Were the Indians Better Armed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn?

Were the Indians better armed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn?  Yes and no says Richard Allan Fox Jr., author of Archaeology,History, and Custer's Last Battle: The Little Big Horn Re-examined

Custer’s men were initially under no great pressure.  The many Indians who were eventually involved accumulated over time, and cautiously infiltrated up the coulees toward Custer’s command. Eventually Lt. Calhoun’s company deployed to disperse the infiltrating hostiles.  This set off an Indian counterattack, and the sudden and unexpected disintegration of the southern end of Custer’s line.  This disintegration resulted in complete panic and the collapse of the entire command in swift order.  (Fox, 287-288)

In Fox’s view it was the sudden disintegration of the southern end Custer’s line that resulted in disaster.  Custer’s men were armed with the single shot .45 Springfield carbine.  According to anecdotal evidence this carbine had significant problems with jamming, but Fox writes, “Archaeological analyses of cartridge cases…lead to the conclusion that extraction failure was not a significant factor in the defeat of Custer’s battalion.” (Fox, 242)  The Indians were armed with repeating Winchester rifles, but Fox tells us, “Range, stopping power, and accuracy combined to make the Springfield carbine technically superior to any repeating rifle of the day.  The long range Springfield effectively kept Indians at distances beyond their normal abilities as riflemen.”  The effective range of the Springfield exceed that of the Winchester by at least 400 yards.   The Springfield carbine remained the official cavalry firearm after the Little Bighorn and until 1893. (Fox, 251) Because of the rugged and broken terrain at the Little Bighorn, the Indians, armed with repeating rifles, were able to creep within firing range of the cavalry, which was unusual, “Thus, the repeater as instrument of shock, coupled with the liability of the single-shot carbine in close-in fighting, probably contributed significantly to demoralization….The shock effect was magnified by the likelihood, based on archaeological data, that the Indians had at least 200 repeating rifles.” (Fox, 253)

Link to: Custer's Last Stand: Portraits in Time

For almost one hundred and fifty years, Custer has been a Rorschach test of American social and personal values. Whatever else George Armstrong Custer may or may not have been, even in the twenty-first century, he remains the great lightning rod of American history. This book presents portraits of Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn as they have appeared in print over successive decades and in the process demonstrates the evolution of American values and priorities.

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History and the Movies

What is the interaction of history, politics, and the movies?

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History's Worst Generals

Success leaves clues.  So does failure.  Some of history’s best known commanders are remembered not for their brilliant victories but for their catastrophic blunders. 

Throughout the centuries countless armies have gone down to defeat, succumbing to greater numbers, more advanced technology, or more skilled opponents.  A few armies have been defeated because of the blundering incompetence of their own commanders.  What are the elements of leadership failure?  A recurrent pattern emerges over the last two thousand plus years. 



Link to : History's Ten Worst Generals

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Custer's Last Stand: The Man Who Killed Custer

Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time

Showdown at Little Big Horn by Dee Brown (1964)

     Dee Brown was a novelist and historian.  This book is a dramatic retelling of the battle as seen through the eyes of many of the major participants, military, civilian, and Indian.  The book is essentially a non-fiction novel, in which Brown puts words into the mouths of participants to make historical points.  For example, Brown has Captain French approaching Major Reno during the initial charge on the village and saying, “Winchesters!....Too many blasted redskins armed with new Winchesters.”  There are no new facts here, just Brown embracing certain historical assumptions through the medium of dramatic dialogue.

    
What is new is Brown’s abandonment of the “Great Man” approach to history.  For Brown, the Battle of the Little Bighorn is not just, or primarily, about George Armstrong Custer.  Using eyewitness accounts, diaries, letters, and testimonies of participants in the battle, Brown embraces the historical perspective of the common man.  Significant too, is Brown’s willingness to embrace Indian testimony on an equal level with that of white participants.  This book anticipates the treatment of the battle in Brown’s more celebrated book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970), in which he recounts the battle solely on the basis of Indian testimony.  In Bury My Heart Brown tacitly admits that Indian testimony can be contradictory, acknowledging at one point that no fewer than four different Indians had claims to killing Custer ( Rain-in-the Face, Flat Hip, Brave Bear, and an unidentified Santee warrior named by Red Horse).  Given the contradictions embedded in non-Indian accounts of the battle, however, Brown has concluded that it is reasonable to treat the Indian testimony on an equal footing.

