

DESTRUCTION OF GENERAL OUSTER'S COMMAND. 95 



surprised and hunted by a very superior force of 

 Indians, for the place was located in the midst of a 

 thicket of bushes bordering the river, where a success- 

 ful defence must have been exceedingly difficult, and 

 where the chances were evidently all upon the side 

 of the Indians. In fact they would not have attacked 

 at all unless they had been. 



It is not a little remarkable that General Custer, 

 the officer who relates this history, was himself des- 

 tined to perish shortly afterwards, in much the same 

 sort of way, while in command of a very much larger 

 force of United States troops. This event took place 

 on June 25th, 1876, on Little Horn River, in Montana, 

 and was one of the most disastrous engagements of 

 the kind which has befallen the U.S. Army during 

 modern times, General Custer and his whole force 

 consisting of some 300 officers and soldiers having 

 been almost completely destroyed by the united bands 

 of Sioux Indians, some 2,500 strong, led by their 

 celebrated War Chief, " Sitting Bull. " In this case also 

 the troops fell into an ambush, and after a most gallant 

 defence were eventually overpowered and hardly a man 

 escaped to tell the tale. Then again as regards Comstock, 

 the scout of whose sagacity we have related some anec- 

 dotes, he too was in the end killed by the Indians in time 

 of peace, while returning home from an Indian village 

 after nightfall. A party of about a dozen young Indians 

 suddenly attacked and murdered him for the sake of 

 a beautiful white-handled revolver which the Indians 

 had long looked upon with covetous eyes, as they 

 supposed it to be of extraordinary value, because he 

 constantly carried it, and always refused all offers made 

 for it, no matter how tempting they might have been. 



