Posted on 06/25/2011 8:15:40 PM PDT by EveningStar
Today marks the 135 anniversary of the Battle of the Little Big Horn near present day Garryowen, Mont. After all this time the death of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer remains a mystery.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedickinsonpress.com ...
Actually, a lot more decisions are made that way than through logic and business planning.
I knew a guy that was the head of a cable company. They had to add a channel to their line up. They added the Cartoon Network instead of Comedy Central. Why? The guy had kids and they liked the cartoons.
It took five years until they rebuilt the system to get more channels.
True story.
The man who forced Lee’s surrender at appomatax on April 9th with his bold moves?
***How on earth could you have contempt for such a man!****
Because he fought those sweet little darlins the Indians! That makes him bad!
Look at Chivington. His command saved the Union from defeat at Glorietta Pass in New Mexico, but he is only remembered for his “massacre” of “peaceful” Indians (who had admitted they were still hostile) at Sand Creek in which he found fresh white scalps and a robe fringed with white women’s scalps.
Custer did the Washita battle in Oklahoma. He followed the raiders back to the camp in fresh snow, attacked the camp and found white captives there. Same a Indians who were at Sand Creek.
Therein lies the problem. The 7th arrived a day early. It has been argued that had he scouted Tullock's fork as his orders called for, he'd have arrived on the proper day. But the 7th had found the trail, it led straight across the Wolf mountains to the Little Big Horn, so that scout, which could conceivably alert the Indians to the 7th's presence, was pretty unnecessary, IMO.
Custer's initial plan was to wait in hiding in the Wolf mountains until the next day. But finding that his troops had apparently been found by roaming Indians precipitated the attack to that day (the 25th). This gave him no time for scouting, and his only input on the village came from the Crow's Nest which was over 15 miles away, the camp itself being hid by the hills along the river.
Custer used a plan very similar to his attack on the Washita. It worked there although the unknown additional villages cause complications later that day. This is why he sent Benteen on his scout upstream; to determine whether, again, there were additional villages. Little could he know that those villages were all in one, very large encampment. That just wasn't common on the plains.
Also, neither was the prospect that the Indians would stay and fight instead of flee. Yet, after their fight on the Rosebud a week before, and what with the size of the village (present estimates center around 1800-2000 warriors or fighting age adult men), they felt they could handle anything. However, there was no way Custer could know this although his scouts felt the presentment.
It's not so much that the plan to separate his wings was a bad one. It became untenable because of the terrain, again something Custer had no time to scout. And while Reno was attacking the village in the valley from upstream, and Benteen was dogging it on the backtrail, Custer was trying to find a suitable ford from the eastern hills, fords being few and far between. The layout of the eastern hills really took him out of the action for some time. So, it wasn't the plan as much as topography made that plan useless.
I recently read a book (I'd cite it if I could remember, but they're all starting to blur together - sorry) and the author's position was that Custer was fixated on keeping the indians from scattering, for the reason you stated.
Custer's troops had marched the entire previous day, followed by an all-night forced march, with the intention of resting up before launching a dawn attack the next day, but he believed they had been discovered by the indians and therefore opted to attack immediately - with exhausted horses and men. He did this because he believed the indians were about to scatter.
As they approached LBH, they found the recently abandoned indian camp with the body of the indian killed at the Rosebud - Custer takes this as evidence that the enemy is indeed scattering, so he moved even faster. To make a long story short, the author believed Custer was most worried about scattering indians and didn't really give a thought about the indians going on the offensive until he looked up to see Crazy Horse and Co. riding him down.
That's one theory anyway...
“...he was out manned, out gunned and out smarted.”
Custer was a lousy general, an egotistical idiot.
A pretty good one, IMO. There were many unknowns that day, and as you pointed out Custer felt he had to do something, knowing the 7th had been discovered by Indian scouting parties. To scout during the day, allowing his troops and horses a day's rest, just wouldn't cut it. Yet, that meant going in without adequate knowledge of the terrain, the encampment, or whether there were any more villages about (ergo the Benteen scout).
