John Burkman

Left With the Pack Train:

John Burkman, Custer's Striker

Introduction

On June 25, 1876, a private in the Seventh Cavalry named John Burkman was, by the best available evidence, posted with the regiment's pack train. His commander, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, was leading five companies toward the Lakota and Cheyenne village on the Little Bighorn River. Burkman had spent several years as Custer's striker, the army's term for an enlisted man who served an officer as a personal attendant. His assignment that day kept him out of the fighting that destroyed Custer's column. He lived another forty-nine years, died by gunshot in Billings, Montana, and was buried at the battlefield.

The documentary trail between those points is thin. Most of what the public knows about Burkman comes from one book, published nearly a decade after his death and built from notes taken by a Billings acquaintance. This article sets out what the surviving records establish, which claims rest on a single source, and where the evidence stops.

The Record Before 1876

The most detailed roster of men who were with the Seventh Cavalry at the time of the battle is maintained by Diane Merkel on the research site littlebighorn.info. It gives Burkman's birth as January 10, 1839, in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. It lists his prior occupation as teamster and records his enlistment on August 16, 1870, at Limestone Creek, Kansas, as a private in Company L (Merkel, "Seventh Cavalry: Surnames Beginning with B"). The same compiler's list of regimental veterans who later lived or died in the region records the nickname by which he is better known, Old Neutriment (Merkel, "Members of the Seventh Cavalry").

These entries are specific, but they come from one compiled source. The page consulted does not name the muster rolls or enlistment papers behind them, and no second source examined here independently confirms the birth date, the enlistment date, or the company assignment. The roster also does not explain how a Company L private came to attend Custer personally.

The Striker in the Archive

Three photographs in the collection of Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument show Burkman at work and in old age. The earliest is cataloged as circa 1873 and attributed, with the catalog's qualifier "probably," to the Yellowstone Campaign of that year. It shows Custer seated outside a tent with three Indian scouts, among them Bloody Knife, and with Burkman, whom the catalog identifies as Custer's striker. The photographer is unknown (Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, "Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer Seated").

A second print, dated circa 1875, shows Burkman holding the reins of Custer's horses Dandy and Vic, with four Scotch staghounds behind him. A penciled notation on the back names the horses and ends with the name E. B. Custer, presumably Elizabeth Bacon Custer, the colonel's wife (Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, "John Burkman with Dandy and Vic"). Such images fit the work the term striker implies: care of an officer's horses and dogs, and attendance on him in camp. They do not document his duties on campaign, and neither catalog entry says how long he held the post.

The third photograph, circa 1923, shows Burkman, then in his eighties, seated in front of his house. A typed note glued to the back is addressed to Mrs. Custer and asks her to take him "as I am," closing with the self-description of a true servant (Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, "John Burkman in Front"). The catalog does not say whether the note was sent. It does indicate that, nearly half a century after the battle, Burkman was addressing Custer's widow.

June 25, 1876

The National Park Service describes how Custer divided the regiment that day. Captain Benteen took three companies to scout to the south. Major Reno took three to cross the river and strike the village. An enlarged Company B, about 130 men, stayed with the pack train. Custer took the remaining five, C, E, F, I, and L, about 210 men, and turned north. The plan, in the Service's words, was to approach from three directions and force the village to surrender (Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, "Lieutenant Colonel Custer's Battalion"). When the fighting went badly, Custer sent a message asking Benteen to come quickly and bring ammunition packs, which shows what the pack train carried.

Burkman's company, L, was one of the five that went with Custer. The roster, however, does not place him in that column. It lists his role in the battle as "with pack train and hilltop fight" (Merkel, "Seventh Cavalry: Surnames Beginning with B"). The two accounts reconcile if Burkman was detached from Company L to travel with the pack, but neither says so, and the reconciliation is an inference. A publisher's description of a modern edition of his recollections states that he was told to remain with the pack train, which fits this reading but is not an independent record (Wagner and O'Donnell).

What happened to Custer's companies is better documented. The Park Service reports that Companies C, I, and L were overrun on Calhoun Hill and in the coulee below it, and that Custer and the remaining three companies were driven back toward Last Stand Hill and destroyed. The bodies of close to two hundred men were found on June 27, after General Alfred Terry's column relieved Reno and Benteen. The "hilltop fight" in the roster's phrasing refers to the defense that Reno's and Benteen's men and the pack train held until that relief arrived. Burkman survived because he was not with his company.

After the Army

The sources consulted do not establish when Burkman left military service, where he lived in the decades after 1876, or when he settled in Billings. The 1923 photograph, titled for his house, places him there in old age. The roster records his death in Billings on November 6, 1925, by a gunshot wound, classifies it as suicide, and lists his burial in Custer National Cemetery at Crow Agency, Section A, Grave 1463 (Merkel, "Seventh Cavalry: Surnames Beginning with B"). The compiler's separate list of regional veterans repeats the date, the cause, and the burial place (Merkel, "Members of the Seventh Cavalry").

The Billings Gazette covered the death on pages 1 and 2 of its November 7, 1925, issue and returned to it on November 8, 10, and 11 ("John Burkman Obituaries"). Informal online discussion gives other dates, but the newspaper's first report on November 7 is consistent with a death the day before. The Gazette pages are available in the source consulted only as page images, so this article relies on them for the dates of coverage, not for their content.

