Battle at the Little Bignorn

[Wolfer]

I have read Sitting Bulls account of the Little Bighorn. As I recall he said there were around 4000 people in camp. I'm not sure how many were warriors. He said the Indians thought the camp was being attacked and were desperate to defend it.
I personally don't believe Custer thought the camp was that big in spite of what his scouts told him.

[M-Tecs]

I believe that was the first major battle where the Indians didn't break off after the initial engagement. Custer was not expecting them to stand and fight based on his previous engagements.

[GOPHER SLAYER]

Our son attended the military collage, The Citadel and went into the Marine Corps. He rose to the rank od Major before in left the corps. He attended many classes on strategy and tactics. I asked him if they had ever mentioned the 10 Rules of War that was written centuries ago by the Chinese tactician Sun Sou [I may not have spelled his name correctly, if that was his name] and if so, why do they keep screwing up? He said they taught the about rules but they keep thinking they can tweak it and improve on it.Their disasters on the battlefields over the last couple of centuries show how wrong they can be.

[Battis]

Tom Custer, George Custer's younger brother, had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor twice. Sibling rivalry might have been one of the driving forces behind George's impulsive actions and decisions - the need to "best" his brother.

I visited the battlefield last August. Great place to visit.

[shooter2]

The indians were much better armed than was expected, and was unknown until the battlefield burned and was investigated about 25 to 30 years ago. Don't quote me on this as my memory sucks.

One body was found not many years ago hidden under a tree stump by the river. I believe he was one of the water carriers fron the Reno Benteen field a mile or two away.

If you can find it, National Geographic Magazine had a dandy article on this. I was there shortly after the fire and one of the Park Service personnel told me how they planned to lay out the grids yard by yard. They went over it with metal detectors and were able to track individuals based on the empty cartridge cases. Much was learned including how badly they underestimated the number of Indians that were there.

All that said, Custer and the troops put up a good fight considering the odds.

[Thumbcocker]

ative witnesses said that Custer was wiped out in the time it takes a hungry man to eat his dinner. Benteen was criticized for not riding to Custer's aid and it was no secrete that he despised Custer; but digging in was the logical choice. Several medals of honor were awarded to water carriers and marksmen who covered them from exposed positions. The Trapdoors were able to hold their own at long range over open ground not so much when the enemy was close and firing quickly. A seldom mentioned factor is the arrows arching in from the gullys around the positions occupied by Custer's troops. Most of Reno's casualties were when he broke and ran from his position at the end of the village and his troops fled in disorder across the river. The Sioux rode next to them and shot them out of the saddle. Surviving warriors said it was like a buffalo hunt.

[flounderman]

Custer split his command and left Benteen and Reno in reserve. Custer needed a big victory and he was a glory hound. He wasn't anticipating that the village was all warriors and not the women and children, he was expecting, and the rest is history.

[Katya Mullethov]

Manifest destiny , just say no , let's roll , yes we can , make America great again !

[johnson1942]

when the men dismounted most of their ammunition stayed of their horses. the natives used goose wing whistles to scare the horses. they are like a dog whistle of to day. to test this i and a friend took a high quality dog whistle and blew it hard next to about a dozen horses. they went nuts and didnt stop going nuts. to them a dog whistle is really painful, much more than even to a dog. also they were not well trained and got seperated and then over run. the natives said one older soldier was very calm and sat down and with his rifle and killed a lot of natives before they got him. they had high respect for him. custer was one of the last to die. white bull fought him hand to hand with all the other natives watching. white bull had a hard time but finally killed him. to this day on any sioux rez the last name white bull hold very very high esteem. also on other plains tribe rez/s. the natives said the battle lasted about as long as it took a hungry man to eat a meal. many of custers men could hardly speak english and again were very ill trained. both custer and buffalo bill have desendents on the pine ridge rez. they didnt mind the native young ladies. one of my papients who passed at 99 years old and would be about 110 now told me the families that decended from custer and buffalo bill. here is a kicker, crazy horse was at least half white. the tribe called him albino until he grew up. he was raised as a native since a baby and felt 100 percent native. some even said he was all white. we will never know but for sure at least 1/2. custer found out civil war tatics didnt work in the west. the natives had repeaters but they had many other guns also. they all didnt have repeaters, many many muzzleloaders was still being used. their favorite gun was a good hand gun and they were good with them off a horse. be very very careful with a dog whistle around a horse. i dont want someone to get killed or some one else killed trying what i said out. take it from me, those horses went nuts.