As for the Indians scattering, that plays in to what I wrote in my post above yours. Little would it be expected that the Indians would stand and fight. That simply wasn't their style when women and children were about. And the vast majority of Custer's actions that are known of that day confirm his belief that they would scatter; his splitting his command into battalions, the Benteen scout, his then splitting his battalion into two wings, the archaeological proof that the wing Custer was with traveled beyond Custer Hill to a ford below the Indian village then returned toward Custer Ridge. He didn't want the Indians to get away, and knew they'd flee North or West what with Reno's attack from upstream. All this is pretty good documentation for Custer's belief that the camp would flee.
Perhaps the biggest hitch in all this was the small number of fords available from the Eastern hills, and the fact that the one most accessible actually took them into the North-center of the village itself (the one at Medicine Tail Coulee).
You realize the secretary general on the UN has always been a communist? Everytime the allies tried to do something they were always met with equal or so opposing force. Mac figured something was up, that’s why he planned Ichon with only telling a few trusted officers. There is more sinister things happening just below the surface than most people are aware. Eisenhower also feared being arrested, that’s why he hid at camp David until the media’s attacks on Mac were well underway.
Found it.....
http://www.epinions.com/review/mvie_mu-1094645/content_237030968964
The 7th is made up of Phantoms was the title.
Thanks !!
Ordered it...:o)
Apparently he had the chance to take a couple but thought they would slow him down. Veeerrry Bad decision. One of these sold on Pawn Stars for @$300K.
Never said he was a bad commander. He only died at bighorn because he split his forces up again. Had he kept them together he would have been able to retreat in good order.
Had he done a bit more reconnaisance, he would have discovered that the game had changed. Rather then the three prongs, he would have got everybody together. He may still have been attacked by the natives, but it wouldn’t have been a massacre. If they waited until he got everyone together, it would have been a rout.
One of the reasons he lost at Bighorn is because of his streak of success. What he had done had always worked, and he assumed that this time would be the same as all the last.
At least one analysis, based on the shell casings found on the battlefield, theorized that Custer stopped - possibly waiting for Benteen and the ammo train to catch up. While they were stopped, the Sioux and Cheyenne moved in unseen, under the cover of the ravines and tall grass, surrounding Custer and cutting him off from any help that might have come from Benteen or Reno.
Which is why terrain analysis is a major factor in all military planning to this day. I would assume it would have been then, too, but, as you said, all assumptions based on years of experience pointed to the Indians running rather than fighting.
While Custer had not had any experience at actually dying, he had been a cavalry officer at either the first or second Battle of Yankees' Run at Manassas.
At Little Big Horn, the last soldier to die was an Irish national and army officer named Matt Keough who had fought for the Vatican when the Papal States were invaded by the forces of Garibaldi, Mazzini and Cavour. He had then come to this side of the ocean to serve in the Union cause because he detested slavery. He rose to the rank of Major during that war but was mustered out with all other foreign nationals at the end. Popular among his fellow officers and troops, he was one of the first to be allowed to rejoin the army for its Western war against the Plains Indian tribes. Keough had enough sense to stay on horseback. Surrounded by a dozen Lakota and Cheyenne warriors who were on foot, Keough killed six before the survivors killed him with a volley of rifle fire. Catholics among the Cheyenne prevented other warriors from mutilating his corpse because they recognized a cameo of Pius IX, a Vatican military award, when it fell out of his shirt while still attached to a chain around his neck. Generally, Custer was not fit to shine Keough's boots or those of most officers of competence.
A good source on Custer is Evan Connell's Son of the Morning Star (NYC: Promontory Press, 1983) which gives a rich tapestry of the whole history of Custer at Little Big Horn and what he and other participants (including Keough) were all about. An odd feature of this history is that Connell jumps back and forth and does not follow a time line.
An American Mother: The Connell book was the one I promised to find and ID for you.
IIRC, Chivington was acquitted by a jury. He should have been turned over to the squaws for summary disposition-—at length. Then he could have wound up BEING freight.
Was he your great, great, grandfather or something????
Glad you were able to find it! Have you seen the episode before? If not I think you will find it is very well directed, (considering the time travel aspect which is always hard to pulled off), and acted.
Glad you were able to find it! Have you seen the episode before? If not I think you will find it is very well directed, (considering the time travel aspect which is always hard to pulled off), and acted.
Glad you were able to find it! Have you seen the episode before? If not I think you will find it is very well directed, (considering the time travel aspect which is always hard to pulled off), and acted.
A triple? Damn!!!!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.