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

Reports say that Custer didn't wait for Benteen to return nor did he hold up and support Reno.
From what has been already told, Custer's decisions that day were driven by a couple of things.

1) He knew that his force was discovered and that he had lost the element of surprise.
The longer it took to attack the village, the more prepared the warriors would be.
2) From reports, Custer was obsessed with the Indians being able to break down into smaller groups and dispersing.
He had to press on with the attack without any delay in order to capture the entire encampment.

Common sense would dictate that if Custer knew the combat power he was facing that day, he would have done things differently.
How could he have known the combat power of the enemy ? Better reconnaissance ?

Common sense really doesn’t dictate anything after the fact. It is paramount to understand what reconnaissance is and was on the frontier under a mobile cavalry battalion. The ability to send scouts around the village undetected in advance of a march on the village under the circumstances you cite and were in effect at that battle and time in history, don’t provide the opportunity to get the same information you would get from a drone today…

Certainly, common sense can dictate either before or after depending on how you look at it.

Did not Custer's Indian scouts caution him about the numbers of warriors in the village ?

I read one report that stated that "US Army intelligence" estimated that the number of braves under Sitting Bull was 800.
Maybe that's what Custer was going with ?

Some things we will never know.

As to Custer listening to his scouts and making his command decisions are why the Army puts officers in charge of troops and not scouts.

The intelligence of the day suggested that weren’t anywhere near as many Indians off the reservation as there were assembled on the Little Bighorn in June of 1876.

The United States government had declared that any Indians not on their respective reservations by January 31, 1876 would be considered hostile and dealt with accordingly. Custer, under orders from General Alfred Terry, was part of an organized effort to deal with a whole lot less Indians than had been anticipated when they left the Far West, just a few days earlier.

That's a different subject, commanding troops.
Reports indicate that Custer did not heed his scout's warnings of many warriors in the village and that he will travel a way he has never gone if he attacks that village.

Custer rode for several miles along the bluff as he traveled to the north end of the village.
Now, he had firsthand knowledge that this was a huge encampment.
Fair to say that any previous reports of enemy strength should have been thrown out the window.
Don't you agree ?

We know that now.

Your point?

A timely piece via RealClearHistory…

The Crows are perhaps the best scouts on the continent and the most venturesome.

https://sheridanmedia.com/news/157532/history-custers-crow-scouts-at-the-battle-of-little-big-horn/

From most of my reading, Curly left Custer’s battalion long before they went down the valley after splitting with Reno.
But he made a good name for himself, and no one can say for sure how much, exactly, he witnessed.
Interesting reading. Thanks!
Reon

You never hear much about the Crow Scouts and how the situation was for them, pretty much written out of the script, even though Crows and Shoshones played a major part in the Rosebud fight.

Interesting in that 1877 newspaper article how they were regarded at the time.

Did Curly or other Crow scouts have relatives in the Lakota camp? Sounds plausible. Were there things going on between the Indians that didn’t make into written accounts? I’d guess that was a certainty.

Relatives in the Lakota camp? Only real connections I know of are covered in the books I’ve read.
Toppa my head, Isaha Dorman, Custer’s black interpretator/guide was married to a Lakota woman, the Sioux knew him pretty well.
Bloody Knife was raised as a Sioux, he moved with his mother back to the Ree Camp near Fort Buford on the Missouri in North Dakota. He and Gall, probably some others had a sorta blood feud between them.
If there were others, they’ve slipped my mind.
Shrapnel, in LBH and Custer probably knows way more than me.
As far as Montana goes, I rely on him much like I do you and Kaywoodie for Texas!😀
The Crow were mortal enemies of the Sioux. You remember a few decades back, the Sioux had forced them out of the Black Hills and LBH territory. It was rightfully theirs, which is why they sided with the Army.
Reon

Custard's famous last words "LOOK AT ALL THEM [bleep] INDIANS".. the rest is history 😁

I think that is highly unlikely. Mitch Boyer was of mixed Sioux ancestry, Curley was a young man at the time of the battle and lived around that area until his death in 1923. Another scout, Thomas LaForge was with Gibbon at the time of the battle, and it is my recollection that he was supposed to be a scout with Custer, but due to ailment or injury, was with Gibbons command. He was one of the first to come into contact with Curley when Curley told of the annihilation of Custer’s command.

A good friend of mine has an extensive collection of leather tack and saddles. He was showing me a set of chaps that belonged to Curley when he was still cowboying in that area into the early 20th century.

Interestingly enough, I bought a Filson vest from a direct descendant of Thomas LaForge just a few years ago, when we were discussing the Custer battle. His name was LaForge and he told me his Great grandfather was Thomas LaForge.

It is interesting to find little nuggets of history as you continue through ordinary life among un-ordinary people…

Is he associated the Laforge in North Dakota?
We visited Laforge in ‘17 on our way to Culbertson MT. Interesting place, I wish I’d have had time to look around more.
I believe Peter Thompson of Company C lived out his days there.
Reon