"Lonesome" Charley Reynolds (March 20, 1842–June 25, 1876) was a scout in the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment who was killed at the

Battle of the Little Bighorn The Battle of the Little Bighorn, known to the Lakota and other Plains Indians as the Battle of the Greasy Grass, and also commonly referred to as Custer's Last Stand, was an armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota Sioux, Nor ...

in the

Montana Territory The Territory of Montana was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from May 26, 1864, until November 8, 1889, when it was admitted as the 41st state in the Union as the state of Montana. Original boundaries ...

. He was noted as an expert marksman, frontiersman and hunter. He had also been a scout with Buffalo Bill.

Biography

Charles Alexander Reynolds was born in Stephensburg, Kentucky. His family moved to Abingdon, Illinois, and he attended Abingdon College for 3 years. He was the son of a physician and moved with his family to Pardee, Kansas where his father had setup his practice. Soon after, in 1860, he was hired to be a Pony Express rider. After the Pony Express, he served in the 10th Kansas Infantry Company B during the Civil War. After the war, he became known as "Lonesome" Charley Reynolds due to his drifting from state to state and job to job, and how he kept his life's details private. In 1865, he was a trader; in 1866, a buffalo hunter; and so on. In 1867, he had a quarrel with an Army officer at Fort McPherson, and when it was done, the officer only had one arm left. Reynolds left that area and became a hunter and guide. He met

George Armstrong Custer George Armstrong Custer (December 5, 1839 – June 25, 1876) was a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars. Custer graduated from West Point in 1861 at the bottom of his class, b ...

in 1869. He was soon a scout for Custer's U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment. During

Custer's 1874 Black Hills Expedition The Black Hills Expedition was a United States Army expedition in 1874 led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer that set out on July 2, 1874 from modern day Bismarck, North Dakota, which was then Fort Abraham Lincoln in the Dakota Terri ...

, he carried unaccompanied the dispatches to

Fort Laramie Fort Laramie (founded as Fort William and known for a while as Fort John) was a significant 19th-century trading-post, diplomatic site, and military installation located at the confluence of the Laramie and the North Platte rivers. They joined ...

that made the discovery of gold public. The night before the

, he had premonitions and gave away his personal items to the soldiers. As they were riding toward the Indian village prior to the battle, Reynolds, who never drank, asked interpreter Fred Gerard for some

whiskey Whisky or whiskey is a type of distilled alcoholic beverage made from fermented grain mash. Various grains (which may be malted) are used for different varieties, including barley, corn, rye, and wheat. Whisky is typically aged in wooden ...

. He also indicated that he had never felt so discouraged or depressed in his life. He was later killed in the battle. Some accounts suggest that he may have been defending a doctor who was treating a wounded soldier. His body was buried on the battlefield and his grave crudely marked. Later, as with all of Custer's slain soldiers and civilians, a white marble slab was erected to mark the spot where he fell. His remains, and those of his comrades, were collected and reinterred on Custer Hill. An

obelisk An obelisk (; from grc, ὀβελίσκος ; diminutive of ''obelos'', " spit, nail, pointed pillar") is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape or pyramidion at the top. Originally constructed by An ...

commemorates the dead.

References

;Bibliography * * * *

External links

Minnesota Historical Society
– A diary kept by Charles Reynolds as a member of the Seventh U.S. Cavalry during the Big Horn Expedition.

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Reynolds, Charley 1842 births 1876 deaths People from Warren County, Illinois People of the Great Sioux War of 1876 American military personnel killed in the American Indian Wars Battle of the Little Bighorn