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Post by Treasuredude on Mar 5, 2006 18:00:29 GMT -6
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Post by crzhrs on Mar 6, 2006 13:22:16 GMT -6
Great article. It's so much better when we have first-hand accounts of what took place. Forsyth's narrative is vivid and almost puts you on the island. Kinda hard for a modern-day authors to come up with some of the descriptions primary sources give us.
Good work!
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Gumby
Full Member
Posts: 202
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Post by Gumby on Mar 12, 2006 16:15:40 GMT -6
Unfortunately, Forsyth's account was written almost thirty years after the fact and was chock full of errors. He jazzed up the story pretty good but added information he did not have at the of the battle. None of the Scouts knew Roman Nose was killed during the battle whenit happened. When they found out later they thought he was killed during the first charge during the morning. In fact, he was still in the Dog Soldier village at the time of the first charges. According to the Cheyenne, he was killed late in the day during what was effectively the last charge. His after action report, written months after the battle, conspicuously fails to mention Roman Nose's death.
First hand accouts are wonderful but must always be taken with a grain of salt. Look at all of the misinformation we have to sift through with the LBH accounts. While working on my current Beecher Island book, I have found some other discrepancies in the first hand accounts of at least one other scout as well.
That being said, the account given by Forsyth in his autobiography was certainly exciting and did contain some worthwhile information that was useful and was verified in other accounts.
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