Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Captain Thomas Weir, 7th Cavalry

In the early 70’s my grandpa took me to a cemetery where six, 7th cavalry soldiers under Custer’s command, were buried. It was the Bon Homme cemetery west of Yankton, SD. The soldiers had been reinterred there from their original burial site on Snatch creek, 1873.
These soldiers were on their way to fort Rice and on to fort Abraham Lincoln in present day North Dakota when they got caught in an April 14th blizzard that lasted several days. There is no record of their deaths in any official reports. It was rumored they may have died of typhoid so they wanted to keep it quiet. Some say they were drowned.
They were delayed by flooded Emanuel and Choteau creeks and miserable conditions. My grandparents farm was along Emanuel creek.
Custer himself was so ill he was confined to bed for several days.

He was a Yankee, following in Sheriden and Sherman's example. He should have been shot dead long before it happened.

Sherman and Sheridan are a different category 😉 Custer got what he had coming from the redskins👍

The only Custer detractor that I can agree with!
Helluva man, helluva General, he lead from the front! His uniform was that of a “circus rider”, because he wanted his men to see him and follow!
Never said go here or do this. He said “Follow Me!” “Come on you Wolverines!”
If you can’t respect a fellow like that, what can I say?
He had plenty of chances to get shot full of holes, but he was pretty lucky!
He lost at LBH because he did what his experience had told him fighting Indians. Usually they’d fight long enough for the non-combatants to get free, and then withdraw themselves.
But Sitting Bulls camp was far bigger than anyone imagined.
Had he taken his scouts advice, and held up, probably they’d have broken up and escaped.
Nobody can say, what might’ve happened had Reno carried his charge through. He might’ve broken up the camp, or he might’ve been wiped out.
The Indians thought the former, and Custer would have been a hero.
Like the Ranger said at LBH “Benteen hated Custer, and Reno hated both of them.”
Custer’s moral compass didn’t always point north. He could be petty and chickenshit, as the record shows. But the man had solid brass nads!
Reon

You really don’t have a clue, do you. What do you consider a Yankee? What were Sherman and Sheridan’s examples that Custer followed?

You really don’t know do you?

True. If anyone ever had brass balls it was Custer

In the interest of continuing a cool thread.

The Sharpshooter wouldn’t have had to be White or mixed, popular History tends to nail our Indians in place. Eastern tribes were out West early, armed and equipped like White men but with Indian skills. It is my understanding that the largest contingent of Rocky Mountain Fur Trappers were Iroquois, fifty years before the LBH.’

The Cherokees were in Mexico by the 1790’s. 1820’s, Cherokees were providing protection to the Mexican settlements along the Rio Grand against Indian raids. Sequoia himself, the mixed-race Cherokee syllabary guy from Tennessee died in Mexico in the 1840’s having travelled down from the Indian Territories seeking to find the Mexican Cherokees.

The exact same Seminole guerillas of the remarkable marksmanship in the Second Seminole War (source Bosworth 1840 “A Treatise on the Rifle”) when they fought the US to a stalemate were all over West Texas a decade later and likewise contracted to protect Mexican settlements. Wildcat, a principle leader in the Florida swamps is easy to track because he was famous, feared in Texas in the 1850’s, the same individual who contracted with Mexico. Smallpox got him in 1857.

Somewhere in there the infamous Scottish-born Scalphunter James Kirker’s no. 2 man in Northern Mexico was the Shawnee Indian Killbuck and his Shawnee/Delaware crew.

An eighty year old Delaware in 1836 coulda been born in New Jersey, lived in Pennsylvania during the F&I War, the Ohio territory during the Rev War, Missouri during the War of 1812 and been living in Texas at the time of the Alamo. Delaware trappers from Missouri, the Indian territories and Texas made it to California and back some years before Kit Carson and Delaware Scouts were frequently employed in Texas 1830’s through 1860’s.

A Delaware Indian easy to track because he was written about was Black Beaver, fluent in English, French, Spanish a number of Indian languages and sign language, born in Illinois 1806. Goes west as a fur trapper, lives five years in Oregon and California, two years with the Crow and Blackfeet. Later scouts for a number of US expeditions including Fremont and the US Boundary Commission, given a rank as Captain in the US Army at one point. Establishes the California Trail, establishes the Chisholm Trail with his partner, active on the Union side during the Civil War.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Beaver

“Half Breed” is sorta redundant as it implies an F1 hybrid whereas miscegenation quickly became multigenerational, it doesn’t appear to be an Indian term as they slaughtered each other based mostly on claimed affiliation as much as ethnicity.

The West was a complex place, heck even Sitting Bull adopted a Polynesian 🙂

There has been rumored speculation that some buffalo hunter was with the Indians and fired at the 7th Cavalry. I doubt that is true at all.

We did find a Sharps paper patch bullet about 7-8 miles east of the battlefield that may have been part of the aftermath of the battle. In our discoveries, we found a 45-70 case, bullet and cartridge that could indicate a conflict back toward the Lone Teepee site, that would suggest that there was a skirmish between Indians and a trooper.

