Custer's Last Balls

It happened on June 25th, 1876, when Lt.Col. George Armstrong Custer pursued the Cheyenne and other Indians to the Battle of The Little Bighorn (River), that was to be his undoing. He had made his reputation in the Civil War, fifteen years earlier, and was still known as a daring and competent, if petulant, leader, who was racist to a fault. He'd turned down an Army offer to command the famous black regiment, The Buffalo Soldiers, as he had no more affinity for them than he did the Indians of the Plains, whom he was ultimately assigned to tame. He didn't create the famous phrase, "The Only good Indian is a Dead Indian".....that was uttered by General Phil Sheridan, but he surely would have toasted to it!~

On the fateful morning of Sunday, the 25th, Custer's troops and scouts spotted what looked like a large gathering of Indians and tepees below the ridge he was on, along the banks of the Little Big Horn river, in southeastern Montana. The trees covered up the true size of the group of assembled Blackfeet, Cheyenne, and Sioux tribes, which was later estimated at at least ten to fifteen thousand Indians, squaws, and children, with over twenty five hundred warriors — The largest concentration of Indians, from six tribes, that history has ever recorded. Despite the advice of his scouts, and objections of his next-in-command officers, he dispatched Capt. Benteen and Major Reno in different directions to surround the group, while he charged head-long into the center of them. He was met with wave after wave of mounted warriors, in numbers he couldn't imagine, to where he called a retreat back up to the top of the ridge. At this point, the soldiers jumped off their horses in order to fire more accurately, but this was another disastrous decision, as in holding the frightened and rearing horses' bridles in one hand, while trying to shoot their rifles with the other, most of the bullets went into the air. Some shot their horses, to hide behind, but they were totally overwhelmed. In the time it would take to have lunch, some Indian observers later said, Custer and his entire regiment of 210 soldiers lay dead. Chief Sitting Bull, who watched the fight from across the river, said it was over in the time it took him to smoke and finish his pipe.

What happened next is a matter of record. The warriors, accompanied by many of the squaws, who had dashed up the ridge in the melee, began stripping the soldiers naked, to not only get their usable clothing, but as a gesture of disrespect. They robbed the bodies of anything valuable, personal belongings, watches, and the like. Then the notorious mutilations began. Indians believed that unless a man remained wholly intact after death, that his spirit would be condemned to walk the Earth forever and not ascend into Heaven. So after the clothes were gone, the warriors systematically scalped the soldiers, as well as hacked off some of their arms and legs with their tomahawks. The squaws, for the most part, indulged themselves in the activity they particularly relished! They pulled knives from their belts and began cutting off the soldiers' penises and testicles. Some of the women cut off the parts separately, but most of them took a delight in cutting off the whole package with one swipe of the knife. Then they opened the soldier's mouths and shoved the severed cocks, head-first into their mouths and down their throats, immediately followed by the still attached balls and scrotums, which then would remain in he soldiers' mouths, bulging their cheeks and keeping their mouths open, — which is just the way they were later found! The Indians had heard of the soldiers' fear and disdain of them, and words they used to describe the warriors, especially the slang, "cock-suckers", which they remembered, and used prophetically as justice in this, and in a number of other Indian fights.

They knew well of Custer, and some, at least, recognized him as he lay dead, from his flowing blond hair, which was actually cut shorter than normal at the time. All the soldiers and officers were in their blue, 7th Cavalry uniforms, of course, while Custer, always the brazen iconoclast, was decked out in a yellow buckskin jacket and trousers, so he was easy to differentiate. They respected him, even though they knew of his vicious exploits against them in the past. So while he was stripped naked of his buckskin outfit, he was neither scalped nor sexually mutilated.....the only man in the entire regiment not to lose his balls!

While this was the Indians' greatest victory, in their long dealings with the White Man, it also proved their final undoing.

As the word spread throughout the West and all the way back to Washington, in this American Centennial year, 1876, of the stunning defeat of Custer's regiment, including the ensuing atrocities, all effort was put forth to pour many more soldiers into the fray, cancel all treaties with the Indians — not that the White Man ever paid them any heed anyway! — And by 1890, at The Massacre of Wounded Knee, the entire Indian nation was reduced to reservations, poverty, hunger, and squaller.