    
Brown’s use of the Indian perspective is a radical departure from previous histories written from the Anglo perspective of the battle and its aftermath.  Brown writes in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, “When the white men in the East heard of Long Hair’s defeat, they called it a massacre and went crazy with anger.  They wanted to punish all the Indians in the West.  Because they could not punish Sitting Bull and the war chiefs, the Great Council in Washington decided to punish the Indians they could find, those who remained on the reservations and had taken no part in the fighting.”  On August 15, 1876, Congress forced the Indians to give up all rights to the Powder River country and the Black Hills, maintaining that the Indians had violated the treaty of 1868 by going to war with the United States.  “This was difficult for the reservation Indians to understand, because they had not attacked United States soldiers, nor had Sitting Bull’s followers attacked them until Custer sent Reno charging through the Sioux villages.” (Brown, 297-298)  By writing from the Indian perspective, Brown reverses the importance of the roles earlier histories assigned to Custer and the Indians.  Custer is now merely the foil for the real heroes of the story…the Indians.

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Hidden Treasure in Virginia

Treasure Legends of Virginia

The history of Virginia told through treasure tales about pirates, Indians, Revolutionary War heroes and Civil War raiders. The full text of the famous Beale Treasure cipher is included along with some sixty other legends.

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Historic Civil War Blenheim: Fairfax,Virginia

Virginia Time Travel interviews Andrea Loewenwater from Historic Blenheim in Fairfax, Virginia.

CIVIL WAR CIVILIAN LIFE: MANASSAS,VIRGINIA 

A brief look at the impact of war on civilians living around Manassas based on first person narratives and family histories.

Women Doctors in the Civil War

A quick look at women doctors and medicine in the Civil War for the general reader. Technologically, the American Civil War was the first “modern” war, but medically it still had its roots in the Middle Ages. In both the North and the South, thousands of women served as nurses to help wounded and suffering soldiers and civilians. A few women served as doctors, a remarkable feat in an era when sex discrimination prevented women from pursuing medical education, and those few who did were often obstructed by their male colleagues at every turn.

Stratagem 1861: The War for the Potomac

Virginia Time Travel interviews Robert Alton, author of the book Stratagem 1861 which describes the war for the Potomac River in 1861.

CIVIL WAR CIVILIAN LIFE: MANASSAS,VIRGINIA 

A brief look at the impact of war on civilians living around Manassas based on first person narratives and family histories.

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Women in the American Civil War

Link to: The Confederate Woman: Soldier and Spy

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The National Civil War Life Museum

CIVIL WAR CIVILIAN LIFE: MANASSAS,VIRGINIA 

A brief look at the impact of war on civilians living around Manassas based on first person narratives and family histories.

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Project Enlightenment – 18th century science reenactment

How Martha Washington Lived: 18th CenturyCustoms 

Neither Martha Washington nor the women of the South’s leading families were marble statues, they had the same strengths and weaknesses, passions and problems, joys and sorrows, as the women of any age.  So just how did they live?

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Book Review: Nathaniel Philbrick - The Last Stand

The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull,and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick (2010)

     “Before Custer became the mythic figure we know today, he was a lieutenant colonel desperate to find a way to salvage his reputation after a run-in with President Grant.  Custer did not stride through history doing what he wanted; he, like any military man, spent most of his time following orders.” (Philbrick, 101)  Custer was on the brink of professional and financial ruin.  If he could catch the Indians all would be well again. In his most hopeful fantasies he imagined a draft Custer for President Movement at the Democratic convention which was to open in St. Louis on June 27.  More realistically he could expect accolades at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia and big box office receipts for a lecture tour for which he was already booked. (Philbrick, 119)

     The villain of the Battle of the Little Bighorn (June 25, 1876) was General Alfred Terry and his flawed battle plan.  According to Philbrick, General Terry “wanted Custer to attack if he found a fresh Indian trail.”  He says, everyone knew perfectly well what Custer was going to do once Terry, “, in the words of Major Brisbin ‘turned the wild man loose.’”(Philbrick, 99)  General Terry was protective of his own military reputation however and was spinning an invisible and cunning web.  “Terry had a lawyer’s talent for crafting documents that appeared to say one thing but were couched in language that could allow for an entirely different interpretation should circumstances require it.”  Terry’s ambiguously worded orders to Custer, allowed him to protect his reputation no matter what happened.  “If Custer bolted for the village and claimed a great victory, it was because Terry had the wisdom to give him an independent command.  If Custer did so and failed, it was because he had disobeyed Terry’s written orders.”  Philbrick continues, “As Terry would have wanted it given the ultimate outcome of the battle, Custer has become the focal point, the one we obsess about when it comes to both the Black Hills Expedition and the Little Bighorn.  But, in many ways, it was Terry who was moving the chess pieces.  Even though his legal opinion launched the Black Hills gold rush and his battle plan resulted in one of the most notorious military disasters in U.S. history, Terry has slunk back into the shadows of history, letting Custer take center stage in a cumulative tragedy for which Terry was, perhaps more than any other single person, responsible.” (Philbrick, 102-103)

     In 1886, some ten years after the massacre of Custer and 225 men of the Seventh Cavalry, the well-respected Terry was promoted to the rank of Major General.

