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Post by Walt Cross on Mar 18, 2005 21:40:36 GMT -6
Elizabeth; Here is some more information on this from a friend of mine.
Walt; I did some digging on this and came up with something. In "Killing Custer" author James Welch suggests that a medal was recovered from Keogh citing the Marquis book on Wooden Leg as his source. I followed Welchs footnote to the Marquis book and read the section on the spoils secured from the dead troopers. The Keogh medal story appears to be some more of Welchs less than accurate research. The text in the Wooden Leg book mentions many items that the Indians secured but there is no specific mention of a medal nor was there any specific mention of Keogh. The only story that remotely qualifies as possible is the story of a Cheyenne warrior who was examining a metal object he had secured from the field on the morning after the Custer fight. No source is given on where he found this object. The warrior listened to the object to see if it made noise and could possibly contain some wasichu medicine. Since the object emitted no sound the warrior concluded that this object was dead and of no use to him. He then disposed of it. Not much to hang your hat on there. Jim.
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Post by elisabeth on Jun 28, 2005 6:01:27 GMT -6
Walt,
So sorry for the discourtesy of not replyng to this great info. (Work etc drew me away for a while.)
Thanks for the Harrington link. Shame about the Welch story; lovely idea, such a pity that the facts don't support it!
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Post by elisabeth on Jun 28, 2005 6:52:07 GMT -6
Walt --
Back again, with a quick P.S. to the above. After a bit of strenuous Googling, I've finally tracked down where I first stumbled upon the myth. It was the Wild Geese Heritage Museum's website, in their biography of Keogh -- wildgees/keogh is the page address -- where the writer, Sean Ryan, goes into the medals question at some length. He attributes the Sitting Bull story to Maurice N. Hennessy's book, 'The Wild Geese: The Irish soldier in exile', published in 1973. So, next mystery: where did Hennessy get it?
It's going to cost me $50 on Amazon to find out, unless my local library can lay hands on the book; either way, getting that next piece of the jigsaw will take a little time. But I will get to the bottom of it if I can. Where LBH is concerned, the myths and untruths can sometimes be almost as significant as the facts; it'd be very interesting to nail the genesis of this one.
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Post by Lawtonka on Jun 29, 2005 19:17:22 GMT -6
There are some great photos in Glen Swanson's book showing Indian Veterans of the battle holding carbines they took from the field.
In the Untold Story, there are some more great pictures. One of my favorites is of the pocket watches taken from the soldiers.
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Post by elisabeth on Jul 4, 2005 23:50:21 GMT -6
Tim -- those sound fabulous, thanks for the tip.
Walt -- Still haven't got hold of the Hennessy book in the flesh yet, but it sounds as if it won't help in any case. Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence, in 'His Very Silence Speaks' (Chapter 6, p. 95) has the following quote from the Hennessy book: "When Chief Sitting Bull died, the Pro Petri Sede medal was found on his body. The Sioux chief had taken it from around the neck of the fallen Keogh after the battle of the Little Big Horn and had worn it as a tribute to the paleface warrior". BUT, as the scrupulous researcher she was, she's careful to cite this as an 'undocumented anecdote' -- meaning, presumably, that Hennessy not only gives no documentary source, but gives no hint at all as to where he got the story. Looks as if it's pure folklore, alas.
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Post by Melani on Dec 16, 2005 0:22:52 GMT -6
I believe somewhere in the Keogh symposium book it was speculated that he probably would have left soemthing as precious as the Papal medals behind in safekeeping. He had apparently already lost the originals in a hotel fire, and the ones he had were replicas obtained for him by a friend.
Dunno where Sitting Bull got his, if it existed. It seems too pat to be true.
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Post by elisabeth on Dec 16, 2005 1:33:52 GMT -6
Melani,
Yes, that's what they say; and it's such a great book that I'd hesitate to argue with it! But he did seem to be carrying a lot of other things that were precious to him ...
I wonder if the Sitting Bull story was sparked off by some of the other religious items he wore/carried. A lot of photographs show him wearing a huge crucifiix; and the Swanson book pictures a rosary he also had. Maybe a sense of dramatic rightness led people to develop the medal story from those?
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Post by hans54 on Dec 16, 2005 6:31:16 GMT -6
Viola's LITTLE BIGHORN REMEMBERED is replete with interesting photos. Quite a few soldiers' objects are depicted, too, such as bags made from boot leather, watches, saddle bags.
Hans Karkheck
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Post by crzhrs on Dec 16, 2005 14:11:15 GMT -6
Hans:
LBH REMEMBERED is an excellent book with interviews with descendants of LBH particpants, great photos of warriors in old age, "souvenirs" from the battle, and an interesting chapter on the Crows who told Edward Curtis (a great anthropologists who has published a number of books of photos of Native Americans) that Custer saw Reno being routed and rather than helping him, continued northward to attack from another direction. Curtis then presented this info to President Theodore Roosevelt with the request of an investigation, but Roosevelt denied it.
This is a must-have book from the Indians perspective!
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