Posted on 06/27/2010 7:36:34 PM PDT by Saije
An American flag found at Little Bighorn after Lt Col George Custer and nearly 270 men were wiped out by Indian warriors is expected to fetch as much as £3.3 million when it goes up for auction.
The swallowtail battle guidon of the 7th Cavalry Regiment was the only military artefact left behind after Custer and his men were defeated by thousands of Lakota and Cheyenne Indians, led by Sitting Bull, in June, 1876.***
The victorious Plains Indians had stripped the corpses clean of trophies but evidently missed the flag, which was hidden under the body of a fallen soldier. It was recovered by Sgt Ferdinand Culbertson, a member of a burial party, and was sold for $54 in 1895 to the Detroit Institute of Arts.***
The auction house has estimated it will fetch between $2 million and $5 million (£1.3 million to £3.3 million) but hopes it could even exceed the current auction record for a flag – the $12.3 million paid for an American flag captured by the British during a 1779 engagement during the War of Independence.
"It's not a piece of decoration. It's a sacred relic, people died for this flag" said David Redden, a Sotheby's vice chairman.***
The battle was part of the Great Sioux War, which started after the US government tried to drive the Indians out of the Black Hills region in what is now Montana.
The land had been ceded to the tribes in perpetuity but, following the discovery of gold there, the US insisted the Indians move to a reservation.
The 7th Cavalry surprised the Indians, led by Sitting Bull, in their village only to realise they had considerably underestimated the enemy's strength.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
The expulsion of the Sioux from the Black Hills is a sad parallel with that of the Cherokee from the Great Smokies. In both cases, gold seems to have been the motive.
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Hair tingling too.
Does hair still tingle when it’s hanging from a pole outside your lodge?
Yeah, well, Custer never was one for sharing a plan with his subordinates, probably because he often flew by the seat of his pants, so to speak. The man was brave, and had some moments of innovation, but he was really not all that good a commander.
There is no question that the Indians outgunned the 7th. The 7th’s ‘73 carbine was a good weapon, but was no match for a repeater within 200 yards, especially given the soft copper shell casings that had a tendency to jam in the receiver when the weapon got too hot. Also, the Indians were able to shoot a storm of arrows from concealed positions, and those sharp missiles falling from the sky caused no end of problems for the troops. The Battle of the Little Bighorn was Murphy’s law in action.
What's really interesting to me is how he apparently changed. Men who served with him during the Civil War loved him, but ended up hating his guts during the Indian Wars.
I thought this flag was in the museum at Ft. Riley...
Most of the grave markers are placed where they found the bodies after the battle. The guys were scattered and several were found in a draw.
At least one theory (partly based on the shell casings they found) was that it appeared Keogh's position was flat-out overrun in very short order. Once his position was gone, it could have generated panic and confusion.
The indians were using the draws for cover and concealment; Custer's guys were exposed on the hills and shot to pieces.
That’s true, but there’s additional issue here - the way that Custer pushed his way into a fight that was overwhelmingly against him. It is one thing to discover too late that your enemy is vastly outnumbering you. It is quite another to have the signs in front of you, ignore them, and blunder on ahead, begging to be slaughtered.
We now live in easy proximity to the lands where the 7th killed Indians - and where the Indians returned the favor. All of the famous Powder River country battlefields are between 30 minutes and 4 hour drives away from our front door. We’ve seen several of them now, and the ones where the US Army lost big share common attributes.
First, let’s get something out of the way: Custer was something of a thug - his career as an fighter of Indians started with his slaughter of Black Kettle’s people in 1868, riding into a village that was showing no aggression, at dawn, in heavy snow, and killing women and children as well as warriors. This starts “the Custer legend” (both in his own mind and in the mind of the public). Custer’s mistake years later was in believing his own press - when the reality was, he won best when he was killing Indians by ambush, in their own beds.
