http://www.custermuseum.org/Comanche.htm
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 ...
Custer’s body showed two bullet wounds. He hadn’t been scalped. Actually, it was his brother Tom Custer who’s body was severely mutilated.
Been told all my life that Custer and his men could have cut down scores of Indians with their sabers had they retained them and maybe even broken out and escaped.
But the Indians had rifles. And arrows have more range than sabers. They massed their forces. A fatal combination for outnumbered U.S. cavalry.
But the Indians’ victory was only temporary. Until casinos.
Q: What did Custer say when he saw the Indians coming?
A: What the hell? They seemed OK at the dance last night!
I know they drove an awl through his ears (so he would listen better in the next life) and they shoved an arrow up his male naughty bits - I don't think they did anything else to Custer, did they? Some soldiers were mutilated so badly that they couldn't be identified, but they limited the damage to Custer for some reason. He wasn't even scalped.
That’s funny. Grant had an issue with Custer because of Custer’s testimony in the Belknap hearings against his brother, Orville Grant. Gen. Sherman asked for Custer’s release so that he could return to his command but Grant refused. Ultimately, Gen. Terry claimed there was no one else to take command of the 7th (the actual commander, Col. Samuel D. Sturgis, was never in field command of the regiment), so Custer was finally given command of the 7th shortly before they left Ft. Lincoln. To say that Grant caused Custer’s death (not to mention the death of over 210 other soldiers) is ludicrous. That’s about par for Oliver Stone.
Guess it could be a case of unreliable narrator, but still interesting. I’d think he’d tell his wife the truth, at least as he saw it. Wonder who the officer with two guidon bearers was that he saw, then. Did the soldiers get a positive i.d. on Custer? (I assume he was stripped and scalped, don’t know if or how badly the body was mutilated).
http://www.custermuseum.org/Comanche.htm
My son did a report on Lt. Col. Custer for school last year. I had to hold my tongue about how much contempt I have for Custer.
In addition, what that Paramount acquaintance of mine also said that Brad Pitt was in talks about the project.
Here’s the funny part that you won’t read in any rag: Brad was not amused on how absurd the script was that he later told the execs ‘I don’t want to work with this clown’. So the project was DOA.
Custer’s body was positively identified. Keep in mind, a number of officers wore dress similar to Custer’s that day. Many of the Indian accounts identify individuals that they later thought to be Custer (they really didn’t know it was Custer attacking them at the time), but were far more likely to be other members of his command. It’s not even believed now that Custer was at Medicine Tail Coulee that day, but with the main portion of his command on Nye-Cartwright ridge, back from the ford. Most accounts have two of five troops approaching the ford.
There was a tv doc on Custer's Last Stand a month or so ago. One interesting thing that was said was the Indians didn't ride around in circles firing at the troopers like what Hollyweird has portrayed it through the decades. They crept up the gullies and ravines and basically kept hidden until they could bring superior firepower down on the troopers.
Thanks, you already answered my questions. Have never sat down and read about the battle in a systematic way. Can you recommend a good reliable account?
A moment of clarity from Brad Pitt? That's refreshing...
I don't think the sabers would have helped much either. I think when the Sioux and Cheyenne hit Custer it was with overwhelming force from several directions - it was over very quickly. I doubt they would have had time to unlimber and set up the gatling guns, much less use them effectively.
Even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then . . . Or maybe Brad Pitt just looks smarter when he’s standing near Oliver Stone?
I’ve come to think Oliver Stone is a decent representation of his surname...
Custer ignored the opinions of his scouts as they were approaching the area. The scouts looked at the tracks and sign on the ground, and told Custer that columns of Indians and horses were converging. Custer disagreed, and asserted the trails were diverging.
His scouts consistently put the numbers of Indians ahead of them at “at least 2500,” and Custer kept downplaying this number to less than 2000. The eventual truth came in at far more than 2500.
From all the accounts I can find to read, Indian and white/USA, Custer simply comes off as a cocksure, brash commander who could not respect the opinions of subordinates. His early success as a battlefield commander, in retrospect, had a large element of luck.
Luck eventually runs out, and when there isn’t cool competence to back it up, the truth comes to the fore.
The gatling guns would not have made much difference because the terrain would have made it difficult to bring their superior firepower to bear.
The popular movie depiction of hordes of mounted Indians swarming the soldiers at the top of the hill is incorrect. That swarming only happened at the very end of the battle when most of the soldiers were either dead, wounded or out of ammunition.
While it’s normally true that whoever has the high ground has an advantage, that wasn’t the case at this battle. The slopes leading up to the top of the hill were not smooth, flat and uniform. They were full of little gullies and depressions which provided sufficient cover, and the initial waves of attackers dismounted while out of range and advanced on foot or crawling from cover to cover all the while picking off the cavalrymen with their superior rifles, as noted up thread.
Custer’s men were above them, just below the crest of the hill, in a concentrated area with almost no cover but the bodies of their horses. Most of the battle was a brutal process of attrition against desperate exposed troopers expending their ammunition against stealthy, difficult to see attackers with superior weapons and terrain advantage.
The gatling guns would not have had many exposed targets, but the gatling operators standing up would have been extremely exposed to Indians shooting from prone, relatively concealed positions.
I spent most of a day back in the late 1980’s walking the battlefield all the way from the Reno-Benteen camp to the last stand site, and talking with the guides about how things went down. I remember thinking as I stood at the last stand site that if I’d been one of Custer’s men I’d have probably fragged him for leading us into such murderously indefensible death trap... /grin
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