Custer and the Gatling Guns

 

     Richard Jordan Gatling invented the Gatling gun in 1861.  The gun fired two hundred rounds a minute and had a range of better than one mile.  The weapons weighed about 225 pounds each, while the carriage and limber together weighed about 405 pounds.  The gun was not accepted by the American Army until 1866, a year after the Civil War, although twelve guns were personally purchased by enterprising Union officers and used during the siege of Petersburg.

     Three Model 1866 .50-caliber, six-barreled Gatling guns accompanied General Alfred Terry’s column in the 1876 campaign against the Sioux.  On June 10 General Terry dispatched Major Marcus Reno and six companies of the 7th Cavalry to determine if there were any Indians on the Powder or Tongue rivers. A Gatling gun and crew accompanied Reno’s column.

     Reno’s column passed over “very rough ground,” which required manhandling the Gatling gun across steep ravines.  On June 15, the gun overturned, injuring three men. The “almost impassable” terrain later forced Reno to temporarily abandon the gun on a high hill. Completing his mission, Reno reported to General Terry that he had discovered a large Indian trail that appeared to lead to the Little Bighorn.

     The intelligence gathered by Major Reno, influenced Terry’s decision to send Custer “in pursuit” on June 22.   “I offered Custer a battery of Gatling guns,” Terry later explained, “but he declined it, saying that it might embarrass him, and that he was strong enough without it.”

     Captain Edward Godfrey later testified, “Custer had declined the offer of the Gatling guns, for the reason that they might hamper our movements at a critical moment, and because of the difficult nature of the country.”

     Terry transferred the Gatling guns to Gibbon’s column as it marched west along the Yellowstone River to coordinate with the expected sweep of the 7th Cavalry from the south and east.  Terry accompanied Gibbon’s column.  A steep hill near the Bighorn River required lowering the guns by lariats. When Terry decided to push on, one officer recorded that “the battery especially had great difficulty keeping up.” Lost at least once in the dark, the guns were abandoned until morning.

     The experience of the Little Bighorn campaign confirmed doubts about the mobility and, therefore, effectiveness of the Gatling gun in Indian warfare.  In a report on August 20, 1878, Captain James W. Reilly, chief ordnance officer of the Military Division of the Missouri, stated: “Gatling guns are only an encumbrance. Indian warfare is entirely of skirmishers, to which the Gatling gun is not adapted. It possesses neither [the ability] to move rapidly nor the power and range of artillery.”

     Ironically, had Custer taken Gatling guns with him, his command would probably not have been wiped-out.  Not because of the additional firepower they would have provided, but because his march would have been so slowed that his attack would have occurred in coordination with the other units converging on the Sioux.

Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time