A Basic Question

Thanks for the suggestion to contact Mr. Anderson on the LBHA forum, Fred. However, I logged on, and I don't see anybody in the member list with a name like "hiplanesrnchr," or even Robert Anderson. So, if you could give me his e-mail adderss, I'd be grateful.

Actually, I feel that when statements such as, "finest light cavalry in the world," or, the adjectives which you mentioned Darkcloud, "best, most, greatest," etc., were used by veteran Indian fighters such as Custer, Mackenzie, Miles, or others intimately acquainted with Plains Indian warfare, to describe their Indian counterparts' abilities, there is a validity to the statement. Assuming of course that such descriptions were their honest opinions. Many of the recognized officers of the Indian Wars had already seen military service in other parts of the world, and throughout the Civil War. Their opinions about horsemanship were the statements of experts.

One thing is certain, the multitude of military descriptions of Native American horsemanship are in agreement that the Plains Indian warriors were master cavalrymen.

Boy, is that ever the truth! It's called "adjective-creep," and the older I get the more pronounced it seems to become. Pretty soon the mundane train-trip on Metro North from Pleasantville to Manhattan will become "awesome" and that accolade will have ceased to become... well... "awesome." It will have to be replaced with "phenomenally awesome."

Personally, I prefer, "real fine horsemen" to "the finest light cavalry in the world."

Best wishes,
Fred.

WY Man,

"Many of the recognized officers of the Indian Wars had already seen military service in other parts of the world, and throughout the Civil War." Some had, surely, seen action in another part of the word, although mostly Europe and then mostly western Europe. How many wars had there been for these officers to observe rival cavalry in action and still be young enough to serve here? Great horsemanship does not, by itself, equal great cavalry.

That's hardly all of the horse focussed world, not even most of it. "Many"? Doubtful. In any case, who had seen action against the central Asian mounted units or the cavalry of the South American pampas nations, for centuries and to this day famous for their horsemanship?

And they may have stunk, for all I know, just saying we have a tendency to inflate our enemy's abilities because while we fight them it decreases expectations, and once we beat them it inflates our self worth.

<"finest light cavalry in the world,:

Apparently if anyone rode horses better than the US military they would be considered the "finest lightly cavalry in the world"

How would one consider the soldiers who road in the Charge of the Light Brigade's horsemanship when all they did was point their horses into the guns of the enemy and say charge?

No. Indians were not cavalry. They rode and fought from horseback, which cavalry does, but Indians never operated as units except coincidently. They had no command structure to do so. They might choose to follow someone and obey for a bit or to the end, but that would be by choice, and they could change their mind. They surely had to be among the best horsemen ever, but that's different.

Cavalry bespeaks organization to win wars, not just battles, and not just displays of courage for the individual to profit. If any 7th soldier suddenly galloped around touching dead and living enemy with a stick, no matter how good he got at it promotion would not follow. Nor would his peers enjoy the attention from enemy weaponry he would bring to them if he returned. Nor would they trust his judgement.

This is an important point: for the Indians to defeat the Army, they would have to abandon whole segments of their culture and cease to be Indians as the forefathers knew them and more like us. The South had the same problem about ceding authority to the central government. Few Indians outside Osceola and Metacom/Wamsutta and Tecumseh 'got it,' or at least are credited by the whites with getting it. They knew they'd have to federate with a common command and work together.

Given virtually all nations around the world had light cavalry, you'd have to have some basis for calling one the best or even among the best, and it would take so long to accumulate the knowledge that enough time would have passed to render initial verdicts out of date. It's just another example of how Britain and America fluff their enemies which they defeated. The Brits never fluffed Washington for Yorktown because we won the war. They worshipped Napoleon because they beat him.

It's a subtle way of praising yourself without actually doing it. Yamamoto, Rommel, all have inflated reputations beyond plausibility. Yet the nations that beat/tied us at war if not in combat, say the Vietnamese, somehow had nobody important or competent enough for us to read about at the military level. Odd, what? Remember when we learned from defeat more than we learned from victory?

Each European nation thought it had the best cavalry, and in any case they 'knew' Europe had the best armies. Maybe. South America had pretty impressive militaries for a while, and I'd wager, given their historically high horsemanship, good cavalry.

Just about always those sweeping statements of grandiosity about anyone are balderdash, and should be viewed cancerously.