Battle of Little Big Horn River

[AR-15Nutt]

The battle was fought almost 20 years before .30-30 was introduced.

no kidding ! yes, i know that, but i just wondered if those brass, if found raised any questions in the minds of those who done the "dig", when was this Archeology of the battle site done, anyone know ? if done in the last 10 , those brass would have been well aged, 50+ years they laid there in the elements.

 

[4v50 Gary]

Jolly Roger said:
He said that " The Crow are like the Jews of the Native Americans" . The Crow are still regarded with distain for the alliance the elders made when they realized that the Government was going to be the long term victor in the conflict.

I learned the same thing when someone came running up to me and urged me to break up a fight amongst the Crow and the Sioux Indians. What are they fighting about I asked? Well, many are still unhappy about the Crow's scouting for the cavalry. Anyhow, the use of opposing indigenous people of one tribe against another goes back to Jamestown. Capt. John Smith recommended it as a means of fighting against them.

 

[jamesinalaska]

@ Leanwolf post #36

Yes. In the book Wooden Leg consistently refered to that area as the Greasy Grass River.

 

[JFrame]

This has really become quite an epic thread...

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[Red Wind]

Was it Nathan Bedford Forrest that said, "Get there first with the most"?

Yes, as we see here.

Get there first with the most men.
Reported by General Basil W. Duke and Richard Taylor
Often erroneously reported as "Git thar fustest with the most mostest." In The Quote Verifier : Who Said What, Where, and When (2006) by Ralph Keyes, p. 272, the phrase he used has also been reported to have been "I always make it a rule to get there first with the most men" and "I just took the short cut and got there first with the most men."

 

[Kleanbore]

A fire in 1984 enabled archeological examination of the site in 1984, 1985, 1989, 1993, 1994, and 1996.

Not all of the cartridge cases and bullets found date from the battle. A "case in point", if you will: .22 WMR cases.

 

[Malamute]

The difference in cartridge cases wasnt simply brass or copper. The copper, inside primed Benet type cases were made folded head style like rimfire ammo. It wouldnt be much of a surprise if an extractor tore through a rim. It was deemed by the Army to be more waterproof than the outside primed "solid head" (what we today generally call balloon head) shells. There was also some change in the chamber, I recall reading that there were letters written at the time about the improved chambers being conical rather than cylindrical (slightly tapered rather than non-tapered).

The "firepower" advantage of repeaters was not entirely ignored by the military thinkers of the time, though I'm not sure I completely agree with their rationale. Their perspective was that in a longer time frame, taking reloading the repeater into the equation, the difference in number of shots fired over say, a 5 minute period of time, wasnt very great. They also prefered the greater power of the single shots for longer distances. No repeaters at the time had the power level of the single shots.

It isnt just recent archeological work that lets us know what happened. The Indians left pretty soon after the battle. I believe (dont recall exactly, and been a longw hile since I studied on it) that the other troops went over the battlefield after the Indians left. The Army also came in shortly afterward, within a couple weeks, and buried the dead. I think it would be apparent if a gunshot would was self inflicted within that time frame, as well as the angle.

I recall seeing info on digs that mentioned later cartridge cases from hunters or whatever later users had been over the area. Its pretty easy to date cases by headstamp type, no matter how aged they look. It wouldnmt have caused any great consternation by any means to find later cases, and seemed fairly common from what I recall.

 

[geim druth]

Wouldn't the Sioux pick up some of the brass?

I remember reading somewhere about the Indians reloading their spent cartridges.

 

[CoalTrain49]

A conservative estimate from archaeological research suggests at least 415 guns were used by the Indians on the battlefield. So I would say they had a lot of guns. Hard to say how much ammo they had but it sounds like they had enough.

http://www.nps.gov/mwac/libi/firearm.html

Custer wore an Arrow shirt.

 

[Cee Zee]

Custer's experience with the Cheyene at Was hita River no doubt influenced his thinking about how Indians reacted when attacked. That was nothing but a sheer panic situation and many Indians died with almost no effort at fighting back. Custer believed that no matter how big the camp that the plains Indians would still panic. He never conceived of the idea that they might form an effective defense.

I don't know how accurate the account was but in the book, "Little Big Man" the attack at Little Bighorn got bogged down because they attacked up a creek bed that got increasingly narrow. The walls were high at the point the creek bed area got so narrow that turning around to retreat was pretty much impossible. From their position up on the banks the Indians rained down arrows and gun fire at the troops below. I don't have any proof whatsoever that it happened that way but the terrain appears to support a claim of that type. Supposedly the book was based on the recollections of a white man who lived among the Cheyene but I'm sure that was pure fiction. Still this aerial photo shows how some of Custer's troops could have found themselves trapped essentially and blocked from escaping by their own troops.



from http://v1.brucedale.com/bighorn/pages/ 29-17.htm

In a situation of this type it would be easy to use arrows very effectively. No doubt though. Custer's conceit was his downfall. He wasn't prepared for a massed enemy with a battle plan. And from what I understand he was led into a trap by fleeing Cheyene and overwhelmed in that trap by Sioux.

