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Post by Mulligan on Sept 4, 2014 2:27:22 GMT -6
RE: Variance of NA Force Estimates At this point in my study of LBH I'm not giving carte blance to all the NA accounts of specific battle events but I will concede that the NAs appear to have more credence when speaking about issues that they would be rightly familiar with, and for which there would be no consequence in discussing. The drift on many of the threads here lately has been to express something about the overwhelming number of hostile NAs that Custer faced, whether it be a comment regarding the immense, unanticipated size of the village, or Custer's own inability to recognize superior force numbers when he saw them, or some other such quantitative misjudgment or miscalculation. These arguments all invariably lead down the road to the punchline, "Too many Indians, General!" Gregory Michno seems a respected author, if perhaps not universally admired. Fred calls him "a pro". In my view he appears extremely familiar with the volumes of Custer research that have been published since the beginning, at least. The Michno book I recently read -- Lakota Noon -- is abundantly annotated with footnotes and attributions, and contains a bibliography that extends twelve pages in fine print. While that is no guarantee in itself of infallibility, of course, I'll submit Michno's references as support for my own position, which more or less mirrors Michno's own conclusions, paraphrased here. 1) The "Big Village" size has been vastly overestimated by whites, for a host of reasons. When NAs describe it in terms of terrain, point to point, rather than in estimated distance, they are surprisingly consistent. It extended from the Garryowen loop in the river to Medicine Tail Coulee. That's 1.5 miles, with a width of three hundreds yards from the river, in white man's terms. -- Lakota Noon2) Seminal studies of early NA accounts establish the number of NA participants in the battle at a figure consistent with NAs inhabiting an area the size of the village just described. In the early 1900's Dr. Charles A. Eastman, a Santee Dakota, wrote that NA battle participant numbers, as in the case of village size, had always been overestimated, and that there were, at most, 1,000 NA warriors in the fight. --- Lakota NoonCuster was a West Point graduate, wherever he placed in graduation order. He was smart and well-informed. He believed the Seventh Cavalry would meet, at most, 1,500 warriors. Let's split the difference and pin the actual number of NAs on the field at 1,250. The Seventh was outnumbered but they had encountered the enemy they had expected to find. Custer lost and the NAs won. However, overwhelming force in numbers was likely not a factor. If a low number such as 1,250 NA combatants is accurate does that necessarily imply tactical errors on the part of the Seventh contributed to their defeat? Mulligan  |
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Post by fred on Sept 4, 2014 9:26:15 GMT -6
Here we go again!!! Sometimes I wonder why I bother with this... but... for the umpty-umph time...
Estimates of Indian Strength
Over 2,000—
1. CPT Frederick William Benteen—In the July 4, 1876, letter to his wife, Benteen wrote that there were 3,000 warriors there [Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 300]. “Captain Benteen stated later that there were ‘picnic parties’ of Indians as large as a regiment standing around the river bottom looking on, and that fully 2,000 hostiles were idling about, waiting for a place from which to shoot. He declared… there was not a foot of unoccupied land anywhere and that there were Indians everywhere… the command was surrounded by from eight to nine thousand hostiles” [Stewart, Custer’s Luck, p. 422].
2. COL William S. Brackett—12,000-15,000 Indians, with about 1/3 of them (4,000 – 5,000) warriors [Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana, IV, p. 263].
3. LT James H. Bradley (7th Infantry; Gibbon’s Chief-of-Scouts)—Bradley never gave a specific amount, but from the comments he made in his memoirs, it appears he felt there were at least 2,000 or more warriors. “… [T]here were Indians enough in the timber [to Bradley’s front when Terry halted the command in the LBH valley on the evening of June 26] and on the hills before them, in chosen positions of great strength, to have cut them all to pieces and driven them back in ruinous disorder. From subsequent examination of the ground I am convinced that there were not less than a thousand of these ambushed savages, with plenty more to co-operate with them, and not only would they have easily defeated the cavalry, but they would have given our whole command a desperate fight had we advanced that evening another mile” [Bradley, The March of the Montana Column, p. 161].