On a ridge is where we found the case and below the ridge toward the battlefield, we found a bullet. We also found a complete cartridge not far from the bullet. It is hard to determine just what happened there, but something surely did. Were there a few shots fired in defense as a trooper was escaping?

The paper patch bullet was found nearly 1/2 mile east of the ridge where the case was found. The trajectory from where the bullet was found to the top of the ridge would suggest that the paper patch bullet could have been fired from an Indian position below the ridge. The map shows the area as I marked it in regards to cases and bullets found, that could confirm the actual conflict 6-8 miles east of the battlefield.

No one has ever investigated this area other than us. It doesn’t prove anything, but it certainly shows the possibility of an escape from the battlefield with Indians in pursuit…

Custer Luck! Any thoughts on why Custer cut his long hair off, a day or two before the battle?

Cool

It is summer, Montana can get hot in June and I am sure that it was plenty hot where he was leaving from. I’m also certain, he wasn’t concerned about getting scalped by Indians…

A Sharps was sold a few years back that came from the battlefield. Indians had a vast array of weapons among them, Sharps, although not many…




https://www.oldwestevents.com/highl...sed-custer-battlefield-1874-sharps-rifle

Big money😵‍💫

Very interesting information.

I read a book written by an English author. I think it was called Red Sabbath.

The book basically states the 7 th over extended their horses/ mules and lightened their load the troopers carry. They also failed to have enough reconnaissance to accurately asses the forces they were facing.

One thing they quit packing was their sabers. According to the author sabers were Big Medicine, they were a source of fear to the Native Americans. One did not want to lose limbs, hands etc before one dies. They don’t grow back. But bullet holes I assume did heal in the after life.

Dismemberment of the enemy was a priority of Native Americans, especially if they were still alive. Perhaps that is why the estimated battle length varies.

A friend of mine went to the battlefield. He stated the grave markers looked very similar to a battle he was involved in in Cambodia. He was in a Chopper assigned to evacuation of South Vietnamese and their Allie’s.The South Vietnamese were over run and had a frantic retreat. The bodies left after the fact looked much like the LBH grave markers.

I found the account by Charlie Windolph of H company where he speculates that sharpshooter was a "renegade white man, or a squaw man of some kind or other. He could shoot too well to have been a full-blooded Indian".

Doesn't make it true, but does tell us the opinion the soldier had of Indian marksmanship.

Who knows, I don't imagine a white man would openly take credit if true. Likely it was an exceptional Indian.

Might have run across the map mentioned in W. M. Camp's book:

3. Walter Camp prepared several maps pertaining to the Little Bighorn River fight, one of which is a large table-size map in several sections. The identifications in this Curley narrative are not shown in the Camp map illustrated in this book. Camp uses the terms Reno peaks, Edgerley peaks, and Weir peaks interchangeably.





https://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/digital/collection/p15999coll31/id/52248/rec/32

The problem with books is that most have been written from reading other books. George Herendeen stated that the cavalry mounts were not worn out and tired when they approached the village. The ensuing battle and chaotic running of horses once the battle started, would then contribute to the horses getting tired.

Reconnaissance before the battle was done in accordance with the terrain and scouting that was done in the limited time and space they had to deal with. Armchair quarterbacking continues today as is illustrated by some of the comments made here.

IF:
Indians had compound bows
Custer had Gatling guns
Custer had kept his forces together
Crook had continued up from the Rosebud
Custer had just 1 M16
Custer had radios

You could go on and on, but none of those ifs happened and history records Custer’s defeat on June 25, 1876. The problem with history is that Custer died a Hero’s death in 1876 and today he is maligned as some fool.

The more you study Custer and listen less to myth and speculation, the more you realize what a cavalry leader and Indian fighter he really was…

If the ponies weren’t exhausted.

Why were the mules so far behind them?

It is my observation mules won’t allow themselves to be pushed beyond their limits.

If they were advanced without the mules………what did their ponies eat?

Where was this statement of “ fitness” of livestock from?

Does it have cooperation of other statements?

How far had they traveled in the 72 hours prior to the massacre?

Why did they dismount from a skirmish line, and flee on foot?

Would not with superior livestock…….simply retreat to attack another day?

One of the strangest things I read in another book was a horse that was believed to be with Custer showed up in St. Louis in its former stall. Much later.

Custer was a hero up until about the 1960s. But then revisionist history and Indian Apologist kicked in, and he got massacred again.
Growing up in the ‘70s, I had a pretty negative view of his place in history. A glory hound, and a fool who sacrificed his command in search of that glory.
But he’s one of those people in history, that the more you know about him, the more interesting he becomes, and you lose the first impression.
There are many things to admire about the General. His record through the Civil War and his actions after The Washita battle show that.
Would I have liked to serve under him in the 7th? I can’t say. I would trade my left one to be part of the Black Hills exposition in 1874 though!
I said to Penny when touring that area, “it’s no wonder the Indians felt this land sacred. If I were God, it’s where I would live!”
Whatever you believe about him, you gotta admit that he always did his best, and he led his men from in front!
Reon