Poetry Archives

On the bluff of the Little Big-Horn,
 At the close of a woful day,
Custer and his Three Hundred
 In death and silence lay.

Three Hundred to three Thousand!
 They had bravely fought and bled;
For such is the will of Congress
 When the White man meets the Red.

The White men are ten millions,
 The thriftiest under the sun;
The Reds are fifty thousand,
 And warriors every one.

So Custer and all his fighting men
 Lay under the evening skies,
Staring up at the tranquil heaven
 With wide, accusing eyes.

And of all that stood at noonday
 In that fiery scorpion ring,
Miles Keogh’s horse at evening
 Was the only living thing.

Alone from that field of slaughter,
 Where lay the three hundred slain,
The horse Comanche wandered,
 With Keogh’s blood on his mane.

And Sturgis issued this order,
 Which future times shall read,
While the love and honor of comrades
 Are the soul of the soldier’s creed.

He said—
    Let the horse Comanche
  Henceforth till he shall die,
Be kindly cherished and cared for
  By the Seventh Cavalry

He shall do no labor; he never shall know
  The touch of spur or rein;
Nor shall his back be ever crossed
  By living rider again

And at regimental formation
  Of the Seventh Cavalry,
Comanche draped in mourning and led
  By a trooper of Company

Shall parade with the Regiment!

    Thus it was
  Commanded and thus done,
By order of General Sturgis, signed
  By Adjutant Garlington.

Even as the sword of Custer,
  In his disastrous fall,
Flashed out a blaze that charmed the world
  And glorified his pall,

This order, issued amid the gloom
  That shrouds our army’s name,
When all foul beasts are free to rend
  And tear its honest fame,

Shall prove to a callous people
  That the sense of a soldier’s worth,
That the love of comrades, the honor of arms,
  Have not yet perished from earth.