The Little Bighorn Battlefield
The headstones mark the places where the bodies of
Custer and his men were found
Count di Rudio arrived in New York on February 22, 1864, penniless and alone, but with the will to survive and to fight for the Union cause. He met with Horace Greeley, the noted editor of the New York Tribune, and with Army officers and politicians who supported the antislavery movement. A passionate republican, he changed his name to Charles C. DeRudio, enlisted as a private in the Seventy-ninth Highlanders
New
York Volunteers Regiment, and distinguished himself in the siege
of
Petersburg in Virginia. In the fall of 1864, he was promoted second lieutenant
and transferred to the Second U.S. Colored Troops Regiment in Florida where he
remained until the end of the Civil War.
While
in Florida, DeRudio was reunited with his wife Eliza, their firstborn son
Hercules, and a very young daughter who unfortunately died of cholera soon after
her arrival in America. In 1869,
with the reorganization of the Army, Charles DeRudio was assigned to Lieutenant
Colonel George Armstrong Custer's Seventh Cavalry, which had recently been
organized at Fort Riley, Kansas. It is said that Custer, who sympathized with
the Democratic Party, reacted "like an angry lion" to DeRudio's
arrival. The Italian's noble origins and the rumours that circulated in the
Seventh regarding his revolutionary activities in Europe and his escape from
Cayenne made him the target of both curiosity, incredulity, gossip and sarcasm
by those who doubted the authenticity of DeRudio's extra- ordinary adventures.
DeRudio never denied his political past and often entertained the officers of
the Seventh with his "tales" of conspiracies, arrests and escapes. He
was soon nick-named "Count-no-account" by the sceptics of the Seventh
Cavalry. Still, DeRudio was a good officer, as historian Charles K. Mills wrote,
"He was not a chronic drinker or gambler. He did not absent himself from
his duty station for trivial reasons. He
did not shirk duty assignments and, above all else, he patently knew what he was
doing at the head of the column of enlisted men."
The
Seventh Regiment, how ever, was divided into those for and those against Custer.
DeRudio was too well seasoned by his life on the edge to be impressed by
Custer's antics, and he soon befriended the more mature Captain William F.
Benteen, Custer's nemesis. The fracture between Rudio and Custer was complete.
In the end however, Custer's enmity toward the Italian officer would turn out to
be a lifesaver for the Count.
In
1875, DeRudio was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant. The following
year, when the Seventh marched against the hostile Sioux and Cheyenne, DeRudio
was to assume, the command of Company E, the Gray Horse Troop that fell with
Custer at the Little Bighorn. Instead, on May 17,
1876,
Custer, in cahoots with General Alfred Terry, had DeRudio transferred to Captain
Miles Moylan's Company A, one of the three units that followed Major Marcus Reno
in the unsuccessful attack to the southern end of Sitting Bull's village.
On
June 25, 1876, the day of the historic battle, DeRudio crossed the Little
Bighorn with Major Reno's battalion and fought on the skirmish lines against the
Hunkpapa and Oglala warriors who had rushed to defend their women and children
from the bluecoats. When, under
pressure from growing numbers of warriors, Major Reno ordered the retreat back
across the Greasy Grass (as the Little Horn was called by the Indians), DeRudio
lost his horse and was left behind in the timber on the western bank of the
river. For thirty-six hours, Lieutenant DeRudio and Private Thomas O'Neill
remained hidden there, alternating hope and despair while witnessing the
scalping of their fallen comrades at the hands of enraged Sioux women.
The
story of DeRudio's "thrilling" adventures and final escape soon made
news. It was first published shortly after Custer's defeat in the New York
Herald on July 30, 1876, and reprinted in the Chicago Times on August 2, 1876
with these catchy headlines: "A Thrilling Tale - Romance of the Battle of
the
Little
Big Horn; DeRudio's Perilous Adventures - Graphic Details from the Pen of the
Lieutenant - Alone in the Burning Woods. . .."
Although
the two soldiers had a couple of dangerous encounters with the Indians, in the
early hours of June 27 they, too, were finally able to cross the river and
rejoin the Reno and Benteen command on Reno Hill.
There, DeRudio found the other Italian troopers who had followed the
Seventh to the Little Bighorn, beginning with trumpeter John Martin, born
Giovanni Crisostomo Martino in 1852 in Sala Consilina (in today's province of
Salerno), the last man to see Custer alive and the one who carried Lieutenant W.
W. Cooke's historic message
"Come on. Big village. Be quick. Bring pack."
to Captain Benteen. The other two Italians, Augusto DeVoto, born in Genoa in 1851, and Giovanni Casella (listed as John James in the rosters of the Seventh), born in Rome in 1848, had been assigned as escort to the pack train under Captain Tom McDougall and saw action only on Reno Hill. The Seventh Cavalry's Chief Musician also was Italian, but not present at the Little Bighorn: Felice Vinatieri, born in Turin in 1834, had followed Custer with the regimental band from Fort Lincoln to Supply Camp on the Yellowstone, where he later received the shocking news of the death of his commander. The only other Italian trooper in the Seventh, musician Frank Lombardi, born in Naples in 1848,
did
not take part in the 1876 campaign because he was left behind sick at Fort
Lincoln.
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The Little Bighorn Battlefield The headstones mark the places where the bodies of Custer and his men were found |
Those
who did survive the Battle of the Little Bighorn, nearly half the enlisted men
of the Seventh Cavalry, were rescued on the morning of June 27 by General
Terry's column. Only then they learned of the fate of Custer and of the two
hundred cavalrymen of the general's command whose mortal remains were found
scattered on what became known as Last Stand Hill and in nearby ravines
Unlike
DeRudio, O'Neill, and the more fortunate soldiers under Reno, Benteen and
McDougall, there were no survivors among the troopers of the five companies that
had followed the "glory hunter" to their death that hot Sunday
afternoon
Years
later, reflecting on his dangerous experience in the woods of the Little
Bighorn, Thomas O'Neill commented that "it was now, as much as any previous
time, that Lieut. DeRudio showed himself to be one of the coolest and bravest
men I ever saw."