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Custer’s men should have had Garands.

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Originally Posted by viking
Custer’s men should have had Garands.

Vastly superior to the spray and pray lever actions of the day.


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Originally Posted by Jim_Conrad
Originally Posted by viking
Custer’s men should have had Garands.

Vastly superior to the spray and pray lever actions of the day.

I believe, for the most part, they didn't even have those. I think the standard arm was a Trapdoor, but I could be wrong.

I'm not in a position to debate the ins and outs of that battle, I'll defer to those that have a deeper knowledge of it.

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Originally Posted by Vic_in_Va
Originally Posted by Jim_Conrad
Originally Posted by viking
Custer’s men should have had Garands.

Vastly superior to the spray and pray lever actions of the day.

I believe, for the most part, they didn't even have those. I think the standard arm was a Trapdoor, but I could be wrong.

I'm not in a position to debate the ins and outs of that battle, I'll defer to those that have a deeper knowledge of it.

Well...me and Viking are experts.


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Trapdoor. The Savages had the lever action.

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Originally Posted by simonkenton7
Trapdoor. The Savages had the lever action.

True, but few people realize the superiority of the trapdoor over the Henry in Indian warfare…


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Originally Posted by shrapnel
Originally Posted by simonkenton7
Trapdoor. The Savages had the lever action.

True, but few people realize the superiority of the trapdoor over the Henry in Indian warfare…

Could you elaborate, please.

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I have relation in the Billings Mt. area and after a family reunion a few of us went to the LBH and I visited a couple of times thereafter. A Great Aunt always had a suspicion that the family had a relative that died there and later a techy young family member working on the family tree traced us back to Lt. Algernon Emory Smith. I visited his grave at Fort Leavenworth.

In 2016, I attended the Red Bird family LBH reenactment near the Crow Agency with the hope of maybe learning something new about the Indian perspective, I did not. However, what I came away with is I smelled and tasted Montana dust, smelled horse sweat and gunpowder, heard the squeal of horses, scream of the eagle bone whistles and Indians, the hooves pounding the ground, tink of saddle accouterments and bugler.

On another side of the family tree I have another connection to LBH, a Great Uncle served in the US Army during World War I and was a quartermaster in Europe where he met George Lone Hill, who was also in the same office. Lone Hill was from the Cheyenne Reservation near Busby, Mt and my uncle lived between Lewistown and Hilger MT. After they got mustered out they stayed in touch.

About 1924 or 1925, my uncle received a letter from Hill informing him that the US Government planned on eliminating 1000s of horses from the reservation and if he wanted any. He notified Hill that he and his brother were coming to look over the horses and they took a train from Lewistown to Crow Agency and met up with Hill and the owner of the horses, Sammy Akecheta (Soldier). My Uncle purchased three mares and one stud, loaded them in a cattle car at Crow Agency on the C B & Q RR which I believe transferred on to the Milwaukee Road and offloaded them at Lewistown. Some of the offspring of those four horses were registered at the AIHR (American Indian Registry) in the 1960s. Do we know for sure if bloodline was actually from horses at LBH, no. That is the problem with the fog of war and history, but I try to make sense of it the best I can.


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Originally Posted by viking
Custer’s men should have had Garands.
There was an interesting Twilight Zone episode where National Guardsmen on a training day came over the hill with their M 16's. Their names are engraved on the monument. True story...Oh, BTW, those plains Indian tribes had fled to the Greasy Grass for one simple reason. They just wanted to be left alone. Sound familiar?

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I saw that Twilight Zone Episode. We sixth graders talked about that one for a week.
I think it was M1 carbines, probably was 1961.

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Following the Civil War, we had boatloads of leftover Muzzleloading Springfields.
The Army decided to re barrel them using the trap-door conversion.
They were .45/70, with the Cavalry carbine being slightly loaded down for recoils sake.
They were better at longer range than the few lever action Henry’s and Winchester’s the Indians had, but remember also that repeating guns were a rarity in The Sioux and Cheyenne camps. Most of them had old muzzleloaders or bows and arrows.
They also had overwhelming numbers.
Had Custer kept the regiment together, he’d have survived, albeit with some egg on his face.
As it was, he divided his command, hoping for a repeat of his victory at Washita.
Indians always split up and ran away from soldiers... except this time they didn’t.
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The 7th Is Made Up Of Phantoms , one of my favorite episodes as well.
I believe they had M1 carbines and 1911s and a Chaffee tank.
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Originally Posted by shrapnel
Originally Posted by simonkenton7
Trapdoor. The Savages had the lever action.

