{"id":17888,"date":"2026-06-25T21:03:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T21:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=17888"},"modified":"2026-06-25T21:03:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T21:03:13","slug":"a-rifle-toting-war-reporter-died-with-custer-at-little-bighorn-150-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=17888","title":{"rendered":"A rifle-toting war reporter died with Custer at Little Bighorn 150 years ago"},"content":{"rendered":"

By MEAD GRUVER<\/strong><\/p>\n

They\u2019ve died from artillery fire, aircraft crashes, gunfire, disease \u2014 even by execution \u2014 in conflict zones and elsewhere around the world.<\/p>

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Over the 180-year history of The Associated Press, 38 journalists have fallen on the job while working for the independent not-for-profit news organization.<\/p>\n

Thursday marks the 150th anniversary of the very first: Mark Kellogg, one of five civilians killed alongside Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and his men at the Battle of Little Bighorn.<\/p>\n

Kellogg, 43, was embedded with Custer\u2019s troops. He was reporting for The Bismarck Tribune and New York Herald \u2014 the AP circulated his reports across the country \u2014 when Custer underestimated the size of a Sioux village that he attacked.<\/p>\n

Custer and his outnumbered men made a last stand on a hill. There, they were annihilated by Native American defenders. Kellogg\u2019s scalped body was found not far away.<\/p>\n

His last published dispatch read in part: \u201cI go with Custer and will be at the death.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was more of an attempt at poetry than prophecy. \u201cAt the death\u201d is a foxhunting term for the end of the hunt, suggesting Kellogg expected Custer to prevail.<\/p>

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Still, Kellogg\u2019s final words and fate circulated far and wide through his employers and the AP. It gave the obscure, part-time journalist \u2014 a widower who worked a variety of jobs to support his two daughters \u2014 fame in death.<\/p>\n

He got to know Custer. He covered the campaign. He mingled with the soldiers and interviewed them at their camps, historian Sandy Barnard said.<\/p>\n

Yet in other ways, Kellogg was much different from modern journalists. He carried a rifle into action, Barnard pointed out. And he made no attempt to avoid not just bias but racism against Native Americans, whom he called \u201cred devils.\u201d<\/p>

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\u201cDuring the last stages of the campaign, Kellogg was probably more of a soldier than he was a newspaper man,\u201d said Barnard, author of a Kellogg biography and other books on the Battle of the Little Bighorn.<\/p>

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