The Strange Odyssey of the Little Bighorn Artifacts

 

On June 25, 1876, at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, five companies of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry, under the direct command of George Armstrong Custer were wiped out. 

 

Many artifacts initially lost on the battlefield were to have a strange after life.  Take for example, the engraved pocket watch of George Armstrong Custer.  There are at least two stories regarding the odyssey of the watch. 

In Son of the Morning Star, historian Evan S. Connel relates that in 1906 a Montana saloon keeper bought the watch from a Sioux Indian.  The watch was lost in a dice game, exhibited in a travelling show, and finally turned up in California before being purchased for the Don and Stella Foote Collection in Billings, Montana. The Foote’s would eventually offer their Treasures of the West collection to the city of Billings, which rejected the gift because the city did not want to pay to have the collection insured.  The collection was sold off and the whereabouts of Custer’s watch is now unknown.

In his book, The Law Marches West, a Canadian Mountie named Cecil Denny claimed that he retrieved the watch from Sitting Bull and sent it to Libbie Custer.

 

Custer’s final message to Captain Benteen to “Come quick, bring packs”, written down by Adjutant Cooke went missing for decades. 

 

In the 1920’s one of Custer’s early biographers, William Graham tried to locate the missing document, only to be told by Benteen’s son that all his father's papers had been destroyed when their house had burned down many years before.  This turned out to by incorrect. 

 

Captain Benteen had given the famous message to an army officer friend, Captain Price. The message finally came to rest in the hands of a New Jersey collector for fifty years, before being put up for auction.  By a happy circumstance Colonel Charles Francis Bates learned of the existence of the message and secured it for the museum at West Point, where it resides today.

 

The medals of Captain Miles Keogh tell an interesting story.  The senior captain among the five companies wiped out with Custer, Keogh's body was found at the center of a group of troopers that included his two sergeants, company trumpeter and guidon bearer.

 Keogh was stripped but not mutilated, perhaps because of the "medicine" the Indians saw in two Papal medals he wore on a chain around his neck.  Vatican records confirm these two medals were given to Keogh during The Papal War of 1860.

  Captain Benteen secured the medals which were sent to Keogh’s sister in Ireland.  They remained in the family until 1988 when they passed into the hands of a well-known collector.  The medals were recently auctioned off for $35,000.

 2nd Lt. John James Crittenden of Kentucky received a gold watch from his father on his twenty first birthday.  Crittenden was 22 years old when he died at Little Big Horn. His body was identified because of his glass eye.

His watch was missing.  In 1880, E.F. Gigot was working in a Canadian trading post when a trapper came in with furs, blankets, and a watch.  Gigot bought the watch of $2.  This was a gentleman’s watch and Gigot began to research.  He wrote to the watchmaker in London, providing the serial number.  The watchmaker confirmed that the watch had been sold to a man named Crittenden.  Gigot wrote to the U.S. Army which confirmed that the watch belonged to 2nd Lt. John James Crittenden.  The watch was returned to the family, which loaned the artifact to the Kentucky Historical Society in 1949 where it remains to this day.

Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time