Comanche (horse)

Comanche was a mixed-breed horse who survived the ambush of George Armstrong Custer's detachment of the United States 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn (June 25, 1876).

Captain Myles Keogh of the 7th Cavalry liked the 15 hands (60 inches, 152 cm) gelding and bought him for his personal mount, to be ridden only in battle.

The horse known as 'Comanche,' being the only living representative of the bloody tragedy of the Little Big Horn, June 25th, 1876, his kind treatment and comfort shall be a matter of special pride and solicitude on the part of every member of the Seventh Cavalry to the end that his life be preserved to the utmost limit.

Wounded and scarred as he is, his very existence speaks in terms more eloquent than words, of the desperate struggle against overwhelming numbers of the hopeless conflict and the heroic manner in which all went down on that fatal day.

The commanding officer of Company I will see that a special and comfortable stable is fitted up for him, and he will not be ridden by any person whatsoever, under any circumstances, nor will he be put to any kind of work.

He "asked the usual questions which his subject acknowledged with a toss of his head, a stamp of his foot and a flourish of his beautiful tail."

His official keeper, the farrier John Rivers of Company I, Keogh's old troop, saved "Comanche's reputation" by answering more fully.

On the Custer battlefield (actually Fort Abraham Lincoln) three of the balls were extracted from his body and the last one was not taken out until April '77…Comanche is not a great horse, physically talking; he is of medium size, neatly put up, but quite noble looking.

As historian Evan S. Connell writes in Son of the Morning Star: Comanche was reputed to be the only survivor of the Little Bighorn, but quite a few Seventh Cavalry mounts survived, probably more than one hundred, and there was even a yellow bulldog.

Comanche lived on another fifteen years, and when he died, he was stuffed and to this day remains in a glass case at the University of Kansas.