Originally Posted by Direct_Drive
Originally Posted by shrapnel
Originally Posted by Direct_Drive
[quote=shrapnel]
Running into a small band of Indians at the site of the lone teepee, is also a point of determination of what course of action you take, and at some point becomes reconnaissance in the field. At this point Custer is still assuming Benteen will return to bolster the battalion to remain as cohesive as it can in an attempt to attack an Indian village and capture the non combatants to gain control of the Indian encampment.
Reports say that Custer didn't wait for Benteen to return nor did he hold up and support Reno.
From what has been already told, Custer's decisions that day were driven by a couple of things.

1) He knew that his force was discovered and that he had lost the element of surprise.
The longer it took to attack the village, the more prepared the warriors would be.
2) From reports, Custer was obsessed with the Indians being able to break down into smaller groups and dispersing.
He had to press on with the attack without any delay in order to capture the entire encampment.

Common sense would dictate that if Custer knew the combat power he was facing that day, he would have done things differently.
How could he have known the combat power of the enemy ? Better reconnaissance ?


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Common sense really doesn’t dictate anything after the fact.
Certainly.

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It is paramount to understand what reconnaissance is and was on the frontier under a mobile cavalry battalion. The ability to send scouts around the village undetected in advance of a march on the village under the circumstances you cite and were in effect at that battle and time in history, don’t provide the opportunity to get the same information you would get from a drone today…
Did not Custer's Indian scouts caution him about the numbers of warriors in the village ?

I read one report that stated that "US Army intelligence" estimated that the number of braves under Sitting Bull was 800.
Maybe that's what Custer was going with ?

Some things we will never know.

As to Custer listening to his scouts and making his command decisions are why the Army puts officers in charge of troops and not scouts.

The intelligence of the day suggested that weren’t anywhere near as many Indians off the reservation as there were assembled on the Little Bighorn in June of 1876.

The United States government had declared that any Indians not on their respective reservations by January 31, 1876 would be considered hostile and dealt with accordingly. Custer, under orders from General Alfred Terry, was part of an organized effort to deal with a whole lot less Indians than had been anticipated when they left the Far West, just a few days earlier.

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