The Book and Its Makers

Burkman's reputation rests largely on Old Neutriment, published in Boston by Ruth Hill in 1934 under the name of Glendolin Damon Wagner. The University of Nebraska Press reprinted it in 1989 with an introduction by the historian Brian W. Dippie, and library records also credit an introduction by Elizabeth B. Custer (Wagner, Old Neutriment, Holy Cross; Wagner, Old Neutriment: Memories, Penn Libraries). The title is Burkman's nickname. Publisher descriptions of a later edition state that I. D. "Bud" O'Donnell, a Billings man, befriended Burkman in the 1920s and took extensive notes of his memories, which Wagner then published (Wagner and O'Donnell).

O'Donnell himself is well documented. Born in Ontario in 1860, he came to Montana in 1882, worked for the Billings family's properties west of Billings, and turned the Hesper Farm into a model operation. He served as an irrigation supervisor for the federal Reclamation Service and sat on the Parmly Billings Memorial Library board for forty-four years from its founding in 1901. He died in January 1948 at age 87 (Billings Public Library; Montana Historical Society). The Billings Public Library also reports that in 1928 he began gathering oral histories from fellow pioneers, a project that became his Montana Monographs. Because Burkman died in 1925, the Burkman notes, if the description is accurate, belong to an earlier and separate effort.

The chain of transmission matters. Burkman's recollections reach readers through O'Donnell's notes and Wagner's prose, and no copy of the notes turned up in the sources consulted. The book is best read as a reconstruction filtered through two intermediaries. It is useful as evidence of how one enlisted man remembered the Custers, and it is not a reliable guide to details that cannot be checked elsewhere.

Notes on Evidence and Discrepancies

Four matters are unsettled or rest on a single source. First, Burkman's birth date and place, enlistment date, and company assignment come from one roster. Second, the roster's August 1870 enlistment implies nearly six years of service before the battle, while a description of the 1934 book says he served Custer for nine years (Wagner and O'Donnell). This article follows the roster and the 1870 to 1876 span but cannot resolve the difference. Third, the pack-train assignment rests on the roster and on a publisher's description that is not independent of the book's own account. Fourth, the article draws on catalog and publisher descriptions of Old Neutriment, not its full text, and on Gazette page images that could not be read for content. A newsletter article by R. Dutch Hardorff, "Faint Images of the Past: Burkman's Last View of Custer" (Little Big Horn Associates Newsletter, March 1988), is listed on the research site but was not consulted. It is the obvious next source for anyone pursuing the subject.

Works Cited

Billings Public Library. "I.D. O'Donnell." Billings Public Library, https://billingslibrary.org/DocumentCenter/View/7862/ODonnellIgnatiusD. Accessed 1 Nov. 2026.

"John Burkman Obituaries." The Billings Gazette, 7 Nov. 1925, pp. 1-2; 8 Nov. 1925, p. 11; 10 Nov. 1925, p. 3; 11 Nov. 1925, p. 12. Seventh Cavalry, edited by Diane Merkel, littlebighorn.info, https://littlebighorn.info/Obituaries/JohnBurkman.htm. Accessed 1 Nov. 2026.

Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. "John Burkman in Front of His House." Circa 1923. Photograph, LIBI_00019_00177. NPGallery, National Park Service, https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/9ebd5252bc7e40888da2f0767ad9685f. Accessed 1 Nov. 2026.

---. "John Burkman with Dandy and Vic [George Armstrong Custer's Horses] and Four Hounds." Circa 1875. Photograph, LIBI_00019_00173. NPGallery, National Park Service, https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/f401cf33fb154f2abaf2b4c63c87762f. Accessed 1 Nov. 2026.

---. "Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer Seated in Front of a Tent with Three Indian Scouts and John Burkman." Circa 1873. Photograph, LIBI_00312_11106. NPGallery, National Park Service, https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/c04977bc34df4459ae234e529cc239b3. Accessed 1 Nov. 2026.

---. "Lieutenant Colonel Custer's Battalion." National Park Service, updated 16 Sept. 2025, https://home.nps.gov/libi/learn/historyculture/lt-col-custer-s-battalion.htm. Accessed 1 Nov. 2026.

Merkel, Diane. "Members of the Seventh Cavalry Who Later Lived and/or Died in the LBH Region (Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota)." Seventh Cavalry Regiment, littlebighorn.info, https://littlebighorn.info/Articles/NearLBH.htm. Accessed 1 Nov. 2026.

---. "Seventh Cavalry: Surnames Beginning with B." littlebighorn.info, 2026, https://littlebighorn.info/Cavalry/NameB.htm. Accessed 1 Nov. 2026.

Montana Historical Society. "I. D. O'Donnell." Montanans, Montana Historical Society Education, https://mhs.mt.gov/education/Montanans/ODONNELL.pdf. Accessed 1 Nov. 2026.

Wagner, Glendolin Damon. Old Neutriment. Ruth Hill, 1934. Library catalog record, College of the Holy Cross, https://library.holycross.edu/Record/b1099768. Accessed 1 Nov. 2026.

---. Old Neutriment: Memories of the Custers. Introduction by Elizabeth B. Custer, introduction to the Bison Books edition by Brian W. Dippie, U of Nebraska P, 1989. Library catalog record, Penn Libraries, https://find.library.upenn.edu/catalog/999949853503681. Accessed 1 Nov. 2026.

Wagner, Glendolin D., and I. D. "Bud" O'Donnell. Custer's Striker (Expanded, Annotated). Independently Published, 2016. Google Books, https://books.google.ae/books/about/Custer_s_Striker_Expanded_Annotated.html?id=kXkEMQAACAAJ&redir_esc=y. Accessed 1 Nov. 2026