The site of Little Bighorn has been researched like no other American battlefield. Using the results of this scientific research, we'll peel away the myths about Little Bighorn, revealing that there was no last stand just as there were, in fact, few bows, arrows or tomahawks.
VIDEO HERE (47:24 minutes)
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Even as a little kid I never have believed that bullshit about a gallant last stand, figuring they were just flat out overran, nor did I believe that the final fighting was on Last Stand Hill.
When I was a teenager, we stopped off at the battle site as we were traveling across the States to my dad's new duty station, and we spent most of the day just wandering around.
You can tell by the outlying markers that those marked the spots where stragglers died, not skirmishers on line as the history books all claimed. Seriously, who sets up a skirmish line down in a ravine shooting up?
I think the account in Black Elk Speaks is probably closer to real than anything they dish up in the classroom and movies and folk tales.
ReplyDelete--nines
The last question.
ReplyDeleteDienbienphu.
French and Vietnam Minh can chime in.
Ragnar
Yeah well, you're talking the French here.
DeleteWell, "Gallant last stand, by heroic few" plays better than "narsasistic officer gets himself and his men killed"
ReplyDeleteNo, Custer was following his orders. They had ridden all night and all morning just to get to the valley and it took 3 hours to find the village. He was supposed to be in place for a dawn attack on the 26th, but he thought they'd been spotted, so he had no choice but to go in.
DeleteNot everything on You-Tube should be taken at face value.
Since everyone with Custer died, just how do you know what Custer was thinking, hmm? Custer was an aggressive, glory hound who wanted all the headlines for himself. That was true of his entire career and you think he was any different in this one? The fool stuck his neck out too far that time and got his head handed back to him, along with those of his men.
DeleteTerry wasn't able to reach the battlefield until the 27th.
DeleteInteresting how the u-toob algorithm coughs these videos up at the same time; I watched this one last night.
ReplyDeleteAs I understood it the columns were pretty dispersed and what is sometimes called skirmish lines were just were these individual sections kinda got cornered. Back when I studied it a bit it boiled down to a bunch of little last stands when they finally figured out they were not going to be able to get back together. Not one big one.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion more accurately documented than many a so called massacre suffered by Indians are portrayed these days but that just seems to be the general trend and of course to get specific you have to go back and read first person accounts by old dead White Men that are automatically counted as lies today.
Pretty bad deal all round. Kind of makes you think what might come out of our current troubles.
ReplyDeleteLittle Big Man
ReplyDeleteThe battlefield is just an hour down the road from here. Most visitors get an odd view of the battle because they see it backwards. They start at the visitor's center and make stops along the way to Reno Hill. They end their visit where the battle began.
ReplyDeleteI also visited the battle site about 30 years ago. I came away with a very different understanding of what happened from what was taught in school. I believe Tsgt Joe pretty well nailed it above.
ReplyDeleteThat was pretty good. The information pretty much jives with what a forensic study of the battlefield revealed in an article written by what I remembered to be a couple of gun guys who combed the area with metal detectors looking for artifacts in order to discover the progression of events. But I might be wrong, the article might have been about these same two fellows.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the most chilling revelation of both accounts was how the final men who died that day died in complete and utter fear, knowing what was about to happen to them.
Something I didn't know was the number of different weapons and calibers used by the Red Men that day. I thought it was mainly .44 Henrys that they used.
Say the same about the Alamo and Isandlwana.
DeleteThat incident got the publicity. Others, like the Fetterman massacre, the Milk Creek fight near Meeker, CO, and the Beecher Island siege near Wray, CO are lesser known.
ReplyDeleteOr the Rosebud battle from a few days before.
DeleteIt was by far the largest defeat the USA suffered from native Americans since St. Clair's defeat in 1791, when Arthur St. Clair led 1,000 Americans against a confederacy of several Algonquin tribes on the Wabash River, and lost all but 24 killed, wounded, or captured. There were three times as many killed there as at the Little Big Horn.