4. CPT Philo Clark (Second Cavalry)—On June 17, the day of the Rosebud fight with Crook, the Indians had about 1,200 standing lodges and 400 wickiups, about 3,500 warriors [Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 116].
5. Lewis Crawford—2,000 to 2,500, but the country could not have sustained that number if they stayed together for very long.
6. Crazy Horse—1,800 lodges and 400 wickiups. At least 7,000 warriors, plus any number of transients and hangers-on [South Dakota Historical Collections, vol. VI, p. 227].
7. LT Carlo DeRudio—3,000 to 4,000 warriors, but he admitted that at the time of the battle he would have guessed at a higher number [RCOI].
8. Fred Dustin—10,000 to 12,000 people, of whom 3,000 to 3,500 were warriors. No more than 2,500 warriors, however, participated in the battle [The Custer Tragedy, p. 106].
9. Feather Earring—In response to the question from General Scott: “How many lodges were there?” “A: There were very many; three or four young men in a lodge. We gave each man a willow stick in order to count them. I know we counted over 5,000, and they were not all there; many were over on Arrow Creek stealing horses from the Crows” [Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 98].
10. LT Winfield Scott Edgerly—20,000 horses, six to eight ponies per man = 2,500 to 3,300 warriors. On August 18, 1881, in a statement made at Fort Yates and carried in the Leavenworth Times, Edgerly said, based on knowing the size of and seeing Terry’s command coming up the valley—500 men—he estimated the size of the Indian force to be about 7,000 warriors. In a speech quoted in a New Hampshire newspaper around 1896–1897, Edgerly said the command had “proof positive” that there were no more than 600 Indians, but in his opinion there turned out to be “not less… than 3,000” [Clark, Scalp Dance, p. 70].
11. Flat Iron—[the last surviving Cheyenne chief who took part in the battle] 14,000 Indians in the camp, of whom 8,000 were fighting men [Helena Independent, October 15, 1915].
12. COL John Gibbon—1,200-2,500 warriors [Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana, IV, 1903, p. 285]. [NOTE: carried below, as well.]
13. LT Edward Settle Godfrey—Godfrey’s estimate of the number of warriors was at least 3,000 to cover the ground he saw [Nichols, RCOI, p. 494].
14. PVT Theodore W. Goldin—Estimated the warrior strength to be between 4,000 and 5,000 men [Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 271].
15. George Bird Grinnell—at least 200 Cheyenne lodges. Two Moon claimed his band consisted of fifty lodges and it was only one of several Cheyenne bands at the battle [Thrall, “The Sioux War,” Kansas State Historical Collections, Vol. XVI, p. 573]. There were six Sioux villages, each as large or larger than the Cheyenne. The Cheyenne told Grinnell there would be as many as three to four fighting men per lodge. That would have meant between 4,500 to 6,000 warriors present [The Fighting Cheyennes, pp. 343 – 344].
16. LT Luther Hare—counted where forty tepees had stood and from that estimated there were about 1,500 lodges plus 400 wickiups. Based on that, a low estimate of the Indian fighting force would be around 4,000 [RCOI; Official Transcript, p. 389]. Estimated there were between 20,000 to 25,000 ponies.
17. George Herendeen—this was the largest camp he had ever seen, but he felt the Indians had moved the camp the morning the troops arrived (this is highly unlikely—it was the day prior). Just after the battle, he estimated the village contained about 6,000 people, half of who were warriors (3,000) [Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 260]. Later, at the RCOI, he told the court there were about 1,800 lodges and 3,500 fighting men [Official Transcript, p. 334; Army & Navy Journal, July 15, 1876; RCOI]. In his 1911 interview with Walter Camp, Herendeen claimed there were 1,800 lodges and 3,500 warriors. Herendeen felt there were between 400 – 500 in the surrounding hills.
