"I go with Custer"

Mark Kellogg was the only journalist to accompany the military expedition led by George Armstrong Custer to death and to eternal fame at the Little Bighorn River in present-day Montana. Kellogg was killed during the encounter, but some of his notes were recovered. A stone marker at the battle site commemorates his presence, but it is not at the place either where his body was found or where it was buried. Kellogg's remains were disinterred and placed in a mass grave a year after the event. Kellogg is shown in a photograph taken in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, when he was about thirty-three years of age. The music here, "Garryowen," was adopted as the marching song of the Seventh Cavalry. The photograph with it shows the staff of Civil War General Andrew Porter, which includes Custer reclining on the right.

 

Kellogg the only journalist with Custer

(This is the final of two related posts)

 

As a reporter and as an individual, I have spoken with any number of people I would categorize fascinating for one reason or another. Some intentionally attempt to mask themselves. With most, it requires uncountable hours of being together -- talking, doing things, sharing ideas and opinions -- to learn the inner-most characteristics of another person.

 

 Only superficial knowledge is known about Mark Kellogg. He was the only journalist present on a military expedition to Montana Territory in 1876 to drive "hostile" Sioux and Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians back to their reservations. He was a reporter for the Bismarck, North Dakota, Tribune. He was killed on Sunday, June 25, 1876, at the Little Bighorn River when a few thousand warriors overran a few hundred soldiers. Unlike most of the other fatalities that day, he was not a trooper in the U.S. Army Seventh Cavalry. His news dispatches were the only press coverage of George Armstrong Custer and his men in the days leading up to the battle during a march that began on May 17 at Fort Abraham Lincoln in Dakota Territory.

 

Marcus Henry Kellogg was born March 31, 1831, in Brighton, Ontario, Canada, the third of ten children. His family moved a number of times and eventually settled in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where Kellogg learned to operate a telegraph and went to work first for the Northwestern Telegraph Company and later for the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company.

 

He married Martha J. Robinson in 1861, and the couple had two daughters, Cora Sue and Martha Grace. During the American Civil War, Kellogg became the assistant editor for the La Crosse Democrat newspaper. He unsuccessfully ran for the office of city clerk in 1867 and he played shortstop on one of the town's baseball teams.

 

Kellogg's wife died in 1867. He left his daughters with his wife's sister, Lillie, and began drifting around the upper Midwest, working as a reporter and editorial assistant in places like Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Brainerd, Minnesota. While living in Brainerd, he ran for election to the Minnesota Legislature, but was defeated. He also worked as a "stringer" -- a correspondent -- for the St. Paul, Minnesota, Dispatch, with most articles published under the pen name of "Frontier."

 

Kellogg arrived in Bismarck, North Dakota, in the early 1870s, and in 1873 helped Clement A. Lounsberry found the Bismarck Tribune. Even though Kellogg was only an editorial assistant for the paper, he substituted for Lounsberry as editor of the Tribune's second, third and fourth editions.

 

When Lounsberry learned that a military column including the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment commanded by Lieutenant Colonel G.A. Custer would soon leave nearby Fort Abraham Lincoln for the Montana Territory, he asked to accompany Custer and provide news coverage. Custer had been ordered not to allow any reporters to accompany the expedition, but he had a way of avoiding orders which did not suit his plans and told Lounsberry to prepare for departure. As it turned out, Lounsberry's wife became ill, so the editor asked Kellogg to take his place, expecting Kellogg would cover nothing more than a sensational military victory.

 

Kellogg sent three dispatches back to Lounsberry, the last one four days before the battle when they were near the mouth of the Rosebud River. His last dispatch read, "By the time this reaches you we would have met and fought the red devils, with what result remains to be seen. I go with Custer and will be at the death." Kellogg was not predicting his own death or Custer's defeat; instead, "at the death" is a phrase borrowed from fox hunting meaning "present at the kill" of the pursued.

 

Four days after that dispatch, the battle of the Little Bighorn was fought, resulting in the deaths of Custer and nearly 300 soldiers, scouts and contract civilians riding with him, including Kellogg.

 

A force of infantry under the command of Colonel John Gibbon arrived at the site of the battle the next day and, along with troopers from other elements of the Custer column, helped bury the dead. Four days after the battle, a detail found the body of a civilian in the high grass near the Little Bighorn River. Gibbon reported, "The clothing was not that of a soldier." The man had been partially scalped and was missing an ear. A distinctive strap rigged to the instep of one boot convinced some the body was that of Kellogg. Gibbon accepted the identification and noted that Kellogg's body was found in a ravine where a number of men from Troop E died. In all likelihood, the mule he was riding skittered at the sound of gunfire, Kellogg was hit and fell. He was forty-three at the time of his death.

 

When Lounsberry learned of the defeat of Custer's force and Kellogg's death, he published a special edition of the Tribune on July 6, 1876. The edition carried the first full account of the battle. Lounsberry also telegraphed the news, along with Kellogg's correspondence, to a number of eastern newspapers, including The New York Herald. Two letters written by Kellogg were published posthumously by the Herald on July 11, 1876.

 

As a newspaper stringer whose reports were picked up around the country, Kellogg is considered the first Associated Press correspondent to die in the line of duty.

 

Some of Kellogg's diary and notes survived the battle and these, along with his news accounts, are one of the primary historical sources for information on the days preceding the battle. His notes are now in the possession of the North Dakota State Historical Society. His satchel, pencil and eyeglasses are on display in the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

 

Before his death, Kellogg had been described as brave and daring and athletic, with a strong sense of humor. Looking at his photograph taken when he was about thirty-three years of age, he appears to me to have been a very serious man.

 

There might be a second post coming here about Kellogg. I recently obtained a 1996 book about him by Sandy Barnard entitled, "I Go With Custer." What additional details this book and other materials might provide me will determine if I write more or allow the only journalist to travel with and to die with Custer at the Little Bighorn to pass on into history.

I have a habit of sort of turning an interview into an interrogation, and think it would have been interesting in the least and fascinating at best to have done that with Kellogg some evening while sharing a bottle of brandy .... in any case, as a fellow journalist, his character and his thoughts pose a mystery to me .... almost certainly one which never can be solved ....

 

But, in a figurative way of looking at it, it is worth a shot because what is life without a few points of fascination which involve mystery and what is mystery without a driving curiosity to solve it?