A Custer survivor in small Town Alberta.

Dyck, Allen

If I make the claim that I knew a survivor of Custer's last stand at the Little Big Horn River you probably have good reason to shake your head in disbelief. I was probably six years old when my friend, Ken, told me that the old man living in the shack by the abandoned creamery was an old Indian fighter. Ken was three years older than me, to the day, so he was three years wiser and should know. What were liver spots on the man's face and hands, Ken insisted, were old arrow wounds. I hardly knew anything about Indians at the time since there weren't any around.

I had pretty well forgotten about this little incident in my life until one day I happened to be browsing through a copy of The Memoirs of the Sunnyslope Pioneers. Many communities throughout the province of Alberta have produced these books which were collections of histories of the local pioneers.

Anyway, about half a dozen pages into the book there was a photograph of an old man with the identifying caption, John McAlpine, beneath it. That name and the photograph triggered a long forgotten event in my life. That was the man that my friend had told me about. A survivor of the 7th Cavalry under the command of George Armstrong Custer had turned up in Sunnyslope, a small town that I'd called home for many years.

The ill-fated battle took place on the southern banks of the Little Big Horn River in southern Montana on June 25th in 1876. Word that a survivor of Custer's last stand had taken up residence in Sunnyslope had no doubt landed on some editor's desk at the Calgary Herald. Before long a reporter drove out to the town to interview McAlpine and his story appeared in a 1938 edition of the Calgary Herald which was reprinted in the Sunnyslope memoirs. There would have been more interest in the story in the 1940s because in a way it seemed that it wasn't that long ago nor far away. After all Montana was just south of Alberta.

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John McAlpine's survival wasn't so much one of heroics but rather one of circumstances. He explained to the reporter that sixty men, including him, had been detailed to guard and bring up the wagon train while the main body of fighting men went ahead. But the wagon train was held up by rough trails and it had to cross several streams that were close to overflowing from the recent heavy rains. The wagon train was held up for two days but when it reached the place where there should have been an army they found only sickening corpses that had been horribly mutilated by the Indians. There was no sign of Indians anywhere.

It was a shocking and dreadful scene that the men in the wagon train had come across. Many of those mutilated bodies had been friends and acquaintances of those men in the wagon train. According to McAlpine there was indeed a survivor of the actual battle but it wasn't him. Custer had a half breed scout who was part Crow. When the scout saw how the battle was going he pulled a blanket off a dead Indian, wrapped it around himself and escaped in the confusion of the battle. John had talked to the man after the battle but he couldn't remember his name. That had been sixty-two years earlier.

The story I got was that the 7th Cavalry of the United States army had been commissioned to round up the Indians and move them back on to their reserve which they were generally reluctant to do. This operation was under the command of Custer. The tribes he was supposed to move included the Sioux and the Cheyenne under the command of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Gall. Custer ignored his own scout's estimation about the size of the encampment, figuring that the 650 men under his command could easily enough defeat the Indians. What Custer didn't know was that there was a camp of over 10,000 Indians of which 2,500 were warriors. It was the largest gathering of Indians in the history of the West.

Earlier Custer had split his men into three battalions, each with a specific assignment. Captain Benteen's battalion had been ordered to move westward in order to check the Sioux on the southern section of the river while Major Reno was to attack the southern end of the camp. Reno crossed the river but never succeeded in attacking the camp. Seeing that there were a lot more Indians than anyone had thought, he put his men into a defensive formation. During the river crossing and the fighting which was taking place in the trees he lost about one third of his men. Seeing the fool's errand he'd been sent on, Captain Benteen came to the aid of Major Reno.

The plan had been for Custer to come to Reno's aid. Instead of doing so he decided to attack at the middle of the camp which was four miles upstream from where Reno and Benteen had crossed the river and were trying to hold off the Indians until nightfall. Suddenly, Custer was surrounded by Indians. They swarmed across the river and drove him and his men to higher ground. The fight that followed quickly decimated Custer and his men. It was all over by the time anyone got there.

The American people could hardly believe that a band of Indians had defeated a supposedly brilliant general and his men. The native victory didn't bode well for them. American government policy hardened towards the Sioux so that they were driven even more relentlessly onto reserves which was a constant source of conflict between the government and the natives. The federal policy of acquisitiveness and blind to the needs and customs of the indigenous people was callous. The reserves they were forced onto were often of inferior land hardly able to feed a people who were not an agrarian race in the first place.

There were, of course, survivors under Benteen's and Reno's commands. The sixty men, including McAlpine, were also survivors. They had survived only because they had been detailed to bring up the slow moving wagon train so it had been a great shock to them when they'd come across that terrible scene of battle.