18. Orin Grant Libby—2,500 to 3,000 [The Arikara Narrative, p.24].
19. Little Buck Elk (Hunkpapa) claimed there was so many Indians not all could participate in the fighting.
20. Dr. Thomas B. Marquis—Wooden Leg told Marquis that the Cheyenne circle was about 300 lodges—some 1,600 people—and that the Blackfeet was about the same. The Sans Arcs was larger; the Oglala and Minneconjou circles were larger than the Sans Arcs; the Hunkpapa circle about twice the size of the Cheyenne. Based on this, Marquis estimated a camp of some 12,000 people, which could easily have meant 3,000 or more warriors [Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 106]. Most of the tepees were family lodges. Actually, the above is misleading. What Marquis wrote was, “At the Northern Cheyenne fair at Lame Deer in 1927, I estimated the encampment at about 1,100. Wooden Leg and some older men were asked to compare this camp with the one on the Little Big Horn… it was generally agreed that there must have been 1,600 or more Cheyennes in their camp when the Custer soldiers came” [Marquis, Wooden Leg, p. 206, FN].
21. 1LT John F. McBlain (Ninth Cavalry)—“With Gibbon’s command was an odometer cart, and the instrument registered the camp as four and three-quarters miles long; now let anyone familiar with Indian ways of camping picture to himself the fighting strength of that camp. I never did and do not now believe that there was a soul less than 6,000 fighting men” [McBlain, “With Gibbon on the Sioux Campaign of 1876”].
22. “Major” James McLaughlin—the Hunkpapa circle did not contain over 400 lodges [My Friend, the Indian, pp. 136 – 137]. McLaughlin was the U. S. Indian Agent at Devil’s Lake Agency, D. T., from 1870 – 1881. The title “Major” is courtesy and custom for Indian agents. From 1881 to 1892, McLaughlin made a great effort to determine the number of Indians at the LBH. Edward Godfrey wrote, “… about one-third of the whole Sioux nation, including the northern Cheyennes and Arapahoes, were present at the battle; he estimates the number present as between twelve and fifteen thousand; that one out of four is a low estimate in determining the number of warriors present; every male over fourteen years of age may be considered a warrior in a general fight… considering the extra hazards of the hunt and expected battle, fewer squaws would accompany the recruits from the agencies. The minimum strength of their fighting men may then be put down as between 2,500 and 3,000. Information was dispatched from General Sheridan that from one agency alone about 1,800 lodges had set out to join the hostile camp; but that information did not reach General Terry until several days after the battle” ["Custer’s Last Battle 1876," p. 14].
23. CPT Anson Mills (CO, M/3C, with Crook’s command)—Custer attacked a village of some 15,000-20,000 people, with 4,000-5,000 warriors. About half that number had been in the Rosebud fight against Crook [My Story, p. 409].
24. CPT Myles Moylan—3,500-4,000 warriors. There was a separate and distinct camp of wickiups [RCOI; Official Transcript, p. 308]. Moylan put the number at 900-1,000 around the command [Stewart, Custer’s Luck, pp. 422 – 423].
25. CPT J. S. Payne (5th Cavalry)—Payne felt—based on speaking to various sources—that there were about 2,500 warriors in the battle [Nichols, RCOI, p. 275].
26. CPT John Scroggs Poland (bvt LTC; Sixth Infantry; Post Commanding Officer at Standing Rock)—Some time after the battle he wrote that at the Standing Rock Agency there averaged about seven Indians per lodge and four per wickiup [Smalley, Little Bighorn Mysteries, p. 6 – 4]. If there were 1,900 lodges, that would mean 13,300 Indians + 1,600 for the wickiups, or close to 15,000 total. He also said not all the Indians in the village were engaged at any one time [CPT J. S. Poland’s report; Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 46].
27. MAJ Marcus A. Reno—“The lowest computation puts the Indian strength at about 2,500, and some think there were 5,000 warriors present” [Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 229; quoting from Reno’s statement to the New York Herald].
28. Nicholas Ruleau—(a fur trader who had lived at the Pine Ridge Agency since 1879, and who spoke the Sioux tongue and knew a number of Indians who fought at the Little Big Horn: [Hardorff, Lakota Recollections, p. 38; in a 1906 interview with Judge Eli S. Ricker]
• Oglala: 350 warriors, led by Crazy Horse.
• Hunkpapa: 1,000 warriors, led by Sitting Bull.
• Minneconjou: 700 warriors, led by Buffalo Bull.
• Sans Arc: 300 warriors, led by Spotted Eagle.
• Brulé (also called Rosebud Sioux): 80 warriors, led by Flying Chaser.
