From a distance the terrain looks deceptively open. In fact, you cannot see Custer's position from Reno's.
I think Reno did the prudent thing retreating to the high ground to form his defensive perimeter. I think he probably would have been picked apart in the woods. He should not have been thrown under the bus to make Custer a hero.
Custer violated several of the Army Principles of War with his unnecessarily complicated plan to divide his forces. What comes immediately to mind is Mass, Unity of Command, Security (no intel)and Simplicity. Was hubris at work? A feeling no Indian force could defeat an Army battalion?
In the hours leading up to surrender at Appomattox, a blustery young blonde Union Brigadier rode hard up to Longstreet and barked orders to him about where and when to surrender to Grant.
It severely chaffed Longstreet to be treated so.
That cocky kid was George Custer.
Here’s a BYU study on the effects of PTSD on soldiers prior to the battle and after the battle. It’s light to medium reading (29 pages).
Apparently the belief is that Custer may have had brain damage from a fall in 1864 that severely impacted his temperment and demeanor. PTSD is suspected and it goes hand-in-hand with a post upthread here where a poster (I forget who - sorry!) states he was a different man after the CW and hated by his troops.
It’s a good read.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=sahs_review
Does anyone know about how long the actual battle took? I read years ago that Custer was one of the first killed early in the battle after he set up a defensive posture.
Thirty-six years ago I thought I’d do a quick side-stop at Little Bighorn on my way back from Yellowstone N.P.
My afternoon stopover lasted until dark and I got hooked on Native American history ever since.
I got a boatload of Western History, Native American history books on my shelf. I’m currently reading about La Salle’s ill-fated attempt to establish a foothold on the lower Mississippi but somehow he ended up on the Texas coast.
Hopefully one of these days I can make it back up to Little Bighorn where my odyssey started.
Why start if with so many negatives and no positives of General Custer?
General Custer was a legendary leader in the Civil War
General Custer was responsible for General Lee being forced to surrender at Appomattox. Custer led his troops in position to cut off Lee’s retreat. They survived the initial Confederate attempt to break through.
Relief infantry then came up and closed off the line of retreat !!!
Lee surrendered on April 9th.
At his surrender, he recognized Custers efforts.
Well I don’t know if anyone can answer this but this is sure the place to put it.
My father always used to say that gen Custer has strait pins put 3 or 4 in a row on the ends of the arms on sleeves of the soldiers uniforms to stop them from wiping their noses on their sleeves. This later became the 3 or 4 buttons on the end of the arms on sleeves.
True?
I used to do Civil war reenacting (mounted cavalry) and in 2006, 12 of us went out and participated in the Battle reenactment on the Real Birds property. We camped along the LBH River directly across from Medicine Tail Coulee(MTC). We were able to ride to Weir Point, down Cedar Coulee, MTC, across Nye-Cartwright and Luce Ridges and Deep Coulee. You can’t ride on the battlefield so we had to stop just short of Calhoun hill. It was a great experience, especially for someone that’s been reading about the battle and Custer since the 3rd grade.
Now to the battle. I think that Keogh’s Battalion(Co’s I, L & C) were left on the south end of battle ridge to cover the rear of Yates’ Battalion, w/ headquarters) as they moved farther north to find another Ford(D) and to wait for a link up with Benteen’s Battalion that was known to be back on the trail after his scout to the left, as they came down Reno Creek from the divide.
Yates’ company was left on Cemetery Ridge as Smiths Co. E headed to Ford D. While this was going on Co L was in dismounted skirmish order firing on Indians to the west along Greasy Grass Ridge. Indians then started firing on Calhouns position from Henryville to the SE. When Calhoun shifted his skirmish line to fire on this new threat, indians started infiltrating in Calhoun coulee to the west. It was at this point that Keogh, who had both his company and Co. C being held in reserve on the east side of battle ridge, sent Co C to push the Indians back down Calhoun Coulee. They barely had time to dismount when the were overun and had to retreat back to Calhoun Hill along Finley-Finckle Ridge. The Indians pushed them over Calhoun Hill and toward Keogh so fast that Keogh didn’t have time to deploy his company. From here it was every man for himself as the survivors headed toward the north end of Battle Ridge, where Yates’ Battalion and Custer had moved up to when the battle was taking place to the south. At some point E Co. made a movement down toward Deep Ravine to clear it of Indians, but the Indian numbers were overwhelming. Once the hard fighting on the south end started, it was over pretty quick.
I think that up until Company C was sent down Calhoun Coulee, the major concern was that the Indians would break camp and run as the had always done in the past. The Indians had rode 40 miles the week before to fight Gen Crook to a stalmate on the Rosebud. He spent the rest of the summer at the foot of the Bighorn Mountains licking his wounds and fishing.
Tactically, Custer made good decisions with the information he had, except for his refusal to believe the Indian Scouts and specifically Mitch Bouyer about Indian numbers.
Custer wasn’t an idiot when it came to fighting. He was one of the best cavalry commanders the Union had during the Civil War. At the LBH he ran into superior numbers of a determined foe, which he thought were breaking camp and on the run to the north.
A really good book that ties time motion studies with battlefield archaeology and Indian testimony is “The Strategy of Defeat at the Little BigHorn” by Frederic C. Wagner III. Great pictures of all areas of the battlefield in the book also.
That second map is wrong on several counts. It says “French” between the Custer and Calhoun positions (the latter of which is also wrong): Captain French was with Reno in the charge in the valley, and didn’t even get to the Custer field until three days after the Custer fight, when he and other 7th Cavalry troops were part of the burial parties. That map also shows Keogh as being south of Calhoun, when the opposite is true. Calhoun’s L Troop was part of the Keogh battalion, or “right” wing, and was deployed as skirmishers while Keogh’s Troop I and Harrington’s Troop C were held in reserve in the swale to the north of Calhoun. The map also shows the Custer force heading north as one complete force with no separation down Medicine Tail Coulee.
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My favorite on-screen depiction of Gen. Custer was in the movie Little Big Man.
Ronald Reagan
Custer just could not fathom his enemy. It simply didn’t occur to him he was inferior.
I had the thought, last evening while thinking over your questions and the various posts, that the LBH was what the post 1940 Army calls “A Meeting Engagement.” That is where two forces, knowing that someone is somewhere in front of them find and engage each other, without a formal plan of battle/attack. Thus the elements utilize the tactics they have found successful in the past.
The “most famous” [IMO] meeting engagement before this, on American soil, was the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg.
I spent 2 years as the S-2 of an armored cavalry squadron in the Fulda Gap (1983-85). We had our defensive battle plans for along the East-West German border, if we had time to get there, but otherwise, we had to rely on our training to fight a meeting engagement if the Soviets crossed the border before the V Corps forces were in position, i.e. a “no warning war scenario.” And during my time as a field artillery forward observer with a 3d Armored Division tank company (I had my own M-60A2 tank to work from) 75-78.