Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire General Custer's remains.

One of my great, great grandfathers was also a Union Solider. The location of his remains are not know to us.

Custer had taken them on an earlier scout, and found that they slowed down the column considerably.
slowing the column might have been a good thing
The original plan was for the 7th to drive the Indians to the approaching infantry.
how'd that work out?

Custer didn't want to share the glory, and bit off way more than he could chew.
political dreams have a way of getting in the way of abilities at times.

"Over the years, animals and the elements scattered many of the bones, while tourists carted off others."

Tourists carried off the bones of the US soldiers. Thank you birdwatcher. And just imagine how many empty cartridge cases the tourists carried off.

You'd be surprised at the resistance at that time, and later, shown to advances we take for granted now. And at a very high level in the Ordnance Dept..

The Army resisted repeaters because they would waste ammo. During the development of the M1 Garand, John C. was told specifically to design it without a DBM "Because the soldiers would lose them.". Doug MacArthur shoved the .30-06 down the designer's throat due to inventory levels. As originally designed, it was a 10-shot .276.

We were LAST to develop a modern rifle with spitzer bullets, hells bells, they were still using the Trapdoor fighting the Cubans and Spanish. They had Mausers, in 7mm, with Spitzer bullets.

Look at WWII tanks, specifically German vs American. MG42 vs 1919. Not so much rate of fire, but look how fast they could change barrels without having to set headspace, etc...which help keeps the gun operational.

I honestly think Custer could have thought things out better, tactically, but equipment-wise, higher-ups had a lot to do with his choices, and he may have had his own ideas, as you pointed out, in deference to "tradition". It is sad it turned out like it did.

But having missed that show, I'll not be too concrete in my opinion. Custer did a helluva job in the State-to-State unpleasantness, regardless of which side you sympathize with.

lmao did no one read the uber thread on Custer (the TV documentary)? A lot of good info and a lot of ignorance was shown already. Fuggs sake, every dipshidt with a keyboard is an expert.

There is little chance that Custer is buried in his own grave. The family won't allow DNA testing and for good cause. What does it really matter, Custer died with the rest of his command and is probably at rest with them at the battlefield.

Many myths have passed on about Custer and the battle and many have been repeated here:

Gatling guns; Had Custer taken the Gatling gun with him, he would have survived the battle because Gatlings are pulled by condemned cavalry mounts and the terrain they had to cover would have held him up a couple days with the guns, saving him from what happened on June 25.

As to his ineptness:

General Nelson A.Miles who is regarded as one of the best Indian wars generals said this of Custer:

"The more I see of movement here (Little Big Horn Battlefield), the more I have admiration for Custer, and I am satisfied his like will not be found very soon again.”

~ Gen. Nelson Miles, Commanding General of the Army

Custer turned down repeating rifles:

Custer took what guns he was issued with him to the Little Bighorn. He had no say in what guns he took other than his own which was a Remington Rolling Block and 2 revolvers not of Army issue. The myth that repeating rifles would have helped the cavalry is just not true. There are too many reasons that the Army chose the Trapdoor for military use to go into all the reasons they were armed with the Trapdoor. If the Indians had been so much better armed than the Cavalry, the rest of the day and next day even with the captured guns from Custer, they would have prevailed against Reno and Benteen, but they didn't.

Some claim that Custer had political aspirations to be president, but there is absolutely no truth in that, he had been active to some degree in politics, but not for himself.

You could write a dozen books to dispel the myths and untruths about Custer and the Little Big Horn, but it is best to find real resources backed by facts and you will come away with a different view of George Custer...

That did occur to me. I guess it would help to know too how much ammo they would have had among them.

I've read a book or two on the Little Big Horn over the decades, and some Indian accounts. Reluctant as Indians generally were to accept casualties it seems reasonable to assume Custer's group up on that last hill were not overrun until almost all of 'em were dead (gunfire and descending arrows?) and/or the survivors ran out of ammo.

Yep. Thinking I, and at least half the folks commenting on what he shoulda coulda done, would line up like scared rabbits behind his leadership in a heartbeat when faced against the redman he had fought on numerous occassion recognizing leadership under fire. Things don't 't always work out as planned, that is why games are played till time runs out.

They don't typically hand out brevet generalships to dipshits.

If he'd taken the Gatlings, he would of lived, because they would of slowed him down enough that he never would of caught the Indians.

