A Dispatch to Custer

The mission seemed simple enough. Lieutenant Lyman Kidder, with 10 soldiers and a friendly Siouxguide, was to take a message that General William T. Sherman had received at Fort Sedgwick, Kan.,and deliver it to Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, who was patrolling about 50 miles south of thefort. Lieutenant Kidder left with the dispatch on June 29, 1867, but never delivered it. Days later,Custer, at the head of his patrol column, came across a dead horse with Army markings. The troopssoon found another dead horse and then the bodies of Kidder and his men–scalped, decomposing andbristling with…