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August DeVoto's Story of the Battle
A Seventh Cavalry survivor's account of the Battle of the Little Bighorn

THE AUGUST L. DEVOTO NARRATIVE

Description of the Reno Fight

ON THE 22nd of June, 1876, the 7th United States Cavalry was camped on the Yellowstone River, near the mouth of the Rosebud Creek.

That afternoon General Custer, in command, left General Terry and started up the Rosebud, to go and make short work of Sitting Bull and his band of Indians. We had no wagons to haul supplies, so [we] used pack mules; we had about one hundred and fifty mules. We soldiers did the packing and took care of the mules.

We traveled up the Rosebud all that day until nearly dark. The next day, the 23rd, we started out at about five o'clock in the morning, and travelled all that day until dark. The morning of the 24th, we started upstream and struck the Indian trail, which was getting larger and larger as we went along. That afternoon we got near the head of the Rosebud. We camped there that night. We broke camp that night between twelve and one o'clock; it was so dark that I could scarcely see the man riding in front of me. His mule had some camp kettles strapped on the pack saddle, and I followed the noise made by the kettles hitting against the saddle. We travelled that way until about daylight and then halted for a rest. We slept about an hour...