[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.

[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.

[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.

[dsc]

“IIRC, battlefield archeologists found many Springfield cartridges with large scratches on them.”

I have read that those rifles jammed when they heated up, and that Custer screwed up by not having his men thoroughly test-fire them.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

The troops had ammo in copper cases, which stuck after a few shots. The officers bought their own Brass cased ammo.

In the movie, THE PLAINSMAN with Gary Cooper, three is a scene of an Indian attack. From cover, notice how Buffalo Bill Cody uses his knife to extract a stuck cartridge.