DeleteWhile Custer's destruction is famous, many American history books omit St. Clair, and then can't say much about the Legion of the United States, a whole new army with a unique organization formed by Mad Anthony Wayne specifically to beat this one enemy.
As Colonel Custer stood on the hillside over looking the Little Bighorn River with 3000 extremely angry and bloodthirsty Sioux and Cheyenne pouring out of the village, he turned to his Calvary troopers with a question. He said men I have some good news and bad news what do you want to hear first. A private yells out give us the bad news. Well Custer says those 3000 braves are about to overrun our position and we are all going to be killed and mutilated. The private in a shaky voice then ask what could be the good news. Custer says with a smile well we don’t have to go back to North Dakota.
ReplyDeleteHey, wait a min..........ok, fair enough.
DeleteThere was later archaeological work that really shed light on what happened as well as the weapons used by both sides. It was interesting the number of live rounds they found indicating panic in the US Army forces. It was also updated as to how the terrain looked at that time period, which is nothing like it does today.
ReplyDeleteWould have been interesting if Custer had brought the two gatling guns they had with them to the battlefield, although in the end they probably would have ended up in the possession of the Indians.
Who would have had no idea what to do with them. And the indication of "panic" sounds like some Lefty college prof doing his bit for the Agenda.
DeleteThey panicked towards the end. The 7th Cavalry was brittle. They had to shoot their horses for cover. The skirmish lines are clear from the archeology, and where the bodies were found, plus Lakota and Cheyenne accounts (is it your position they ALL got together and decided to tell the same lies? WHY?). At the end, the remainder broke and ran down the draws in a futile attempt to escape and were run down and killed there. It's not some left-wing conspiracy theory. What's the damned eyeroll emoji?
DeleteI don't know if live rounds dropped indicates panic, or just trying to reload on a galloping horse. The 7th Cavalry's main weapon seems to have been the Trap-Door Springfield, a single-shot breech loader with a cartridge (.45-70) massive enough that it soon became the choice of many buffalo hide hunters. It was good rifle when (as usual, and as the other two columns did in this battle) American cavalry rode to the battle then dismounted to fight, but it was not made to use from horseback. Custer had charged his column right into a melee on horseback at hand to hand range. Perhaps they also had revolvers, but once those were empty, they were even more difficult to reload while fighting hand to hand, or while Indians with Henry/Winchester 16-shot lever actions were only a few feet away. Given their huge numerical advantage, all the Indians had to do was keep charging in at them so they never got a chance to reload or to form lines with the enemy on the outside.
DeleteI like military "genius":
ReplyDeleteDisregards all available intelligence
Divides his forces in the face of a superior force
Leads his contingent into aa tactically inferior position
Gets killed with all his contingent
Declared a hero.
He had taken a bullet in the side during the river crossing. Doubtful he was giving the orders.
DeleteProve it. You can't. There are varying Indian accounts (normal for the confusion of battle) and that's it. Precisely when Custer was shot is purely conjectural at this point.
DeleteMany modern historians believe Custer was killed early on in the creek (from several Indian accounts) and his body dragged up the hill to keep it from the Indians. The heroic figure noted on last stand hill was probably his brother Tom who had won two Medals of Honor in the Civil War.
DeleteA friend of mine (a fellow Marine) had to attend an Army school to audit it for possible use by our Marines. In it, he had to give a briefing. He started off by commenting that he had noticed all of the Army guys kept saying "HUAH! HUAH!" so he had done some research and found that this came from none other than Gen Custer himself. As Custer was looking out across the great Sioux Nation preparing to rip him a new one, he turned to his SgtMaj and asked, "Who-ah, who-ah pissed off the Indians?!" He said it went over like a lead balloon.
ReplyDeleteThe grass burned off the Custer battlefield about 20 years ago, allowing a survey to be done. If I recall correctly they estimated the Indians to be armed about 1/3 bows, 1/3 muzzleloading guns, and 1/3 cartridge guns.
ReplyDeleteDidn't watch the video, did you? Their findings showed the Indians had a shitload of lever rifles and were better armed than the soldiers. If they found any arrowheads at all, I don't think they mentioned it.
Delete