[Battis]

I bought a book when I was at the battlefield titled WHERE CUSTER FELL - A NATIVE AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE. Many Indian eyewitnesses claim that Custer died at the river, and not on the hill.

[Mica_Hiebert]

I grew up 12 miles from the battle field, the key here is that last week un June the temperature is in excess of 100 degrees on the prairy, the Indians camped on the little big horn river and cut the American troupes off from water for several days. They where half dead of dehydration before they where ever attacked. Most of the men used their last bullet to kill the man standing next to him as a mercy kill as an alternative to being scalped and beaten or hacked to death by the indians.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The Army decided to stick with the trapdoor Springfield although the rimfire .44 Henry and 1866 Winchester were available, because it would be better suited for war against a European army - which in view of its long-range accuracy was probably true. It probably owed much to Napoleon III's Mexican adventure, and the fact that the French had adopted a long-range 11mm. rifle, the Chassepot, in 1867) and it had proved far superior to the Prussian rifle (Shame about the strategy!) in their war of 1870.

All the same, Army selection could be a funny business in those days. In Army triaonels of 1875 the box-magazine turnbolt Lee performed extremely well. 750 each of the Lee, Winchester-Hotchkiss and Chaffee-Reece were issued for trials to 149 companies, which found the Lee far superior to the other two, which both had tube magazines in the butt.What is more remarkable, though, is that they said they much preferred keeping the trapdoor Springfield. Anybody who believes that, of fighting soldiers nine years after the Little Bighorn, will very likely believe anything. So the Board decided to await further developments, which turned out to be the .30-40 Krag. It was, fortuitously, a good decision, like the British dilly-dallying so long about their improved .402 Martini (actually about as good as military black powder cartridges can be), and thereby avoided buying hundreds of thousands of them a couple of years before smokeless powder and small calibre came along.

James Paris Lee fired fifty unaimed shots in a minute in those trials, and while that would have been pretty useless with the variously reported amounts of ammunition carried by Custer's troopers, there was great value in the ability to dump and replace a magazine without immobilising the rifle for a second, just like a modern automatic. Too much is made of claims that the Springfield can keep up steady sustained fire at a greater rate than a lever-action. Not when you are lying as low as possible and loading from a cartridge belt, it can't.

The number of Indians in the field was underestimated by everybody, by Custer less than the Indian agency. A village, rather than a military camp, might well panic if taken by surprise. It seems likely that Custer thought most of the warriors were absent or sleeping, and he hoped to capture a large number of women and children. He stated in his book published just two years earlier, that it was desirable to use Indian families to deter them from fighting. It is hard to fault Reno's decision to break off his attack, but there is little doubt that Custer expected it to be pressed home, and the village to be taken by an attack from two sides. Had he survived, it would be very much in character to have blamed someone else for failure.

Most historians now agree that he was killed early in the engagement, and there are Indian accounts which suggest he may have shot himself. It is unlikely in the extreme that Crazy Horse was either part-white or an albino. He did have rather light hair in his youth, but that is far from impossible in a full-blooded Indian. White blood would have been big news to his full sister who was alive and well known to white people in the 1930s, and an albino would have had poor eyesight.

[richhodg66]

People are quick to criticize Custer and he made a lot of mistakes, but his experience in the Civil War was pretty good and as often as not, boldness and audacity was what won the day and that was how he thought.

I've often wondered why the Army stuck with the Trapdoor when an American company was exporting rolling blocks to other countries militaries. Seems it would have been a much better rifle.

I've been to the Little Bighorn a few times, I much preferred seeing it in the Wintertime when there aren't any tourists around. That is a lonely, desolate place in February.

I have also heard before that the average cavalry trooper on the frontier at the time wasn't very well trained and most had not shot their assigned weapons much. Seems the evidence shows that they never really did get together in any kind of cohesive defense once things went south on them, they might have made a better showing had they done so.

