145th Anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn (History Nerd Thread)

The Roman War Criminal ^ | 6/25/21 | Roman War Criminal

[Roman_War_Criminal]

[Lurkinanloomin]

The Gatling guns he left behind would have made a big difference.

[Mariner]

“*Reconnaissance - there was none and the results showed.

*He clearly didn’t trust his scouts or officers. “

Clear and indisputable failure of leadership.

[Vaquero]

This put quite a damper on the centennial ceremonies back east. Couple of weeks later Wild Bill Hickok was murdered. Jack McCall shot Hickok from behind as he played poker at Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory on August 2, 1876. Hickok held 2 pair. Aces and eights forever after known as “dead man’s hand”.

[Paladin2]

The gov’t needs to just leave peeps alone.

[Campion]

34th in his West Point class of ... 34.

[caver]

I like the illustrations showing the battle field movements. Thanks for posting!

[rdl6989]

That says much.

[M Kehoe]

Bttt.

5.56mm

[NWFree]

He never should have separated his troops and split them up.

[MplsSteve]

“His armaments were single shot Springfield rifles.”

IIRC, battlefield archeologists found many Springfield cartridges with large scratches on them. This was indicative of extraction failure. It sounds like (and I’m merely guessing here - don’t flame me) Custer’s troops were unable to keep up a steady rate of fire that may have kept the Indians at bay.

[Tennessee Nana]

1876

Plus he split his command...

[hardspunned]

The Indians were well armed too.

There were 2,361 cartridges, cases and bullets recovered from the entire battlefield, which reportedly came from 45 different firearms types (including the Army Springfields and Colts, of course) and represented at least 371 individual guns. The evidence indicated that the Indians used Sharps, Smith & Wessons, Evans, Henrys, Winchesters, Remingtons, Ballards, Maynards, Starrs, Spencers, Enfields and Forehand & Wadworths, as well as Colts and Springfields of other calibers. There was evidence of 69 individual Army Springfields on Custer’s Field (the square-mile section where Custer’s five companies died), but there was also evidence of 62 Indian .44-caliber Henry repeaters and 27 Sharps .50-caliber weapons. In all, on Custer’s Field there was evidence of at least 134 Indian firearms versus 81 for the soldiers. It appears that the Army was outgunned as well as outnumbered.

[yetidog]

We lived in Montana for several years and I spent many hours at the battlefield imagining and trying to understand Custer’s circumstances and decisions. Fundamentally, he made a series of poor decisions (no recon, split command and having expectations of subordinate leaders that they would not/could not meet). Also, the topography of the battlefield was not friendly—while it looks like wide open spaces, it is not and provides a lot of hills and gully (or as Montanans call them -coolies) concealment

[Equine1952]

My bucket list includes a ride on horse back of that battlefield. The Indians have tours of it or did the last time I was there. I know a lady whose grandmother was a little girl in an Indian camp at the battle site. I believe they fought so hard because they had their families there and broke camp because they knew who they had destroyed and didn’t want their families at further risk. Custer was an egomaniac and an azzhole. IMHO.

[Roman_War_Criminal]

True. The casings were not brass back then and copper instead. Supposedly this caused the casings to expand and get stuck which caused the need to manually extract them. I watched a show about this once and the weapon expert interviewed stated this would not have really happened a lot contrary to popular opinion. It's a worthy point of discussion however. Another point is that prior to this battle, every soldier kept their ammo sack attached to the horse. When the Indians ran off the horses their ammo went with it. After this battle the ammo belt became popular in case soldier got separated from horse, he still had his stash.

[SoCal Pubbie]

Last night I watched the Twilight Zone episode where the National Guard tank crew travels back in time and joins the battle!

[forgotten man]

I heard that Miles Keough was an Irish immigrant who had previously been a Papal Swiss Guard. He was wearing a ring that had been given to him by the Pope. The story is maybe the Indians did not mutilate his body because they thought that the papal ring had magical power.

[Roman_War_Criminal]

Agree with all you stated.
I’ve only been there twice. You cannot see very far from most vantage points. You lose your horses there and you’re done.

I remember seeing a few photos from the first “reenactment” of the battle back in the 1880s where some black & white stills showed the numbers of Indians coming over those hills and up the ravines.

Picture that landscape and hundreds and hundreds of warriors coming at you in masse - he had no chance.

[Roman_War_Criminal]

Keogh was an amazing individual. Full of fight and I believe he had over 40 Civil War battles under his belt. I thought it was a cross on a necklace instead of a ring? I could be wrong. He was on General John's Buford's staff at Gettysburg. He's on the far left here in 1863.