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

Yeah, I sometimes let my imagination run away with me... But the fact that people still argue about Custer's political aspirations makes thinking about it interesting.

This doesn't give much credibility to a Cavalry leader, which also taints my opinion of Reno and his handling of the retreat, which is better classified as a rout.

The whole reason Reno pushed for the Court of Inquiry was to clear his name, as he was maligned for years after the battle for his actions. Had his troops been satisfied that he had done what he could, there would not have been the need to clear his name. He died with that dark cloud of drunkenness and incompetence hanging over his head. He was dishonorably discharged and died as a drunk with no regard for his military career.

In 1967 Reno's family requested a review of his Court Martial and they overturned his Dishonorable Discharge to Honorable. He is buried at the Custer Battlefield and is within a few feet of the flag flying in the cemetery. In respect of his service in the military I have no issue with his burial, but I do raise an eyebrow when revisionism creeps in to change a decision about his character and actions by 20th century standards...

I grew up in Minnesota where little crows war was waged.

There are markers all through the county where an attack occurred.

I was enamooured with the Sioux Indians as a child. Last year I started reading " The heart of everything that is" by Bob Drury and Tom Calvin.

This is the " Untold Story of Red Cloud".

In my opinion if this book is true makes Red Cloud look much like Jack the Ripper. I quit reading it because it was so gruesome.

The book also states the Sioux believed that what there physical shape of their body was before death , is how they would live eternity. Hence their fear for being sliced up by a saber.

They believed mutilations to be most effective need to be done on a living enemy.

I have never been 2 the Little Bighorn. I have a good friend Who was a crew chief on a gunship helicopter in Vietnam. When he visited the Little Bighorn he said the way the graves are marked looked much like what they would see when the South Vietnamese were overrun by the North. In battles in Cambodia.

It would not have been a good career move in the Army of that time to give the appearance of lusting after the Presidency. “ Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence “.

You may be right.

All bird dogs are dogs, but all dogs are not bird dogs...

I continue to only agree partially. I stand by me earlier statement that it was a breakout from encirclement and not a retreat in the usual sense that we think of retreat (the enemy is in front of us and we're a-running scared the other way). I think it truly was a breakout as the Army defines it, that it had to happen because Reno was given a difficult task and not enough men to accomplish it, and at some point Reno became OBE (overtaken/overcome by events) beyond his control.

But it is fair to say that Reno's breakout was not well organized and it pretty much became chaos about the time they crossed the river and headed up the hill. The thing about a breakout is that you begin by attacking straight into the enemy and at some point you punch through. So it goes through stages where the enemy is in front of you, then to both flanks, and then behind you. Once the enemy is behind you, you need to fight a rear guard. But the rest of your force might still be fighting through break point of the encirclement. So it's a difficult thing to coordinate.

One of the reasons I'm looking forward to the book I referenced in an earlier post is that the author focuses on the details of the valley fight and apparently (from the intro on Amazon), makes "a compelling case in Reno's favor." I'm curious to see what the author puts forward given that so many other authors have denigrated Reno.

You still have to understand the reason for Reno’s reputation was because of Reno, not circumstances. If only one person reported what happened at that battle and if that person had been Reno, there wouldn’t have been the need for a Court of Inquiry to clear his name. It was because of his actions that surviving witnesses impugned Reno’s integrity.

You also have to be realistic and question Reno’s leadership when “every man for himself” was his way of handling that debacle. Until the desperate attempt to flee the river bottom, only a couple soldiers had been killed. A scramble with no leadership to get to the top of the hill to safety falls directly on Reno’s shoulders.

Worse than all of that, once they had gotten refuge on top of the hill, Reno had considered abandoning all the wounded to make an escape. This is not the thoughts of an effective leader. He was still rattled so badly that once Benteen got there he had to take charge because Reno was not at all in control.

These are indications of Reno’s incompetence...

I've always figured Reno doomed the attack to failure before Custer could even engage. I feel Reno failed Custer and Benteen did nothing to actually help the assault.