I realize that the situations were different but comparing this to the British fight at Rourke's Drift, where similarly capable rifles also against a numerically superior aboriginal force and a very different outcome. Maybe training and individual soldier discipline made a difference.

[GhostHawk]

Custer has been known to say that with 100 Calvary he could ride through the whole Sioux nation.
He was proven wrong. He was promoted fast in the Civil war, but I think he earned most of those over the bodies of his dead soldiers.
He did not lack for courage or willingness to charge the guns. But I think he was long on dash and short on tactics. In the end it cost him.

If Custer had not attacked, stayed with his baggage train, picked a good spot to defend he probably could have lasted until reinforcements could arrive. However it was not in his nature to do so. Also Mica HieObert has a good point about water. There is none on the defendable ridges. Only down in the creek bottoms where you have limited visibility.

Ken Burn's movie "The West" also talked about soldiers mercy killing each other.

The fact is the Indians should not have ever let us cross the Mississippi. Once they did their fate was sealed.



Splitting his command, changing the guns, including the gatlings, nothing would have changed the end result.
Custer had a date with destiny. The changes would only have affected how many Sioux would have died.

[Jeff Michel]

I "think" that it was more than just hubris. Custer like many people of that generation, held no small amount of contempt for the native peoples both as "humans" or as fighters. A lot has already been mentioned about his poor tactics but certainly not the least of which is under estimating your adversary. The same mind set exists today with people with national notoriety, the endless pursuit of a legacy at whatever the cost to the nation.

[waksupi]

i am by no means a military tactician but to attack a village the size of the one at the little big horn with 250 men 20/20 hindsight or not seems stupid to say the least.

The way the village laid, it wouldn't have been possible to see all of the camp. It was strung up and down the river in the cottonwoods for a considerable distance. He should have listened to his Crow scouts.

[waksupi]

when the men dismounted most of their ammunition stayed of their horses. the natives used goose wing whistles to scare the horses. they are like a dog whistle of to day. to test this i and a friend took a high quality dog whistle and blew it hard next to about a dozen horses. they went nuts and didnt stop going nuts. to them a dog whistle is really painful, much more than even to a dog. also they were not well trained and got seperated and then over run. the natives said one older soldier was very calm and sat down and with his rifle and killed a lot of natives before they got him. they had high respect for him. custer was one of the last to die. white bull fought him hand to hand with all the other natives watching. white bull had a hard time but finally killed him. to this day on any sioux rez the last name white bull hold very very high esteem. also on other plains tribe rez/s. the natives said the battle lasted about as long as it took a hungry man to eat a meal. many of custers men could hardly speak english and again were very ill trained. both custer and buffalo bill have desendents on the pine ridge rez. they didnt mind the native young ladies. one of my papients who passed at 99 years old and would be about 110 now told me the families that decended from custer and buffalo bill. here is a kicker, crazy horse was at least half white. the tribe called him albino until he grew up. he was raised as a native since a baby and felt 100 percent native. some even said he was all white. we will never know but for sure at least 1/2. custer found out civil war tatics didnt work in the west. the natives had repeaters but they had many other guns also. they all didnt have repeaters, many many muzzleloaders was still being used. their favorite gun was a good hand gun and they were good with them off a horse. be very very careful with a dog whistle around a horse. i dont want someone to get killed or some one else killed trying what i said out. take it from me, those horses went nuts.

Another thing some don't realize, there were a fair amount of whites fighting with the Indians. Some of them had buffalo rifles, and could set back in the distance and play a hand.

[trebor44]

I "think" that it was more than just hubris. Custer like many people of that generation, held no small amount of contempt for the native peoples both as "humans" or as fighters. A lot has already been mentioned about his poor tactics but certainly not the least of which is under estimating your adversary. The same mind set exists today with people with national notoriety, the endless pursuit of a legacy at whatever the cost to the nation.

Yep, as it is today!

Another perspective: "Custer Died for Your Sins;An Indian Manifesto" by Vine Deloria, Jr. Interesting reading and informative. George wanted to be President and the power brokers in DC were on his side, provided ....

[white eagle]

He just ran into a superior advisory
quite a bit different from killing women and children

[Thumbcocker]

Of course he could have waited for the rest of the army including the infantry like he was supposed to.