• Santee: 40 warriors, led by Red Top.
• Yankton Sioux: 40 warriors.
• Cheyenne: 45 warriors, led by Little Coyote.
• Total Indians: about 6,000 in camp. Ruleau said about one-third of the total number were single men, accounting for the lower total as compared to the number of warriors.
• Total warriors: 2,555.
29. 1SG John Ryan (Company M, Seventh Cavalry)—In his book, Ryan claims there were usually five or six warriors to a lodge: “… the ordinary rate….” [Barnard, Ten Years With Custer, p. 252] (seems a bit excessive). Ryan estimated the Indian strength at the Pompey’s Pillar fight during the Stanley Expedition of 1873 at 1,500 warriors [p. 270]. Ryan also makes the point that in 1873, “… Sitting Bull was not at that time joined by any very formidable force of agency Indians” [p. 271]. “… I have seen the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Kiowas, Apaches and Comanches move together in the Indian Territory and in Kansas years before, while campaigning there under General Custer, and I should say there was double the amount move out from this camp” [p. 301].
30. GEN Hugh Scott—a year after the battle he attempted to count the rings and reached 1,500 without counting them all. From this, he estimated closer to 7,000 Indians were in the camp [Some Memories of a Soldier, p. 49].
31. LTC Michael V. Sheridan— On June 6, 1876, Col. Michael V. Sheridan—LG Philip Sheridan’s brother—dispatched a message to Terry: “‘Courier from Red Cloud Agency reported… [on June 5, 1876] that Yellow Robe… says that 1,800 lodges were on the Rosebud and about to leave for Powder River… and says they will fight and have about 3,000 warriors.’” This now clearly indicated the military expected a large number of Indians, willing to fight. Terry received this message after the LBH fight [Willert, Little Big Horn Diary, p. 97].
32. LG P. H. Sheridan—At least 2,000 Indians from the Missouri River agencies—men, women, and children—surrendered to Nelson Miles on October 27, 1876. This did not count either Sitting Bull’s band or Crazy Horse’s and it also did not include any of the Northern Cheyenne. It also did not include any of those taken in by Mackenzie. There were still more Indians out and being hunted down by Crook, Merritt, and Mackenzie [Sheridan’s report, dated November 25, 1876; Carroll, The Federal View, p. 78].
33. Vern Smalley—Estimates of 1,000 warriors attacking Reno is reasonable [Little Bighorn Mysteries, p. 6 – 5]. “After the fact, we know there were roughly 3,500 warriors who would have slaughtered [Reno] just as they did Custer” [More Little Bighorn Mysteries, p. 13 – 5].
34. Spotted Horn Bull—In an 1883 interview—with his wife, Pretty White Buffalo, telling most of the story—he said 5,000 would cover the warriors and chiefs [Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 84].
35. Edgar I. Stewart wrote that if Vestal, Grinnell, and McLaughlin are in general agreement, the matter should be settled. They were [Custer’s Luck, FN 15, pp. 311 – 312]. After the battle, Terry learned from General Sheridan that about 1,800 additional lodges had set out to join the hostiles. Stewart believed about 3,000 warriors were there and they were in a generally higher proportion than would be the case. Stewart felt there might have been “thousands” of Indians in the vicinity this day.
36. BG Alfred H. Terry—In his June 27, 1876, battle dispatch, said both Benteen and Reno estimated not less than 2,500 warriors, but other officers thought the number of Indians engaged was much more [O’Neil, … Official Report… Terry, p. 15].
37. PVT Peter Thompson—2,800 warriors [“The Experience of a Private Soldier in the Custer Massacre,” p. 79].
38. LT Charles Varnum—the wickiups were very thick along the edge of the timber, along the stream, and at the south end of the village [RCOI]. LT Charles Varnum—Four thousand [Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 343]. Varnum felt there were as many as 4,000 Indians, many of whom were never engaged. The men on the hill could see large masses of them a good ways off.