I am about 90% through "son of the morning star" lots of information on the players.
About read out i flipped on youtube and used search word "rosebud"
which took me to a channel from the rosebud reservation.
buried within the various videos was one for a soldier lost overseas, returning home. Something to watch.
they buried him, and something seeing the american flags, and vets from various conflicts. Watch another video of some kind of
outdoor circle center, lot of indians in costume, and a whole line of vets from various conflicts.
strange, reading of sitting bull, wounded knee, custer, and then watch those veterans from various conflicts.

Custer sent Benteen on reconnaissance south to investigate the upper valley.. He was also instructed to engage
or “pitch into” indians he may encounter...nobody can accuse Benteen of not following that order from Custer.

I am assuming the order Benteen didn’t follow was not coming to Custer’s aid when he had been told by Seargeant Kanipe and Martini the bugler when they told Benteen of the urgency to come in support of Custer.

Does "Come quick and bring packs" mean anything to you?

apparently Custer hurriedly despatched those two brief messages just before he began his assault.

Benteen actually hastened his pace by deciding not to wait any longer for the requested pack train.
Had he waited to bring such along, its likely he would have been accused of being even slower
in coming to Custers assistance.

Stop and wait for the pack train...OR carry on without it......which would Custer have preferred
if he wanted Benteen there ASAP..??



Its hard to say precisely what Custers actual situation was from the two brief messages he sent.

On the surface it could sound like Custer wants to attack, but is anxiously waiting for Benteens battalion
and ammunition from the pack train before doing so.

If Custer was already in a rapid running battle when he sent messages, why the stressed need for the pack train?
ie; how would ammunition from the pack train be distributed to those troops?... Thus it could make one think
that the repeated request for the pack train in Custers short messages ,simply means Custer is on the verge
or brink of conducting a preperatory attack, but no such action is yet in progress.

It seems to me that many people want to cut Reno slack for his conduct of the Valley Fight, and I'm not sure why. He was drunk. He halted a charge that had every chance of succeeding and potentially routing the Hunkpapa village, and did so at a position that made absolutely no tactical sense--out in the open with no cover and out of rifle range of the village. He then ordered a withdrawal to the timber along the riverbank, but made no effort to organize that withdrawal, and then once in the timber, "led" (more appropriately instigated) the rout across the river and up the hill, again with no effort to organize an orderly withdrawal. (The fact that such a maneuver was a well-established tactic in the 7th was demonstrated by Benteen and Weir during their withdrawal from Weir Hill later that same afternoon, as an example.)

Reno had been devastated by the death of his wife the previous year, and then by Terry's refusal to grant him leave to travel back East to bury her and attend his children. He had been drinking heavily since then--and this was in an outfit that was known for heavy drinking as a matter of course, such that standing out as a particularly heavy drinking officer suggests toxic alcoholism. Are we to excuse his crucial failures in the Valley Fight and on Reno Hill because of this? Considering the loss of life within his own command, it is difficult to do so, in my view.

Consider this: if Reno had carried through on the charge into the Hunkpapa tipi circle, the course of the battle would have been very different. Large numbers of non-combatants could have been taken hostage--which was the proven tactic for "winning" an Indian fight, as demonstrated by Custer at the Washita, among many other examples--although this would probably have only taken some of the Hunkpapa warriors out of the fight, at most.

More likely, the havoc Reno would have created in a fight among the Hunkpapa tipis would have drawn many of the warriors away from the north end of the village. This would undoubtedly have resulted in many casualties to his command, but in conducting such a vociferous and organized assault he would assuredly have reduced the number of warriors available to attack Custer's battalion before he could capture the large number of women and children fleeing out of the north end of the village.

Too many critics of Custer point to his decision to split his command. They fail to grasp the fact that the objective was NOT to engage the Sioux/Cheyenne warriors in pitched battle, but rather it was to capture noncombatant hostages and thereby force a surrender of a numerically superior force. As such, dividing the command was exactly the right thing to do. Had Reno done his part effectively the casualties would have been significant, but most likely not as severe as Reno's men sustained in the battle as recorded by history; and Custer would have been able to win the overall battle by achieving his stated objective, i.e., capturing hostages to force capitulation.