Friday, June 27, 2025

Custer's Dead Officers: First Lieutenant William Van Wyck Reily

 


First Lieutenant William Van Wyck Reily was one of the youngest officers in the 7th Cavalry Regiment and among those killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876.

Born on December 12, 1853, Reily came from a naval family.  Reily himself entered the Naval Academy in 1870 but resigned in 1872 after academic difficulties. He later joined the 10th U.S. Cavalry as a Second Lieutenant in 1875 and transferred to the 7th Cavalry in early 1876, just months before the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

He was described as a “dashing and handsome officer,” though some accounts suggest he was still learning to ride when the regiment departed on the final campaign.  His a signet ring was later recovered from a captured Cheyenne warrior in1877 and returned to Reily’s mother. His remains were reinterred at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Washington, D.C.





Tuesday, June 24, 2025

Custer’s Dead Officers: 2nd Lieutenant James Sturgis

 


On June 16, 1875, James “Jack” Sturgis graduated from West Point and was appointed a 2nd Lt, in the 7th Cavalry.  Jack Sturgis, at twenty-two, was the youngest officer in the regiment.  He was also the son of the 7th cavalry’s commanding officer, Colonel Samuel Sturgis. 

Lt. Jack Sturgis would have had little time to get to know Custer.  He arrived at his duty station at Fort Abraham Lincoln in October 1875.  In March 1876 Custer went East to testifying before Congress.  Custer would not return until May 1876 in time to lead the troops in the field in the campaign against the Sioux.

On June 25, 1876, on the day of Custer’s last fight, Lt. Sturgis was with Company E, one of the five companies under Custer’s direct command that day, all of which were destroyed.  According to archaeological evidence and Native American accounts, it appears that Company E conducted a disciplined retreat toward Last Stand Hill until overwhelmed. 

Jack Sturgis’s body was never officially identified.  His blood-soaked underwear was picked up by General Terry’s troops across the river in the remnants of a Lakota camp. Several decapitated corpses were found near the river, and one soldier later claimed he recognized Sturgis’s scorched head along with several others in a Lakota fire pit.

It is believed that the unidentified remains of Jack Sturgis were buried in a mass grave with the enlisted soldiers. 





Custer’s Last Stand Re-examined


Tuesday, June 17, 2025

American Indian Patriots in the American Revolution

 


Daniel Nimham 

Stockbridge, Massachusetts began as a mission or “praying town” for Mochicans and Wappinger Indians.  The so-called Stockbridge Indians supported the Patriot cause during the Revolution vowing:

 Wherever your armies go, there we will go; you shall always find us by your side; and if providence calls us to sacrifice our Lives in the field of battle, we will fall where you fall, and lay our bones by yours. Nor shall peace ever be made between our nation and the Red Coats.

Some of the Stockbridge Indians enlisted as early as 1775, primarily as scouts and sharpshooters, and were eventually allowed to serve in their own company.  The unit suffered devastating casualties fighting near Knightsbridge, New York (in what is now the Bronx) in 1778.

Daniel Nimham was the last chief of the Wappinger People.  He joined the Patriot cause in Boston at the age of 49.  He and his son Abraham were killed at the Battle of Knightsbridge.



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Monday, June 16, 2025

The Wounded Knee Medals


 

In July 1862, Congress authorized a Medal of Honor to be awarded to soldiers who “distinguish themselves by their gallantry in action.”  The first medals were presented in 1863, and it remains the highest decoration for valor the United States can bestow on an individual in the armed services.  There were 421 Medals of Honor awarded during the Indian Wars from 1865 to 1891.

A controversy surrounds the Medals of Honor awarded to participants in the 1890 Battle of Wounded Knee in South Dakota. Twenty such medals were awarded. In 2013 Calvin Spotted Elk, a direct descendant of Chief Spotted Elk killed at Wounded Knee, launched a petition to rescind medals of the soldiers who participated in the battle arguing that this was not a battle but a massacre.  He cited the high number of killed and wounded Lakota women and children and the one sided casualty count.  The Lakota suffered 300 killed of which 200 were women and children.  The Seventh Cavalry suffered 25 killed, many from friendly fire.

A Department of Defense review recommended in 2024 that no medals be revoked.



Custer's last Stand Re-examined