Never considered them maybe breaking the cartridges down for a different use. Can see them pesky Injuns doing that though.
They wanted the 45-70 infantry round to be able to break up a cavalry charge at 600 yards and less in volley fire. I suspect that would have interested my GG Grandfather M.
My GGGranfather Rockpile was in one of the temporary Mexican War Regular Army regiments and his son married a girl whose dad was my GG Grandfather S. He was a corporal in the 15 th Indiana Infantry for three years in the western theater and saw lots of combat and was wounded twice. If those Southern boys had shot a touch better I might not be typing this. :<{
I would really love to know what they were issued during their careers but alas they left no written records.
Which was why they began with the .50-70 chambering in the earliest Infantry trapdoors, easy to sleeve the barrel down on the old leftover Civil War muskets, followed by new production rifles mostly using the old machinery.
But in a carbine version it was both hard on the shooter and worse on his horse when mounted. Cutting the diameter of the bullet and reducing the powder charge helped considerably, and the stocks of the old .50 caliber Springfield ammo were given away at many frontier military posts to any buffalo hunter wanting to help reduce the Indian's food supply. That worked out pretty well for the Army and the US Western expansion; for the Indians, not so much.