Sorta similar, in San Fernando Cathedral here in San Antonio there is a sarcophagus on display reportedly containing the bones of Bowie, Crockett, and Travis.

In the actual event, after the battle the bodies of the 200+ defenders were stacked in three piles amid piled brush and branches and incinerated. The bodies were reportedly incompletely burned and the ghastly piles were left for a period of months, fed upon by everything from a horde of vultures to stray dogs. It was Juan Seguin, a local Tejano who had know all three men, who finally took it upon himself to bury the remains, mostly in pits near the cremation sites. At this time he is said to have separated the remains of the three leaders and interred them inside the church. Decades later these remains were later discovered and exhumed, and placed in the present sarcophagus.

No word on how Juan Seguin identified the remains after they had lain months in the open.

At least one of the mass burial pits was later uncovered and the collected remains reburied next to the grave of Samuel Walker up in the Oddfellow's Cemetery overlooking downtown.

Who was is that said of handguns "Ya can't miss fast enough to hit."

...but I expect you can run out of ammo pretty quick.

I was not, there but have read the many if not all bodies were butchered in celebration.
If so, how does one tell whose is whose?

The burial detail couldn't tell much about individual troopers other than identifying marks or tattoos. They were mostly mutilated beyond recognition...

If I ever make it back down there love to link up with you, to tour the battlefield again. I would even buy you coffee at the towne pump gas station. I toured it on June 25 2016. Pretty cool day to visit. Anyhow I heard/read that the Indians were scared to death of sabres, do you think it was mistake to leave the sabres behind? Another one I heard was the Indians were scared of the infantry, but i think I read somewhere on here you said the Indians whipped the infantry in a earlier battle.

By all means contact me, I have access to places you can't go. Custer chose to travel light and fast. Sabres were unnecessary bulk, and made noise when traveling on horseback. The force of General Crook met Crazy Horse at the Rosebud and were soundly thrashed and with few casualties retreated back to Fort Fetterman. No one seems to review Crook's actions that definitely had an effect on the outcome of the battle, as he had almost 1,000 men and they were nowhere near the Little Bighorn during Crook's retreat.

Standing on the battlefield was definitely a real eye opener. Big country for sure, I can only imagine what those troopers were going through full retreat out of the Little Bighorn.. different time for sure, those men sure in hell a lot better than me.

The Indians were scared to death of sabers?

Ain’t we talking people who trained for combat from early childhood? Ain’t these the guys for whom one cultural ideal was to kill a grizzly in hand to hand combat? These are guys who customarily wore their combat records in their hair. People who would take risks to ludicrous extremes like carrying sticks into a fight rather than weapons, and doing stuff like staking themselves on a leash to the ground in the face of charging enemies.

Down here in Texas, Texas Ranger Captain RIP Ford had more experience fighting Plains Indians than any other White man who lived to tell about it. Ford’s take was that on horseback the bow and arrow were fully the equal of the revolver. An Indian on horseback could shoot you with an arrow just as easily while running away as he did on the attack, deadly 60 yards or less, could hit your horse unerringly at 100. Ford described the Indian method of archery as firing from a bow held flat and low, today what we would call aiming by instinct. Arrows were held between the fingers, ready to be rapidly placed in the bow, accounts of Indian archery demonstrations speaking of as many as five arrows being accurately fired in rapid succession before the first one had hit the ground.

If I were an Indian in a running fight with the cavalry I would have been overjoyed if they had chosen to bring knives to a gunfight.

IIRC we have that one famous saber charge against the Cheyennes, OF COURSE they scattered before it, doesn’t mean they were out of the fight if they had chosen to fight. Can anyone relate a single incidence outside of a camp massacre situation where any Indian was ever whacked by a cavalry saber?

OTOH I am aware of an account at least one incidence where a Lakota Indian used a cavalry saber on other Indians in a fight.

Fine words.

I'm thinking you are missing the point.. when Custer and his boys were hauling ass on there horses to lay down an ass whooping they would of had there sabers drawn. A guy on a horse swinging a saber might have you rethink some things. But as shrapnel said Custer wanted to move fast and carrying sabers was not beneficial to them. Far as the last stand area we know from history what happened to there rifles..

Interesting audio interview:

http://cpa.ds.npr.org/sdpb/audio/2016/03/dm_Images_Enright_03142016.mp3

The story:

Custer Family Tragedy