264 SPORT AND TRAVEL 



stone hammers, but often slash their own bodies mer- 

 cilessly in their frenzy. 



A Sioux chief whom Mr. B. had known well in 

 former years, and whom he again met subsequently 

 to the disaster to General Custer's force, in giving 

 an account of the fight, in which he took part, said 

 that the Indians suffered little loss in this en- 

 counter, as they attacked the whites in overwhelm- 

 ing numbers from the ambushes into which they had 

 craftily led them, and killed them very quickly, 

 General Custer and his brother, who fought their 

 way to the top of the hill, where the monument now 

 stands, being amongst the last to fall. As every 

 corpse was buried exactly on the spot where it was 

 found, a white tombstone now marking each dead 

 man's resting-place, a survey of the battle-field gives 

 one a very good idea as to what took place on that 

 fatal day when Sitting Bull, for one last brief mo- 

 ment, stemmed the tide of the white man's conquest 

 of that vast continent where once the red man 

 reigned supreme. So complete was the ambush into 

 which they were led that, as is well known, not 

 a single member of General Custer's well-mounted 

 force escaped. One man, however, the Sioux chief 

 told Mr. B., got clean through the Indians, and, being 

 exceptionally well mounted, would in all probability 

 have escaped, when to their astonishment he turned 

 and came galloping back amongst them. Thinking 

 he had gone mad, he was not immediately killed, as 



