Medicine Tail Ford

As soldiers descended Medicine Tail Coulee, the Minniconjou and Cheyenne camps stood on the western bank. Archaeological evidence supports Indian testimony that the initial fighting took place on the flats near the river to the left and on the cutbank directly ahead. The Gray Horse Company, Company E, and possibly Company F approached this area, but Indian pressure quickly forced these troops to Battle Ridge. Three Crow scouts who had led Custer fired into the village from the bluff at left before departing. Trumpeter Giovanni Martini of Company H, 7th Cavalry, recalled seeing Custer’s command on the flat while Indians in the village rode toward the river waving buffalo hides, and the battalion appeared to be falling back from the river. Two Moons, a Northern Cheyenne, recalled that his people hurriedly crossed the river, some going up and some down, to get on each side of where the soldiers intended to come, and that when they reached the edge and stopped, the guns began to fire and soon roared like thunder.

Montana · United States