Lakota Warriors Vow to Crush Dirty Rainbow Hippies

I’m familiar with how the Army operated and its goals. I know the goal of the Army was not maximum survival but winning, if winning was possible. Custer was aggressive and he bit off more than he could chew, but it was NOT obvious - not to him and not to many others.

Custer was fighting to win. Given the numbers he encountered and their equipment, it was a long shot - but a long shot gets its best chance with aggression, not caution.

“You claimed that “no historian” agreed with me.”

Who? Who seriously thinks Custer knew exactly what he was riding in to? Yes, he knew there would be a lot - as the Army had often encountered before. He did not know total numbers, their equipment, and he did not know they would fight as aggressively as they did. Gen Crook had learned that lesson a week earlier, but there was no way for Custer to know it.

He wasn’t there to play it safe. Had he realized the full extent, his actions might have been different, but various officers and men learned just what they were facing at different stages in the fight.

You wrote: “From his vantage point above the encampment he would have had ample time to understand the tactical situation and to withdraw. Nobody who has been there could possibly think otherwise.”

Having read the accounts of men who were there, NO ONE understood the tactical situation in a timely manner. And since they were there at the time, I give greater weight to what THEY SAY than to what you claim is obvious to any visitor.

And yes, I’ve been to the battlefield. I haven’t ridden it on a horse, in weather similar to that day’s, and sure as heck haven’t done it when there were thousands of men and horses present. Neither have you

This statement, like so much that you presume, is false. My father, who will be 90 on Thursday, took a horse tour of the battlefield with me and my three brothers on June 25th, 1975, as a birthday present. In those days, the Crow Agency ran horseback tours of the battlefield. I have been back there several times since, with my own family. Haven't checked if the tours still run, but maybe you can get one. When Colonel Custer reached Weir Point, there were not "thousands" of men present. Even so, hundreds of cavalrymen on horse back would not have obscured Custer's view from above the Sioux camp.

I know the goal of the Army was not maximum survival but winning, if winning was possible. Custer was aggressive and he bit off more than he could chew, but it was NOT obvious - not to him and not to many others.

Thanks for demolishing your own point and making mine.

The culture of the US Army, Custer's own undeniably fierce courage, his wife's political ambitions, and his belief that his soldiers were worth ten Indians apiece all contributed to the terrible decisions that he made that day. And you will find many more historians who agree with that point of view than yours. As for the testimonials of men made in the postmortem, I'm inclined to disbelieve them, since they had so much to lose by admitting that the tactical situation turned out exactly as the scouts had insinuated it would.

I do not have the privilege of being a descendant of the original Black Elk. When I was in college, I read Black Elk Speaks by some opportunist left wing college perfessor of the 1930s who cast Black Elk as though he were a pagan. Black Elk had been a lay Catholic missionary among the Lakota for nearly 30 years by then but the author engaged in major dishonesty. I very much admire Black Elk and some other Native American celebrities and Black Elk's name was available when I joined FR.

As a Catholic, I tend toward a certain degree of bloodthirstiness. As popes said in sending Crusaders against the Muslims: Deus vult! (God wills it!).

You underestimate the Spanish. Unlike the English, the Spaniards did not believe in race-baed slavery and racial harmony (and intermarriage) in their former colonies worked much better than race-based slavery o the English from which the USA suffers to this day.

The hippies were pigs and nuisances in their youth. This bunch occupying the Black Hills are pigs and nuisances now. As Mr. Swan so eloquently said: You are not a tribe. You are frickin' fruitcakes! That about covers it. Like the ancient Spartans, they can go home (NOW!) with their shields or on them. They are nothing more than members of the wierdo American community.

Some here have claimed that the Lakota forfeited their rights t 7.7 million acres by attacking the Crow who were not parties to the Treaty of Laramie. I don't know from personal knowledge but the Wikipedia article on the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 mentions the land given the Lakota but nothing about that concession ever being abrogated.

The Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho were allied for as long as anyone knows in intramural warfare against the Crow and the Blackfeet. The Wikipedia article makes no mention of any agreement of the Lakota not to make war against the Crow or the Blackfoot. It would be like seeking the agreement of Italian Americans never to eat tomato sauce.

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