McAlpine had other close calls that he didn't mind telling about. One of his favourite stories is how he single handedly captured an entire Indian village, well, sort of. There had been reports of Indians attacking settlers and ranchers so a company of about 1,000 soldiers set out to roundup their horses.

In John's words;

   A number of green recruits had been
   taken on and many of them couldn't ride.
   Our trained horses were given to them
   and we were given new ones. I got a
   beautiful animal of racing stock that had
   been sold to the army because he was
   uncontrollable on the track.

   One day our scouts brought information
   that many of the Sioux who had been
   attacking settlers and ranchers were
   heading back onto the Standing Rock
   Reserve where they would be safe for the
   winter. About a thousand of us started
   out to get the Indian ponies so they would
   not be able to leave the reserve again.

   Next day, as we approached the reserve,
   a scout raced up to us to tell us to hurry
   that the Indians had heard we were
   coming and had started to run their
   horses into the hills to hide them. We
   were then ordered to proceed at a trot.

   In a few minutes another scout urged us
   to hurry before it was too late, so we were
   put on the gallop. My horse got the bit
   between his teeth and proceeded to run
   away with me. He soon passed the rest of
   the column and was out in front in spite
   of everything I could do. The trail was a
   narrow one through heavily wooded
   country and I was kept busy dodging the
   low branches.

   Before I realized what had happened, we
   were in a clearing headed straight for
   several thousand armed and mounted
   Sioux. My gallant steed dashed into the
   very centre of them and stopped. I didn't
   know what to do so I just sat and looked
   at them; and they just sat and looked back
   in poker-faced silence.

   They told me that it couldn't have been
   more than five minutes, but I'll swear it
   was hours before the rest of the troops
   galloped into view and I could breathe
   again.

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McAlpine left the United States army in 1880, came to Alberta in 1901, and eventually drifted into the small town of Sunnyslope in 1904. As he told the reporter from the Calgary Herald, he'd lived three lives, twenty-six years in the British Isles, twenty-seven in the United States, and so far thirty-seven years in Canada. He had been born near Glasgow, trained as a draper, and worked in a number of cities in England and Scotland.

The remainder of McAlpine's life was a far cry from the life he'd been leading in the army; not likely as exciting nor as colourful, but far less dangerous. Settling down in Sunnyslope he went into partnership with Dan McKinnon, a successful rancher in the area. Later on, he became the first secretary of the local improvement district in the Sunnyslope area and the town's sixth postmaster. He even became the official auditor for the Alberta Department of Education for many years. He was a well respected and highly esteemed senior of the town and province.

He was about 90 years old when he lived in that humble dwelling by the old creamery and that is the image that still sticks in my memory; an old man living there by himself. One wonders if that was by choice or if the services he had provided for the province were left without any compensation for the years he'd spent as a public servant.

Ranch Pupils in Alberta

It seems desirable that the parents or guardians of young men wishing to emigrate to the north-west of Canada and take up land there should be made aware of our recent experience in the matter; and we therefore hope that the publicity given to this letter by our paper may be the means of saving other persons from the serious loss of time and money which we have incurred.

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Being anxious that the lads, in whom we were interested, should have the benefit of an older colonist's advices and experiences for the first year of their new life, we wished to enter into an agreement with a suitable man. A so-called "Rancher" from Alberta, who was at home on a holiday, induced us to enter into an agreement with him, by which we paid him in advance a large premium, and he undertook to teach the pupils, in whom we were interested, all the practical and working and management of a ranche, and to lodge and board them for a year. His connection with a well-known family in Aberdeenshire led us to accept his statements without question. These implied that the ranche was very extensive, the stock large, the dairy profitable and the opportunities for learning complete. His partner, he said, kept the farm accounts, and it would be in an advantage to the pupils to learn book-keeping from him!

When the young men reached the so-called ranche they found the whole thing had been grossly exaggerated, that the "Rancher's" partner repudiated the idea of students coming for tuition of any sort, that there was no dairying, that, in short, the fees had been obtained by misrepresentation. There was nothing to learn. Legal advice had been taken in Alberta, and we are informed that we have no case against the "Rancher." The lads have decided, without our approval, to leave him, and take their chances of getting trained by workmen on some genuine place, and all three have already obtained this. Our premiums have been lost, the lads' time has been wasted, and we have no means of redress. Should any of your readers desire further particulars, the undersigned will be ready to give them; and we are, sir, very truly yours, Alex. Walker, JP, Aberdeen & E.R. Townsend, Cork.

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Aberdeen Evening Express, September 18, 1891

Allen Dyck is a resident of Grande Prairie and was formerly a homesteader in the Peace River area.