Distinctly Montana Magazine

52 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • S U M M E R 2 0 2 5 pear and disappear instantaneously at disparate points on the battlefield. Those factors contributed to grossly exaggerated estimates of enemy combatants, ones advanced in the battle's immediate aftermath and later publications, by Army officers and embedded newspaper columnists. By contrast, there is no question that combat in the "Gap" and Kollmar Creek sectors factored disproportionately in the historical record and outcome of Rosebud. Kollmar Creek, an in- significant and typi- cally dry watercourse, transects the western portion of the battle- field. On that fateful day, it earned a host of ominous nicknames, the most foreboding of which was con- ferred by Captain Guy Henry, who was grievously wounded there. Henry appropriately characterized the area as the "Valley of the Shadow of Death." Some 210 members of the Third Cavalry, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel William Royall, navigated a torturous, 700- yard gauntlet from their initial position on Kollmar's southern crest to Kollmar Crossing. Their retreat, which met with pro- gressively increased resistance, culminated in the fiercest fight- ing of the entire engagement. This portion of the battlefield was also the one area in which the Lakota possessed a decided nu- merical advantage. With every fourth soldier sequestered as a horse holder, Roy- all's four companies could muster a skirmish line that included no more than 170 troops. By the time they approached Kollmar Crossing, Royall's command faced a hornet's nest of highly mo- tivated warriors, one that Lieutenant James Foster of Company I estimated at "five to seven hundred Indians." Regimental officers who were also Civil War veterans agreed that "they never in their experience saw anything hotter" than ROSEBUD BATTLEFIELD STATE PARK

• Cover