If memory serves me correct, and I tend to find that`s not always the case, "They died with Custer" has lists of identified individuals and where they were found. I`ll take a wild guess and assume it`s correct? As for the figure of 20 men reaching LSH, is that number from Fox? I believe he uses it in "Archeology" but how he ended with that number I don`t know.
Thank you for sharing the article, I`ll read it more than once.
Archaeologist Douglas Scott estimated 27 to 44 men were killed in the area between Custer Hill and Deep Ravine. This includes the SSL.
Michno in
The Mystery of E Troop [218], claimed 44 grave markers on the main branch of the SSL, seven on the southeast branch, and four more across Deep Ravine (55 total).
Douglas Scott says Custer, 5 officers, and perhaps 40 EM lay on Custer/Last Stand Hill.
• 28 names are documented: 14 PVTs
PVT Ygnatz Stungewitz (C)
PVT Willis B. Wright (C)
PVT Anton Dohman (F)
PVT Gustav Klein (F)
PVT William H. Lerock (F)
PVT Werner L. Liemann (F)
PVT Edward C. Driscoll (I)
PVT Archibald McIlhargey (I)
PVT John E. Mitchell (I)
PVT John Parker (I)
PVT Francis T. Hughes (L)
PVT Charles McCarthy (L)
PVT Oscar F. Pardee (aka, John Burke) (L)
PVT Thomas S. Tweed (L)
• 2 civilians
Boston Custer (QM)
Autie Reed
• 1 surgeon: Dr. George Lord (HQ) (Marker 17 for Lord is on the SSL; this is probably an incorrect placement.)
• 1 trumpeter: Henry Voss (HQ)
• 4 NCOs
SGM William Sharrow (HQ)
1SG Michael Kenney (F)
SGT John H. Groesbeck (F)
CPL William Teeman (F)
[NOTE—CPL John J. Callahan (K) was identified on Last Stand Hill by others. The exhumation in 1877 of a body with corporal’s stripes could have been Callahan’s. Less likely in this location would be CPL William Teeman (F), probably found a little lower on the ridgeline. This would make the identifications total 29.]
• SGT Robert Hughes’ (K) body was most likely the one found at the head of Deep Ravine, though there is a remote chance he was killed on Custer Hill. Supposedly identified by CPT McDougall.
• Six officers:
GAC (HQ)
William Cooke (HQ)
Tom Custer (C/HQ)
Algernon Smith (E)
George Yates (F)
William Van W. Reily (F)
• Presently, 52 markers are located on Custer Hill; 42 bodies had been buried there initially.
• Deep Ravine (8 men from Company E):
1SG Frederick Hohmeyer
SGT John S. Ogden
CPL George C. Brown
CPL Albert H. Meyer
PVT Richard Farrell
PVT William Huber
PVT Andy Knecht
PVT William H. Rees
Bruce Liddic presented his own description of where bodies were found,
Vanishing Victory, 164.
• Grouped near Custer around the top of the knoll:
LT Cooke (HQ)
PVT Driscoll (I)
PVT Parker (I)
LT Smith (E)
SGT John Vickory-Groesbeck (F)
TMP Voss (HQ)
PVT McCarthy (L)
• Deep Ravine:
SGT Hughes (K)
PVT Tim Donnelly (F)
PVT Andrew Knecht (E) [Hardorff,
On the Little Bighorn with Walter Camp, 132, FN 5].
• On a rise above Deep Ravine: CPL John Briody (F)
• Farthest north on the battlefield, opposite the present parking lot on the east side of the service entrance road: SGM Sharrow (HQ).
• Lower west side, down the slope from the monument, about 100 yards from GAC:
Boston Custer
Autie Reed
• About 20 feet southeast of George Custer, on a hillside: Dr. Lord (HQ)
In addition, Sergeant John Rafter claimed the body of Private Weston Harrington (L Company) “was found between Custer and the deep gully. The body was not mutilated and a blanket was thrown over him. He was known among the Sioux before he was enlisted and it was thought that some of them recognized him and protected his body in this way” (Hardorff,
Camp, Custer, and the Little Bighorn, 64 – 65).
