have, the remains of men, women and innocent babes horribly
mutilated, burnt, butchered, and hacked to pieces, they too, if they
knew such a fate awaited them beyond the possibility of a doubt if
captured alive, would unhesitatingly court death by their own hands,
suddenly and immediately, rather than wait for the other, a few
hours or days more remote, perhaps, but certain, and horrible in its
prolonged agony.
I know that it was commonly understood, if not actually agreed to
among the officers at frontier posts, that each one should reserve the
last bullet in his revolver for himself in the event of a horrible
contingency. I have known of many officers in the long-ago of my early
service among the Indians, who, whenever they went on an expedition
against the hostile tribes, invariably had concealed about their
persons, easily accessible, a small capsule of prussic acid or some
equally potent and swift messenger of death, to be used in case of a
possible contingency.
Custer, it will be remembered, was shot through the head, and it was a
curious coincidence that two or three of his subordinates whose bodies
were found near his had been shot in precisely the same manner.
In view of all these facts, there can be small doubt that those
officers carried out the plan of death determined upon, the moment they
recognized the hopelessness of their situation.
That the story of Rain-in-the-face, if he ever told it, is not at
all likely to be the truth, may be inferred from the fact that the
average Indian, as I know him, when discoursing of his own prowess is
the most unconscionable liar, and the truth is not in him. Of course
if Rain-in-the-face could prevail upon a newspaper correspondent to
flatter him in regard to the part he took in a battle in which a great
white warrior was defeated, he would rather lie to that correspondent
than not; and that is just what Rain-in-the-face did in this
instance--provided, always, that the correspondent did not invent the
whole tale.
The truth of how Custer came to his death can never absolutely be
known, for out of that awfully unequal conflict there came but one
miserable Crow Indian and Col. Keogh's celebrated horse "Comanche,"
alive. From the fact that the great soldier was not scalped, the theory
I have suggested is certainly more plausible, and will be accepted by
all who are familiar with the customs of the Indians, than that story
which has made the rounds of the newspapers a dozen times.
references & Further Reading:
TALES OF THE TRAILSHORT STORIES OF WESTERN LIFE BY COLONEL HENRY INMAN Late Assistant Quartermaster, United States Army AUTHOR OF "THE OLD SANTA FÉ TRAIL," "SALT LAKE TRAIL"
(Project Gutenberg)
Maj Henry Inman Jr. (1837-1899) - Find a Grave Memorial
New Study Debunks Tales of Mass Suicide at Custer’s Last Stand | HISTORY
News - Skeletal Study of Custer’s Men Questions Suicide Claims - Archaeology Magazine
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