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Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time

For almost one hundred and fifty years, Custer has been a Rorschach test of American social and personal values. Whatever else George Armstrong Custer may or may not have been, even in the twenty-first century, he remains the great lightning rod of American history. This book presents portraits of Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn as they have appeared in print over successive decades and in the process demonstrates the evolution of American values and priorities.

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George Armstrong Custer: Manufactured Hero?

Six months after the Battle of the Little Bighorn (June 25, 1876), Frederick Whittaker’s A Complete Life of General George A. Custer was published.  Whittaker’s book made no pretense to objectivity, this was a canonization which presented Custer as a dashing and brilliant military leader abandoned to his fate by lesser, disloyal, treacherous, and cowardly men.  Whittaker borrowed generously from Custer’s own book My Life on the Plains, as well as on his own imagination, which was fulsome, since Whittaker was a professional writer of nickel and dime novel fiction for a leading publisher.

Whittaker quoted (or manufactured) the testimony of one of the Indian scouts, Curly, who claimed to have escaped from the field of battle.  When Curly saw that the party with Custer was about to be overwhelmed, he begged Custer to let him show him a way to escape.  “…Custer looked at Curly, waved him away and rode back to the little group of men, to die with them.”  Why, Whittaker asks, did Custer go back to certain death?  “Because he felt that such a death as that which that little band of heroes was about to die, was worth the lives of all the general officers in the world….He weighed, in that brief moment of reflection, all the consequences to America of the lesson of life and the lesson of heroic death, and he chose death.” 

Paperback edition


Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time

For almost one hundred and fifty years, Custer has been a Rorschach test of American social and personal values. Whatever else George Armstrong Custer may or may not have been, even in the twenty-first century, he remains the great lightning rod of American history. This book presents portraits of Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn as they have appeared in print over successive decades and in the process demonstrates the evolution of American values and priorities.

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Colonial America mystery writer Andrew Mills

Interview with mystery writer Andrew Mills, author of the Archibald Mercer Colonial Detective series.  Archibald Mercer, America's first detective, solves crimes in colonial and Revolutionary era America.  Books in the series include: (1) The Female Stranger, (2) The Stolen Sash,(3) The Gambler's Debt, (4) The Stolen Election, and (5) The Burning Palace.

The Colonial Detective Mystery Series

Civil War Story of Brentsville, Virginia

“Came to Brentsville (Prince William County, Virginia), examined the place, found five houses occupied, including the jail. But two men reside in this town; the court-house has but a part of the roof remaining on; the houses are generally in ruins.”  So read, in part,  a letter of March 8, 1864, written by Captain Andrew H. McHenry of the 13^th Pennsylvania Cavalry.

Brentsville was the county seat during the Civil War. It was at the Brentsville courthouse that citizens met to vote on secession and where they came to enlist in the military. In response to John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859, the Prince William Cavalry (Co. A, Virginia Cavalry) was formed here on the courthouse lawn in January 1860. The Ewell Guards (Co. A, 49th VA Infantry), were also organized here and drilled on the courthouse lawn.

When Union General McClellan began his campaign to take the new Confederate capital in Richmond, southern troops were forced to evacuate their winter camps that were set up throughout much of Fairfax and Prince William Counties. Brentsville, then the seat of local government, was one of the first communities affected by invading Federal forces. Thousands of troops of both sides passed through Brentsville. Churches and private homes became hospitals after battles at Manassas and Bristoe Station. Many of the buildings were ravaged for bricks to build encampments. The roof of the courthouse was partially torn off and the adjacent clerk's office was totally destroyed. Most of the county's records were lost. A Union soldier wrote, “The documentary accumulations of more than two hundred years had been torn out of their files and scattered over the floors of the buildings to the depth of several feet.”

Brentsville sat in the midst of “Mosby’s Confederacy” as Confederate partisans harassed union troops throughout the war.  A soldier in the Tenth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry wrote, “Guerrillas were all about us, as was evident when a straggling member of the Tenth was fired upon….Oct. 6th, a squad of men went over to Brentsville, shire town of Prince William County, to get bricks for the General’s quarters.  They secured them, but at the expense of the buildings themselves.”


