Originally Posted by Osky
All interesting.
Shrap… I thought about some of your ideas as I recently returned from the area. Contemplations come easier to me when I’m on site so to speak.
I hope you find the cache of evidence of which you search. When the bands broke camp they fragmented as they always did and after the elation of winning the battle wore off and reality of consequence set in it strikes me that getting rid of evidence would be easiest and fastest if the evidence were thrown in the water.
I would also be magnet searching hard in the Bighorn, Yellowstone, Tongue, and others for metal objects, rings, watches, guns, etc.
I know a rancher who found a row of singed military buttons on his place among other things. Could it be some of the clothing taken off bodies was later burned along with other flammables?
Lastly I know from a very good source of someone who was cleaning out a spring to get the flow back up who found two military rifles in the mud. Seems they would have been thrown in there when the pool was full back in the day?
Noting the examples above is what really brought home the “hide it underwater thought” quick and easy.

Just some thoughts.. again I’m hoping your search goes well because any new items or evidence found would be great for the cause of understanding.

Osky

There is a common thought that Sitting Bull had warned the Indians to not take any material from the battlefield, that would get them in trouble should they be captured by whites with that contraband. I have no clue as to the truthfulness of that claim. I can tell you that a plains Indian would not leave 2 important items if they had a chance to get them, and that would be a horse or a gun. Nothing was more important to the survival of any person on the frontier, white or Indian, than a horse or gun.

Our investigation is for whatever they did leave that they couldn't take with them, which still could include a firearm or two, but it is doubtfull they left many guns.

You can be sure, no Indian left a rifle or threw it in a river...

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