 

[Malamute]

I dont recall any of the actual battle areas being very tightly closed in, even where Reno stopped and dismounted. It all looked fairly open as I recall, but its been many years since I was there.

 

[MEHavey]

"Little Big Man" was a novel written in 1964 by Thomas Berger and was a dark parody woven of both myth and the content of numerous letters/materials from across a wide range of people and accounts. It was in that sense nothing more than a historical novel with an agenda that swept through America in the 60s and 70s.

Cee Zee has outlined the most probable rationale for Custer's approach, which at its core was that of a no-brainer rabbit drive gone unexpectedly bad.

And Truck Monkey has offered what I believe to be a central thread of the Little Big Horn story... blame it on the dead guy... while replacing large chucks of previous fact with wish-it-were-so personal destruction of an individual as excuse for the White Man's attitude suddenly getting his rear end kicked.

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[Kleanbore]

blame it on the dead guy..

Well, in spite of a intense, long, concerted effort by the Army and Libby Custer to shine up Custer's tarnished reputation, he is certainly the one "dead guy" who deserves most to the blame.

His approach was anything but stealthy, with the smoke of cooking fires visible for days. Not a strategy to bring about a successful surprise attack.

His scouts told him that the Indians were extremely numerous, yet he ignored them and proceeded without waiting for the other two columns--which he had been told to do.

Having been discovered and having lost the element of surprise, he attacked anyway.

It was somehow lost on him that the loss of Major Elliot and his men in 1868, and Custer's harrowing retreat after wiping out Black Kettle's village and killing the horses that he had intended to capture, might cast at least some doubt on the conventional wisdom that charging into Indian villages would always bring about "victory".

All the marks of a dangerous ego, in my opinion.....

I have to wonder if, in his final minutes, he found himself wishing that he still had the Spencer carbines that he had used in previous battles.

 

[Iggy]

I met Wooden Leg when I was a kid. The Bureau of Indian Affairs gave all of the Indians new names when they went on the reservation. His new name was Dewey Beard.

He and Princess Blue Water came down to Cheyenne Frontier Days every year with the Sioux Indian Dancers that performed in the parades and rodeos.

I was about 10 or 12 and visited the "Indian Village" on the rodeo grounds and talked to Dewey.
I had read a book of the month club book about the Custer fight and was fascinated by the Indians.

In the mean time my interest in the battle grew and I walked the battle field and the scene of the Reno fight. I knew enough about the battle that I didn't need the map provided there to know exactly where things had happened. I even found Trooper Slaper's boot heel.

I even had an eerie feeling about having been on that bluff before.

It wasn't until about 10 years ago that I made the connection that the ancient old warrior I had talked to was Wooden Leg.

Wow, the questions I could have asked him if I had only known.

A search of the battlefield after a prairie fire provided evidence that the Indians had many 44 Henrys and their progress could be traced by firing pin imprints left on the empty cases they ejected as they creeped up on Custer's command. It also showed that the Indians fired about 13 rounds to each round fired by the troopers..

The 7th went down in a hail of bullets and literally from a hail of arrows launched upward from cover that rained down on the troopers hiding behind their dead horses.

 

[Cee Zee]

"Little Big Man" was a novel written in 1964 by Thomas Berger and was a dark parody woven of both myth and the content of numerous letters/materials from across a wide range of people and accounts. It was in that sense nothing more than a historical novel with an agenda that swept through America in the 60s and 70s.

Yeah as I said it was fiction but I wondered about whether that aspect of the book had any validity. I certainly make no claims about its veracity. I just look at the terrain and wondered if it could have happened as the book suggested. BTW it wasn't the force that was led by Custer that got cut off by the ravines in the book. I am fairly certain Custer took a direction north of the river and away from the ravines. I don't remember if they even mentioned who it was they said led that particular part of the attack. The book certainly had it's agenda. It's your typcial "anything liberal must be right" work that was indeed made popular in colleges in the 1970's. That's where I was forced to read it. It was fairly well written and somewhat accurate about events like the Was hita River Massacre. But there are many accounts of that attack that appeared credible to the white world back at the time So finding info about that rout was much easier than finding info on the Little Bighorn battle.

 

[Robert]

As fascinating as this may be, it started life off topic for THR and went downhill from there.