Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Little big horn / greasy grass battle

On the approach to the battle horses were going down from exhaustion. That factor and green troopers going up against desperate battle hardened Indians that were able to use the terrain to their advantage was a huge issue. It's pretty obvious that panic set in and the defense disintegrated. That is if there ever was truly an organized defensive position.

I've been to the battlefield several times and studied as many opinions and facts as I could find.

I believe Custer's main blunder was when he dismissed Capt. Benteen's advice to keep the whole outfit together. The Springfield rifles and disciplined fire from the troopers on the flat side (west) of the river would have had an excellent chance of repelling any Indian counter attacks. This is where Reno attacked with only 3 companies and he was apparently somewhat timid. In this alternate scenario the Indians may or may not have gotten away but they certainly would have had to abandon their tepees and anything else they couldn't carry off.

As it was 7 out of the original 12 companies survived in a very imperfect defensive position under the command of Capt. Benteen.

I believe I recall reading that the Lakotas moved west in numbers in response to the power vacuum created by the devastating smallpox epidemic of 1837 that effectively took out the Arikara, Mandans and Blackfeet especially, leaving few survivors.

Ft. Dilt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Dilts

Check out the Three Affiliated Tribes Museum, New Town ND. They have an original painted buffalo robe there detailing the original owner’s exploits.Including killing a noted Cheyenne war leader in a pre -arranged duel.

https://www.mhanation.com/

Kinda sad was a painted exploit where the guy lay waiting hidden in brush for six days outside a Chippewa village until the opportunity came to kill and scalp a woman and daughter early in the morning and make his escape. All that endurance and daring for such a petty and tragic outcome.

https://www.ndtourism.com/new-town/history/museums/three-affiliated-tribes-museum

In Kansas there’s a Pawnee museum not far off I35.

http://www.kansastravel.org/pawneeindianmuseum.htm

In that museum there’s a medicine bundle. The owner and his young daughter were out on the plains in the 1870’s when they were surrounded by enemy Lakota. The father, the owner of the bundle, put his daughter on a horse with the bundle and she escaped.

For the next few generations the bundle was passed down in the family but nobody opened it because they didn’t know the correct songs. Eventually someone in the family gave it to the museum, where it still sits, unopened.

http://www.kansastravel.org/pawneeindianmuseum.htm

I am inclined to believe Shrapnel on this one.




P

You can make a strong case that up until the very end that, a few infamous massacres notwithstanding, more Indians were killed by other Indians than were ever killed by White people, and diseases wiped out many times morethan the best efforts of both combined.

The Crows willingly led the cavalry down on the Sioux and Cheyenne on the LBH because those two tribes represented a much greater immediate threat to their women and children than the White folks.

Also if those Sioux,Cheyenne et al had remained on the then Great Sioux Reservation, encompassing most of the Dakotas, they wouldn’t have been attacked by the US. I

Also typically underreported is the enormous desth rolls inflicted upon mostly unsuspecting White men, women and children by Indians in times of war.

1760’s French and Indian War/Pontiac’s Rebellion: ~1,500 settlers killed by Indians, most in Pennsylvania.

1770’s-1790’s American Revolution: ~7,500 settlers killed by Indians along the whole frontier.

1830’s-1870’s Texas: ~1,000 settlers killed by Indians.

Most immediate to the LBH, 1963, Santee Sioux uprising: Estimates run as high as 800 settlers killed in Minnesota in just three weeks.

Like wolves today, sympathy for Indians decreased the closer you actually lived to them.

...and by the 1870’s, the US Army was often the Indian’s best friend, Custer notwithstanding.

Yes. Smallpox wiped out the Mandan. Strangely, The Lakota were more closely related to the Crow than their Algonquin allies, the Cheyenne and Arapahoe. The latter three pushed west from MN and north and east by other tribes.

My memory let me down. The Crow were given/ assigned the Powder River and east yellowstone country in the early 1850s Laramie treaty. The Lakota and Cheyenne were assigned areas to the east. The current Crow agency is quite a way east of the original agency. Red Cloud changed the dynamics of the Black Hills and west in the 1860s. To the west of the little BH, the Crow fought the Lakota allies to a standstill.

Point I was trying to make was the Custer fight was on land the US gvnent might have been in the process of planning to take from their Crow allies. Did the Lakotah view the land as disputed rather than Lakotah? Even Red Cloud and his allies?

Hard spinning nomads down.

The Indians believed that a person could not pass on to the afterworld if their body was not intact. It was common practice, fighting against fellow Indians, or against whities, for Indians to mutilate a corpse to deprive him of his entrance into heaven.


After the battle, the squaws did cut up some of the dead soldiers of the 7th Cavalry.

Yes there are accounts that Custer was tortured. And an account that the bodies were mutilated and Custer was found stripped but untouched. I don't think that sounds accurate. I applaud anyone that has done the research and teaches history. I would encourage those interested to do your own research and keep an open mind. History is a quite fluid as more information and technology uncover evidence that changes said history. I did alittle research as I became more interested I guess due to what I perseved as as an insult to my intelligence and integrity. Have a good day !

I should of said mutilated not tortured. Sorry

Colonel Benteen’s words On locating Custer’s corpse.
Reno and Benteen and most of their men were convinced in their own minds that Custer had abandoned them and rode off northward to join Terry’s column.
Many of the officers and men of the Seventh and other units identified Custer’s body, along with the fact that the Indians had not desecrated it.
Some of the Southern Cheyenne present claimed that he was a relative through his relationship with Mohnaseta after her capture at Washita.
I stated in a previous thread, that growing up in the 1970s, I had a decidedly negative opinion of Custer.
But the more I read about him, the more I have come to admire the General in spite of his faults.
His bravery and aggressiveness in battle had won him much recognition, and in his time he was viewed as a great leader and a hero by many.
The admiration unfortunately didn’t extend to some of his subordinate officers though, namely especially was Benteen, along with Colonel Reno.
Their dislike of the General sowed the seeds of defeat at The Little Bighorn.
7mm

Search did general Custer have an arrow shoved into his penis and have his ear drums pierced by an sewing awl. Take one account and it's gospel lier fu do some research kool-aid drinker. Do some research nitwit.

I apologize if that wasn't meant for me.

Again upon reading it more carefully a truly apologis my mistake. Stupid knee jerk reaction. Sorry

If you like Custer, you'll love Cortez. Arguably one of the greatest generals to ever live in spite of the current fashion of maligning his good name.

This is much how I have viewed Custer and the battle. He was much more the heroic figure than many recognize. His accomplishments are legion, though not without some failure. Show me the perfect man and you will still find detractors, critical of his faults and disregarding his successes.

Most of the criticism comes from the ignorant…

Custer actually became well known for his actions in the civil war before this battle if I'm not mistaken.

http://public.gettysburg.edu/~franpe02/files/[John_G._Neihardt]_Black_Elk_Speaks__The_Complete_(z-lib.org).pdf

Is it true that no weapons from the fallen 7th Cav members were ever recovered? Or personal effects?