lysanderxiii
Member
Rash, maybe, but not an idiot.His orders were to reconnoiter the camp, and if there were superior numbers, fall back and wait for Terry and Gibbon, who were making haste to get there. He was given (and this was Terry's big mistake) leave to attack if he felt his numbers were sufficient to capture the camp with minimal bloodshed. This is where Custer's hubris is culpable; he (wrongly, as it turned out) believed that by capturing women and children the braves would fold and fall in line back to where they belonged. They were on Crow land, hence the many Crow scouts he had, whom he didn't believe anyway when they told him not to attack until he had more men. Instead when the force besieging Reno and Benteen heard Custer was almost at the camp, a good portion of them peeled off their attack, and wheeled to hit Custer's flank, and then quickly surrounded his men, dooming them, and allowing Reno and Benteen to withdraw to a hill they could defend, which they did while a blocking force whittled away at them until sometime on the 27th. The Indians performed the classic maneuver of divide and defeat in detail, but the terrain prevented them from a final assault, and Terry and Gibbon were able to relieve them, their numbers causing the Indians to fall back. In the meantime McDougall, who had struggled to catch up to Custer and couldn't, had linked up with Terry, so the relief force was also well-supplied.
True, to the extent they defeated Custer only, and bloodied Reno and Benteen's force pretty good. Had Custer not been a 'rash idiot' in this case, the outcome most likely would have either been an all-out battle on the 27th or 28th, with the Army winning, or more likely, the Lakota and associated tribes with them vacating Crow land and going back to their land after a parley sometime around the 28th.
When you take into account that all the commanders in the West knew of what happened the Col Joseph Reynolds after Powder River, he was Court Martialed. In the thumb-nail account that circulated among the posts, trimmed of all the exact details, and legal nuances of the trial, was that Reynolds was tasked with capturing an Indian village, and failed, and after taking only ten casualties (four dead, six wounded), retreated.
In short, aggression was the unwritten order of the day.
And, a battle on the 27th or 28th? Why would the Indians stick around for at least 36 to 50 hours after they discovered by the Cavalry? Custer manage some surprise on the village because he did attack immediately, but to expect 700 cavalry soldiers to sit 5 or 6 miles from an Indian village and not be detected within a few hours is silly.
A more likely scenario had Custer not attacked on the 25th would have been:
General Terry: "So, George, where is this 'big encampment of Indians'?"
Colonel Custer: "Well, they were down on the flat ground south of the river, we have about 20 or 30 under guard the valley to our right."
Terry: "I don't see any south of the river."
Custer: "Well, some of the slipped away the night of the 25th, the rest of them left the afternoon of the 26th. Our patrols only managed to catch a few, those are the ones we have now."
Terry: "Why didn't you attack when you had the element of surprise?"
Custer: "Well, there were a lot of them . . ."
Terry: "Did you go and count them, Colonel?"
Custer: "Errr, no, my Indian Scouts said there many have been as many as 7000 . . ."
Terry: "You know Scouts are prone to exaggerate. You're fired. And consider yourself lucky I don't Court Martial you for cowardice!"