The Prince William Historic PreservationFoundation is currently raising money for museum exhibits and interpretive services for the “ Old Jail”, which is the final building to be restored at the 29 acres Brentsville Courthouse Historic Centre, an open-air museum centered around the restored 1820s courthouse. 

The Civil War Wedding

An entertaining look at the customs and superstitions of weddings during the Civil War era.

Wars and Invasions

General George S. Patton once said, “Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance.” Here are four stories about the history of the world IF wars we know about happened differently or IF wars that never happened actually took place.

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Custer’s Last Stand - Reno’s Charge

On June 25,1876 George Armstrong Custer's Indian scouts identified what they claimed was a large Indian encampment along the Little Bighorn River.  Custer decided to attack despite the warning from Mitch Bouyer a veteran scout of French and Sioux descent that this was the largest gathering of Indians that he, Bouyer, had seen in more than thirty years.

Custer divided the regiment into three battalions.  Captain Frederick Benteen was sent south and west, to cut off any attempted escape by the Indians.  Major Marcus Reno was to charge the southern end of the encampment, and Custer rode north, planning to circle around and attack from the north.

Reno began a charge on the southern end of the village.  The Indians did not flee, but began pouring out of the village toward Reno like angry bees.  Reno halted, had his men dismount and formed a skirmish line.  Sioux and Cheyenne warriors in huge numbers began to flank Reno’s position and he beat a hasty retreat, or as he reported it “a charge to the rear”.  Barely escaping massacre, Reno established a defensive position atop the bluffs overlooking the river and made a successful stand against the attacking Indians.

Custer attempted to ford the river at the north end of the camp but was driven off.  Now, hundreds of warriors pursued the soldiers onto a ridge north of the encampment. Custer’s men were unable to dig in, however, because they had been outflanked by the Indians.

Custer’s Last Stand: Portraits in Time e-Book edition
Paperback edition

For almost one hundred and fifty years, Custer has been a Rorschach test of American social and personal values. Whatever else George Armstrong Custer may or may not have been, even in the twenty-first century, he remains the great lightning rod of American history. This book presents portraits of Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn as they have appeared in print over successive decades and in the process demonstrates the evolution of American values and priorities.

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Women’s Hair Styles and the American Revolution

From: How Martha Washington Lived

In the matter of hair styles colonial Americans took their cues from Europe.  Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, was the fashion icon of the day and set a fad for outlandishly tall, elaborately decorated wigs in the late 1700s. Her hairdressers created hairdos that often weighed five or more pounds and stood up to three feet high. Her wigs were imitated by other members of the French court and soon ladies of fashion throughout Europe and in the American colonies. The height of these styles was generally about 1 to 1 1/2 times the length of the face, and was styled in a pyramid shape.  This high hairstyle, called the pouf, was created using “cushions” made of fabric or cork.  The cushion was attached to the top of the head, and then natural and false hair was curled, waved, or frizzed and piled over and around the cushion.  The pouf was often styled into allegories of current events and was ornamented with ribbons, pearls, jewels, flowers, feathers, as well as ships, birdcages, and other items that evoked the theme.  Such elaborate hairstyles could be worn for days or weeks at a time and frequently became the home of insects.  It was permissible to scratch the head with a special stick.

The hairstyles of most American women were generally not as extreme as those in Europe. With coming of the Revolution in 1776, the passion for high hair began to wane in America. It seemed extravagant, wasteful, silly and raised suspicions of pro-British sympathies.  Josiah Bartlett, a delegate to the Continental Congress, wrote to his wife in 1778 about, “the Tory ladies…wearing the most enormous high head Dresses after the manner of the Mistresses and Whores of the British officers.”

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Did Slavery Pay? The Economics of Slavery

From : Why the South Fought the Civil War

The production of cotton in the Deep South demanded labor, and with the termination of the African slave trade, this demand for labor fueled an explosion in the price of slaves and the proliferation of the domestic slave trade.  Slavery was a dynamic institution, expanding where the economy was expanding and providing an easily convertible asset in case of need.   The case of Hickory Hill plantation is illustrative.  Hickory Hill, owned by the Wickham family, was a 3,500 acre plantation located in central Hanover County, near Richmond, Virginia.  The plantation practiced the most up to date agricultural methods.  The most important pillar of the Wickhams’ financial security, however, was the increasing value and number of slaves at Hickory Hill.  In 1852 there were two hundred slaves valued at $70,000, an average of $350 each at Hickory Hill.  In 1860 there were 275 slaves, averaging slightly more than $650 each, worth $180,000.  In eight years the value of the Wickham’s slave property increased two and one half times.  Low crop yields were not something the Wickhams had to worry about.  If the Wickhams had to endure several consecutive years of crop failures, they could always sell some of their slaves.(9) The Wickham family was not alone however; as previously noted, slave owning was not only for wealthy planters.(10)