But let’s put that aside for a moment and deal with the Little Big Horn: Anyone looking at the lay of the land in which Custer chose to make this battle would say “Uh... this isn’t where I want to start a fight with a numerically superior force.” The land is such that you could hide an entire division of men and material just over the next hill — and you might have no idea of this until you poke your schnozz over the hill and say “Uh oh.”
But let’s say that Custer thought he had no choice. Custer screwed up in that he:
1. Didn’t brief his NCO’s or junior officers on what the overall plan was. As near as I can tell, the “overall battle plan” was to ride into the village and start shooting the Indian warriors, then shoot the women and children. There was bad blood between Custer, Reno and Benteen - and Custer handled this by not briefing them properly on his plans. It appears that Custer thought he was going to hog the expected glory from the results. Custer did indeed receive the majority of the results.
2. He allowed the supply wagons with thousands of rounds of ammo to trail far behind him, or conversely, he got strung out away from his resupply.
3. Some of this men didn’t control their horses and went well forward of the skirmish lines - and were slaughtered for their effort. Others of his men would not hold a line. The accounts of his men in combat were that of a force that lacked discipline and cohesion, probably due to point #1 above: they were not told an overall plan or strategy.
4. He refused an offer of additional men from Terry only days before. Custer, ever the braggart, refused these additional men, saying he could whip the entire Sioux nation with the men he had.
All in all, one need do nothing but examine the evidence, see the actual terrain, walk up and down the area of operations - instead of the reading the contemporary romantic mythology that sprang up soon following Custer’s death - and one comes to the conclusion: “He was a moron of the highest order.”
But the biggest mistake Custer made, IMO, was the one where his own scouts were telling him that a) the number of trails and sign they were seeing indicated a huge gathering of Indians - trails converging. Yet Custer kept on wanting to mentally change estimates he was being given to “no more than 1,500 Indians” - even when his scouts were telling him “at *least* 1,500,” or “2,000 or more,” and he kept thinking that the trails were diverging.
Custer’s own orders after the battle had begun show that he was not expecting the size of the Indian encampment to be so large. Ignore the advice of people who can read the signs, the people you brought along to give you intelligence.... and you get the results that invariably come with this.
BTW — Custer wasn’t the only dumbass in the US Army to do something this stupid. If you ever get a chance, go to the site of the Fetterman Fight, which is just north of Buffalo, WY and south of Sheridan, WY. It is easy to get to off Interstate-90. The Wagon Box Fight was fought just north of this area too.
Long story short: Fetterman and Custer were cut from the same cloth - immense egos, underestimated their opposition, thought they had enough men to wipe out the entire Indian nation, Civil War veteran with a brevet rank, etc. Fetterman had an almost-excuse in that they had little experience in fighting the Plains Indians at that time. Custer had no such excuse, and should have learned something from Fetterman’s example.
Fetterman was given direct orders to go out and support a wood-cutting party that was being harassed by Red Cloud’s warriors. Fetterman was told by Carrington, CO of the fort, explicitly, to not pursue the Indians, no matter what. Just support the wood cutting party. That’s it. Don’t give chase, don’t get out of sight, don’t freelance.
Well, of course, Fetterman didn’t listen. Carrington was seen as too slow, too cautious, too fearful of the Indians, and junior officers like Fetterman were chafing at the bit, claiming that if they were turned loose, the “Indian problem” would be solved.
Carrington, however, was a good observer of Indian tactics and drew the correct lessons from what he was seeing.
Crazy Horse (unknown until this fight) came in close to Ft. Phil Kearny, drew fire and caused Fetterman to come a-following. Again, when one looks at the terrain and conditions at the time of the fight, we see that these Civil-War veteran officers were a) brash, b) racist (in that they could not *conceive* of the Indians being able to plan a battlefield), c) stunningly stupid about terrain factors. Crazy Horse, Red Cloud and others had chosen their terrain well, planned the fight to maximize even the weather as an element, and had studied their opponent’s mental failings.
