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You'd have a very hard time not being chock full of confidence based on prior skirmishes with Indians up to the time of Little Bighorn.

Matter of fact, any commissioned officer that wasn't chock full of confidence when it came to Indian fighting would pretty much meet the definition of a coward.



Travis

Gettysburg is only one of Custer's little known Civil War accomplishments. Jeb Stuart was the pride if the Southern Army and was killed at the hands of Custer's command at Yellow Tavern.

There is a reason Custer was a General at 23 years of age. Custer was at Appomattox when Lee surrendered. Phil Sheridan bought the table that they signed the terms of the surrender on and gave it to Libby Custer with a note stating that the war would not have come to as early a conclusion without the heroics of her husband...

Some of the first Indian battles did not exactly instill confidence in the Army on the Frontier. The Battle of Platte Bridge and the battle of Red Butte, at Casper Wy, was a win for the Indians.
Great post and new information ,for me on, Custer's Last Stand.

For this reason, Montana shudders when Travis and I end up in the same truck with more than a 7mm-08...

Very interesting and thanks Schrap. I was lucky enough to go to the battlefield last year after our hunt in WY was over. It's incredible to see the size and scale of the battlefield and equally humbling to see all of the markers everywhere where the soldiers and indians fell. I read a couple of the books you suggested prior to going to the site and I definitely agree that you truly gain a different perspective when you are able to actually see and stand where the battle took place. I try to make a special effort to visit at least one significant place each year when we go out to hunt WY (which is 16 years now for me and over 30 for my father). We've been to a number of great places but I will get back to the battlefield again, hopefully sometime soon. Thanks again for your insight here.

Craig

This is true and we are in the middle of investigating this cache. There are several Indian accounts of this and there was a record of where. Among poor care taking of certain documents describing what and where, this document has disappeared. There is still evidence that needs to be investigated to try and find this cache.

The value isn't in the contents of the cache as much as the historical significance of its existence...

fascinating thread, has given me a lead on some books I want to buy for cabin reading


and shrap ugly guys with guns always leave folks a bit nervous

There is another little known battlefield on the Tongue River that involved Crazy Horse and Nelson Miles, the following January of 1877 in below zero, winter conditions...

You are undoubtedly a deeper historian than I am, & not to belabor the point, but I don't think Custer really had much to do with Stuart's actual death.

The Union Cavalry outnumbered the Confederate's but more than 3 to 1 at Yellow Tavern & Custer's 5th Michign was actually more or less in retreat when Stuart was shot by one of its soldiers.

Generally speaking, prevailing in a 3:1 battle isn't an exceptionally overwhelming military feat.

I'll have to go find some other books on Custer, but taken on the whole, the Union won the Civil War with overwhelming forces & resources (repeating rifles for one), not because of necessarily better generalship, though the Union's latter military planning finally took advantage of its manpower & resources to the inevitable end.

MM

Crazy Horse died in 1877. It is unlikely your friend ever met him, possible I guess, but unlikely. Crazy Horse would have been dead 2 years before AU was born...

You aren't from the South are you?

If one studies Custer's Civil War record they'll see that the man made things happen.
His troops captured the most enemy battle flags of any command.
I've read that his troops captured every piece of artillery that fired on them and that he never lost any of his own to capture(though he had to take some back,from the enemy,a time or two).
He was one of the first to go up in a hot-air balloon to be a Forward Observer(he volunteered for that duty and was under heavy fire).
In a drawn sabre cavalry charge he was always in the lead even as a General(there are many accounts of this occurring).
General Grant thought so much of him that he gave Custer and not the President the table that the surrender was signed on.

Shrap,are you familiar with the Crow Rock Fight? I've heard that Sitting Bull was in that one.

I am not familiar with that battle. The table that the treaty was signed on at Appomattox was purchased by Sheriden and given to Libby Custer due to Custer's influence in the war...

Laughin' here.

Yeah, I am.............Chattanooga to be exact; but nonetheless, fact are facts.

Manpower & resources tend to win wars; obviously, leadership is vital, but even leadership can only overcome some level of lack of the other two.

Custer's loss at the LBH should be a classic example of that even if he was an extraordinary military genius, which is subject to some level of conjecture.

MM

There are accounts of a cavalry mount found dead at the mouth of the Rosebud. It was saddled and the saddlebags contained rations and ammunition with a carbine laying nearby. There are also Indian accounts of a Soldier riding out to the north early in the fight...could he have been sent to find Gen. Terry or could it have been Curly?

Crow Rock is north of Miles City...the Lakota and Crow had a running fight from the Powder with the Crow ending up on this large rock outcropping sticking up from the prairie with the Lakota surrounding them for a couple of days. This occurred sometime during the 1860s.

MM [/quote]

Gettysburg is only one of Custer's little known Civil War accomplishments. Jeb Stuart was the pride if the Southern Army and was killed at the hands of Custer's command at Yellow Tavern.

[/quote]

A little off topic, but I have always wondered what would have happened if Custer had come up against Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Standing there, with the wind blowing around me, I got one of the eeriest feelings that I could imagine.

I stand corrected. Thanks!

(If C H died before A U was born, why say "possible but unlikely?" Why not say, flat-out, 'impossible?'")

Old Fart memory is feeble. I don't remember which of the Custer-massacre chiefs was A U's mentor. Said "Crazy Horse" as a sort of logical guess. Whoever he was, he's well known to history. Don't remember the names of any of the other chiefs.

'Tain't easy bein' senile � especially in the company of better informed youngsters who're compelled to expose every little error of rickety memory.

A U was certifiably reliable. He's on the cover and prominent in the books Before Barbed Wire and its sequel, and in my presence, he accurately named most of the people in those old L A Huffman photographs. (Should I have corrected him when he called Hitzfeld "Hitchfelt?")

My former in-laws' greatest social delight was what I called "negative conversation." Every statement had to be argued. Say casually, for example, "It's two o'clock," and they'd promptly argue (loudly) "No, it's seven seconds after two."

I was wondering about that statement myself?

Some other key Indian from the battle perhaps?