• Private John C. Creighton (K) said SGT Vickory’s body was found in a ravine between Calhoun and Keogh. He also said LT Reily was not mutilated. [71]
• PVT Charles Graham of L Company was found on a line between Calhoun and Keogh. [71]
2LT Richard Thompson, Terry’s Acting Commissary of Subsistence, said there were only 9 or 10 men found between Custer and the gully (June 27, 1876) Hammer,
Custer in ’76, 248.
From Brust/Pohanka/Barnard,
Where Custer Fell, pages 127 – 132—
• LT Wallace: “They had apparently tried to lead the horses in a circle on the point of the ridge and had killed them there and apparently made an effort for a final stand.” [127]
• SGT Kanipe: the horses “were ‘scattered all over the hill.’” [127]
• CPT Walter Clifford (7I): “slain horses, placed head to tail.” [128]
• LT DeRudio: “Five or six horses lay as if they had been led there and shot down for a barricade. These horses were all sorrels from Company C.” [128]
• CPT Michael Sheridan: “It was a rough point or narrow ridge not wide enough to drive a wagon on. Across that ridge were 5 or 6 horses apparently in line, and looked as if they had been killed for the purpose of resistance, but the remains were found in a confused mass.” [128]
• GAC, TWC, and “Cooke were among the dead on or just below the crest of the ridge.” [128]
• TWC “was found some 15 to 20 feet from his elder brother and somewhat higher on the ridge.” [128]
• Cooke was found just below the crest.
• GAC was actually buried on the ridge, but below the spot where his body was found. [132]
• “Post battle eyewitnesses described the top of Custer Hill as a small knoll, some 30 feet in diameter, an area roughly equivalent to the grass around the granite memorial shaft today.
About 10 bodies were found there, including that of General Custer near the southwestern rim of the elevation. Six horses lay in a convex perimeter on the east side….” [132]
From Hardorff,
Indian Views of the Custer Fight, 104, footnote 14—
“Survivors found the bodies of 42 men. Ten of these corpses lay on a little elevation, some 30 feet in diameter. Gen. George A. Custer was found near the southwestern edge of this elevation, behind a horse, his right leg resting across the body of an unidentified soldier, while his back was slumped against the bodies of Sgt. John Vickory, the regimental color bearer who lay face-up, and Chief Trumpeter Henry Voss, who lay across Vickory’s head, Voss laying facedown. Some 20 feet back from the general, toward the eastern perimeter of the elevation, lay… Tom Custer. Nearby lay LT … Cooke…. The fourth officer on the crest was LT Algernon A. Smith…. Of the remaining four enlistees, the names of only three are known: Private John Kennedy, of L Company, who lay near Cooke, and Privates John Parker and Edward C. Driscoll, of I Company, who were both found near the eastern ridge of the elevation.”
From Michno,
The Mystery of E Troop, pages 234 – 235—
The South Skirmish Line (SSL)—
• “Roughly 720 yards from the monument on Custer Hill to Deep Ravine following a line down from the monument to Marker 54, then along the Deep Ravine Trail, which meanders a bit, touches near most of the remaining grave markers, and continues to its end at the lower trail crossing near grave marker 7.”
• The actual “line” itself “begins about 200 yards down from Custer Hill at Markers 52, 53, and 54 in the upper reaches of Cemetery Ravine. It wavers down the ravine and then climbs up obliquely across the ravine’s south bank, following the grave markers in descending order. The Boyer cluster, Markers 33 – 39 [sic; should be, 33 – 34], is near the divide and about 180 yards from the start of the line. Markers 29 – 32 are the last stones on the Cemetery Ravine side of the divide and are about 200 yards from the head of the line. About 220 yards along the trail there is a soft crest where the trail begins to dip down into the upper Deep Ravine watershed. At 270 yards is another cluster, grave Markers 24 – 28. The South Skirmish Line has been heading roughly north to south, but at this point a branch of markers diverges to the southeast. This branch consists of 7 more or less isolated stones, numbers 20 – 23, 255, and 1 – 2. The latter two are down in the upper reaches of Deep Ravine, far above the headcut” [234 – 235].
• The formal SSL terminates just below the low divide in the 24 – 28 group of markers.
• Markers 7 – 19 are considered the “fugitive” markers.
• From Markers 24 – 28, “the southeast branch splits off, the trail and fugitive lines follow the markers another 190 yards to stone 7 at the edge of Deep Ravine. The total length of the line—formal and fugitive… is about 430 yards.”
Best wishes,
Fred.