Here in Wyoming along the Big Horn Mountains, when there is enough moisture, the grass grows really well. I mean REALLY well. This, BTW, is why the Indians fought so hard for this ground. It is a veritable game factory - deer as thick as flies, pronghorn everywhere you look. Wild turkeys, sage grouse, geese, ducks, you name it. This is a result of lush grasslands, rolling terrain to shield game from weather in the winter, plenty of good water.
In the days of the great bison herds, the rolling foothills were probably black in areas. Little wonder that the Indians were going to fight to the death for this ground.
This is one of the good moisture years, and the native mountain brome grass is chest-high on me - and I’m over 6’ tall. Unless you hay this grass or have cattle/bison to graze it down - it stays very high into the winter. Such was the case before the winter of 1866. Unless you have a good, high-angle perspective on a field, you cannot see someone laying in the grass waiting for you. The grass is thick enough in spots that I cannot see a black angus cow laying in the grass less than 100 yards away from my second story deck. You get my point - a field of rippling grass, waving in the wind, is not something you go charging into if you value your life, whether there are Indian warriors or a Angus bull waiting out there for you.
Fetterman follows Crazy Horse and the other decoys over the hill, out of sight of the fort. In the tall grass, there’s over 1,000 (some accounts have it at 2,000) Indian warriors, laying down, waiting for the decoying force to draw Fetterman and his men down the reverse slope. Fetterman gets far enough into the trap, the Indians sprang up and started attacking.
All of Fetterman’s men and their dog were killed.
Same pattern as at Little Big Horn 10 years later: brash, intemperate officer who was promoted to a brevet rank in the Civil War, underestimating his opponent(s), ignoring the tactical use of terrain by his enemy, thinking that he could wipe them all out if he had but a scant number of “brave men.”
Fetterman and Custer are bookends of the Plains War, dumb and even dumber, respectively.
One other thing about the US army of the period and Custer specifically. He didn't listen to the Crow scouts mostly (IMHO) because of racism. They were after all Indians.
Good post, good summation.
Wasn't it Fetterman who claimed he could beat the whole Sioux nation with 80 men and was then promptly wiped out along with 79 of his men?
Yes.
He said this to Carrington three times. Each time, Carrington was telling him to NOT follow the Indians, to NOT pursue, to NOT get out of sight of the fort, to NOT rise to the bait. Fetterman basically despised Carrington, mostly because Carrington was an engineer/administrator, not a combat vet from the Civil War. Carrington was the right man to build a fort in the wilderness and handle the engineering, construction, logistics, etc - but the junior officers who were blooded in the Civil War held him in contempt because he followed his orders - which were to build a fort, establish lines of supply and work on a road on the Bozeman Trail. Carrington was not given orders to make war on the Indians, nor did he see the point in free-lancing after them given the terrain, the numbers of Indians and the speed with which the Indians could appear and then disappear.
Truth was, tho, that Carrington learned a lot more than the young hotheads by watching what the Indians were doing.
There is but one explanation for the fate of the men who followed Fetterman to their deaths: the arrogance of a commander who clearly didn’t know his enemy.
Another piece of evidence of how men like Fetterman didn’t understand the Indians:
All of the men who followed Fetterman to their deaths were mutilated but one. The bugler, Adolph Metzler, was found dead, but intact, clothed and covered with a buffalo robe. The soldiers who came out to recover the Fetterman bodies puzzled over this for some time.
The Indians later told tales of Metzler as a “real warrior” who, after running out of ammo, had stood his ground and beat several Indians to death with his (wait for it).... bugle. Even tho the Indians had scant firearms at that time, think of the situation: You’re outnumbered 10:1 and more, the Indians are experts at close quarters combat with lances, axes, clubs, knives and the like - and here’s this young “bluecoat,” standing his ground, beating several Indians to death with a bugle.
The chiefs must have been awe-struck at his bravery.
Being covered with a buffalo robe when the temperature was going to drop to sub-zero that night was a high honor indeed.
I’d never heard that story about the bugler before. That was great.
We visited the state/national? park that is where Custer and his men died. It made the hair on my arms rise up as we walked and drove around the battle ground. Battle fields always do something to me I can’t explain.
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