True, but few people realize the superiority of the trapdoor over the Henry in Indian warfare…

Shrapnel…. I respect the years of research that you’ve invested in the study of the LBH so I’d be interested in your opinion of why you believe the single shot Trapdoor was better for Indian warfare than a repeating rifle? I can understand how it was more accurate at distance and packed the punch to take out a horse but I think for the close up combat of either mounted or dismounted troops a repeating rifle would be preferable. I can’t help but to think that if those Troopers that day had all been armed with Winchester or Henry lever action rifles or Spencer repeaters the outcome might’ve been different?….the force multiplier those repeaters would provide of sustained fire against a superior number of enemy…..coulda, woulda, shoulda. 😁

I appreciate all those that contribute to these types of threads, I always learn something.


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The Trapdoor does reload faster....grin

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With that many Indians I’m not so sure a Gatling gun would’ve made much a difference.

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Originally Posted by rainshot
With that many Indians I’m not so sure a Gatling gun would’ve made much a difference.
Custer was offered a couple of Gatling guns but turned them down because they would have slowed him down. I don't think they could have been brought to bear at Last Stand Hill but they very well may have saved him by slowing him down enough that he and General Terry's troops coming in from the north would have converged on the camp simultaneously on the 27th. The Indians had problems defeating infantry or as they called them "walking soldiers".


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Originally Posted by Jcubed
Originally Posted by shrapnel
Originally Posted by simonkenton7
Trapdoor. The Savages had the lever action.

True, but few people realize the superiority of the trapdoor over the Henry in Indian warfare…

Could you elaborate, please.

The military has a standard by which they choose weapons, tactics, armor and all sorts of things as they prepare for battle. That was true then, as it is today.

During the Indian Wars, the army tested firearms in regards to how well they would perform with the least amount of breakdowns or failures. They did have an acceptable rate that would still allow a less than perfect firearm become the issued weapon.

The idea of fighting plains Indians was built around fighting in a skirmish line of troopers several feet apart and firing in a battery with sustained fire of 8-10 rounds per minute and as every trooper would be firing in a separate cycle, the skirmish line became a force to be effective against Indian attacks.

The 45-70 was also a longer range rifle than a Winchester 1866 or Henry repeater. Once a repeating rifle is empty, it takes enough time to reload, that the person using that rifle is out of the fight for a sustained amount of time as everyone else is firing their guns empty. Consider the range and energy of the 45-70 and it becomes vastly superior in its lethality because a 45-70 can also put down a horse.

Comanche was Miles Keogh’s horse and sustained 7-10 small arms wounds and survived the battle. He would never have survived that many 45-70 wounds. If you can put an Indian’s horse down, you can take an Indian out of the fight.

So when you see where people comment about Custer being outgunned by the Indians with repeating rifles, you can tell how much they don’t know about the decisions made by the army in regards to how they equipped their cavalry.

Custer wasn’t outgunned, he was out numbered and beaten by superior tactics in a setting that can’t be calculated in a board room somewhere that will see every condition that could be met in the field.


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Originally Posted by rainshot
With that many Indians I’m not so sure a Gatling gun would’ve made much a difference.

I had read somewhere that they had difficulty traveling with the Gatling guns. The parts would constantly come loose from the packs and cause the teamsters to stop and repack/lash them up again.

As for the Springfields, the one downside was the copper cases would cause jams which negated the speed at which they could be fired. I believe they were using the 45/50 which was a down loaded 45/70 for use with the carbines

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Originally Posted by rainshot
With that many Indians I’m not so sure a Gatling gun would’ve made much a difference.
For 2 reasons:

The Gatling gun was pulled by condemned cavalry mounts and was so heavy and awkward, they would have slowed his advance down. Had Custer taken a Gatling, he would have survived, as he would have been 2 days later getting to the LBH.

Deploying a Gatling gun isn’t like a ma deuce on a tripod that would allow you to strafe a battlefield like we see done in the movies. That is another fault with perception and how many people base reality on what they see in the movies.


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