     Fueled by speculation, the total value of slave property across the South in 1860 was enormous compared to other sectors of the economy.  It was nearly three times larger than the total amount of capital invested in manufacturing throughout the entire country, almost three times the amount invested in all railroads, and seven times the amount invested in all banks.  It was three times the value of all livestock, twelve times the value of all farm implements and machinery and forty eight times larger than the total annual expenditures of the Federal government. (11)  Slave owning Southerners worried about the loss of this huge investment.  Northerners, such as Ambert Remington of New York, foretold that, “…a man that owns ten, twenty, or thirty thousand dollars in slaves, ($4-12 million in current dollars) will not give them up without a struggle….” (12)

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Hitler and Gandhi

In case you wonder how Mahatma Gandhi, the prophet of non-violence, would have made out with someone less civilized than the British, Andrew Roberts gives us some insight in his book The Holy Fox: A Life of Lord Halifax.

During a European visit, Lord Halifax, a former British viceroy of India, was invited to Hitler’s mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden for lunch.  After lunch Halifax brought up his experiences as viceroy of India, where he had urged a policy of conciliation.  Hitler interrupted him and said, “Shoot Gandhi!  And if that does not suffice to reduce them to submission, shoot a dozen leading members of Congress; and if that does not suffice, shoot 200 and so on until order is established.”

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Where is the real Treasure Island?

Norman Island is often mentioned as the probable site of the "real Treasure Island."   Norman Island  lies some fifty miles east of Puerto Rico in the British Virgin Islands, a group of thirty two small islands and islets  only a few of which are inhabited.   Most of this British colony's 13,000 people live on Tortola.  These islands were heavily infested with pirates.  The coves and bays provided a lurking place for pirates and buccaneers.  Only a really knowledgeable sailor could make it through the maze of reefs, which proved an ideal hiding place.  One of the most famous legends of these islands is the one of Dead Chest (the name of an actual island), celebrated for centuries in the Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum song.  Blackbeard the pirate marooned fifteen of his men on the small speck of land named Dead Chest with only a bottle of rum and a cutlass. 

Norman Island takes its name from an 18th century buccaneer who is said to have buried his treasure on the island.  The legend of Norman's treasure was first documented in a small book entitled LETTERS FROM THE VIRGIN ISLANDS (London, 1843). The surface of the island is rugged, covered with scrub timber and Guinea grass, and punctuated with bare rock outcroppings.  The island is also liberally sprinkled with caves.  At a spot called Treasure Point, there are two caves into which a small boat can enter from the sea.  The larger cave appears to have steps carved into the rock.  A few treasure holes can be found in likely spots.   Except for an occasional curious visitor from a yacht the bats have the caves and the treasure to themselves.

Link to: Secrets of Mysterious Islands

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Are Zombies Real?

One well known concept introduced by Haitian Voodoo is “zombification”, the practice of reviving the dead.  The term zombie came into general use after the publication of The Magic Island in 1929, in which William Seabrook described his experiences in Haiti, including an encounter with the walking dead: “The eyes were the worst. It was not my imagination. They were in truth like the eyes of a dead man, not blind, but staring, unfocused, unseeing. The whole face, for that matter, was bad enough. It was vacant, as if there was nothing behind it. It seemed not only expressionless, but incapable of expression.” 

The dead risen from their graves and animated by malevolent Voodoo sorcerers, a fanciful superstition?  Perhaps only partially according to Harvard trained biologist Wade Davis who has studied zombies in Haiti.  Victims were only made to look dead, by means of a drug that dramatically slowed metabolism.  According to Davis, a Voodoo practitioner prepares a powder that is rubbed into a victim’s skin. The subject becomes paralyzed, his lips turn blue, and within a matter of hours his metabolism slows to a level almost indistinguishable from death. If the victim survives the first few hours after poisoning, he or she revives spontaneously.  Then the so called zombie master administers Datura or some other drug that perpetuates the victim’s disorientation and reliance on the zombie master.  One of the ingredients that Davis found in every zombie powder he examined (along with such things as toads, sea worms, lizards, tarantulas, and human bones) was a dried species of blowfish.  Many of these fish contain a powerful poison known as tetrodotoxin, one of the most powerful non-protein poisons known.

 Link to: Secrets of Mysterious Islands

 

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