39. Stanley Vestal [aka, Walter Campbell]—quotes White Bull, saying there were about 2,500 warriors “fit to bear arms.” He put the number of lodges at over 2,000 with from one to three warriors per lodge, more than half of them seasoned warriors. Vestal also said, “the top estimate of the effective manpower of the Western Sioux when all together” was 3,000 [Sitting Bull, p. 157, also p. 147; Warpath: True Story of the Fighting Sioux, p. 80; Warpath and Council Fire, p. 235]. Vestal agreed with Grinnell, though Grinnell’s numbers appear considerably higher than Vestal’s.
40. White Man Runs Him—4,000 to 5,000 warriors [Graham, The Custer Myth, p. 16].
41. PVT Charles A. Windolph—“Altogether there may have been as many as one third of all the Sioux tribesmen here—possibly close to 10,000 out of 30,000. That would figure out somewhere between 2,000 to 3,000 warriors.” [Windolph, I Fought With Custer, pp. 91 – 92.]
1,500 – 2,000—
1. Barron Brown—no more than 2,000 warriors, only one-half of whom had modern firearms [Comanche, p. 27].
2. COL John Gibbon—1,200 – 2,500 warriors [Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana, IV, 1903, p. 285]. [NOTE: Gibbon’s estimate is carried above, as well.]
3. Frazier Hunt—1,800 to 2,000 warriors [Custer, the Last of the Cavaliers, p. 174].
4. Runs The Enemy—2,000 warriors took part in the battle [Dixon, The Vanishing Race, p. 179].
1,500 or less—
1. Flying Hawk—1,200 warriors in the entire village, but only about 1,000 took part in the battle. The others were out hunting [Flying Hawk’s Tales, p. 40].
2. Dr. Charles Eastman—no more than 5,000 Indians, total. Hunkpapa: 224 lodges; Sans Arcs: 85; Santee: 15; Cu Brulé: 140; Minneconjoux: 190; Oglala: 240; Cheyenne: 55 [total: 949]. He said that at 5 per lodge, this equals 4,945. With 25% warriors (too high a percentage, he said) + 200 attached from various agencies (too low, he said), Custer only had 1,411 warriors confronting him, less than he actually anticipated. Dropping old men and boys would reduce the number to 800 or 900 [“The Story of the Little Big Horn,” Chautauquan, Vol. XXXI, July, 1900, p. 354]. Eastman went on to say that it was not the numbers Custer under- or overestimated, but the military ability of the Indians. “I reiterate that there were not 12,000 to 15,000 Indians at that camp as has been represented; nor were there over 1,000 warriors in the fight. It is not necessary to exaggerate the number of the Indians engaged in this notable battle. The simple truth is that Custer met the combined forces of the hostiles, which were greater than his own, and that he had not so much underestimated their numbers as their ability” [“The Sioux Narrative,” Chautauquan Magazine, 1900].
3. Gregory F. Michno—Maybe 1,500 warriors. “Refocusing our myopic vision to other years and regions, we can find at least one dozen villages larger than the one on the Little Bighorn, and on-field geographical and spatial considerations illustrate the impossibility of the exaggerated size estimations. The village was about one and one-half miles long, and contained about 1,200 lodges and perhaps 1,500 warriors” [“Myth-Busting at the Little Bighorn,” Custer and His Times, Book Five, p. 156].
Unsure—
1. Gall—could not tell how many were in the camp. His own following consisted of some 60 lodges [Joseph Henry Taylor, “Bloody Knife and Gall,” North Dakota Historical Quarterly, vol. IV, April 1930, p. 165; “Major” James McLaughlin, My Friend, the Indian, p. 134].
2. George E. Hyde—Fifty lodges of the “wildest of the Northern Cheyennes” were the only ones at the battle [Red Cloud’s Folk, p. 182].
3. Red Cloud—4,000 Indians in the camp [Joseph K. Dixon, The Vanishing Race, p. 170]. Unclear if he meant warriors or total people.
There! Knock yourselves out. A more realistic estimate, based on modern-day demographic studies, is probably in the 7,000 or 8,000 to 10,000 range (the higher number being inserted by me, though I do not necessarily agree, even with my own numbers) and as many as 3,000 warriors... for a number of reasons.
My best guess for warriors being involved in one or both phases of the June 25th fighting is 2,072.
Best wishes,
Fred.
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