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Post by mcaryf on Jul 5, 2006 4:48:02 GMT -6
Hi Elisabeth
Your analysis seems reasonable to me.
I guess the whole thing goes like this. Custer realises before getting to MTC that the Reno attack has failed and that he can hope for no better success himself. The only chance now is to grab some noncoms. There are none at MTC so he heads further North, perhaps there is even an outside thought that Terry might somehow be in the offing. Now he has a problem as he has sent for Benteen and the packs so he needs to leave a force to maintain communication which is Keogh and the Right Wing. He is now having immense difficulty in maintaining appropriate force levels at any point but he carries on to Ford D but with the force he now has he cannot achieve anything against whatever resistance is mounted there by the Indians. To have had any chance he probably needed to find some unguarded noncoms sitting in a neat circle waiting to be captured. His Left Wing now comes under some sort of pressure so he can only withdraw steadily towards the Right Wing but before he gets there it is too late and the Right Wing has been overwhelmed. He and the remnant of the Right Wing now make it to LSH and the rest we broadly know.
I am not sure how all this fits with the timelines but I think it most unlikely that Custer sat anywhere waiting for things to happen, I think he must have had some difficulty in getting back from Ford D, perhaps some person important to him, such as a relative, got wounded so it was a slow and difficult return.
That is my current best picture. I really do not agree with posters such as Tony who think Custer was at MTC earlier relative to Reno's defeat. The failure to attack at MTC only makes sense if Reno is known or thought to be out of the equation.
Regards
Mike
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Post by shan on Jul 5, 2006 5:43:02 GMT -6
mcaryf,
good point about the men DeRudio says he saw from the timber being Boston and Martini, { I think most of us would agree that his account of his being able to identify Custer and Cooke from nearly a mile away has somewhat discredited his story,} it is certainly a theory I haven't heard before. We will never know what, if anything Boston saw, but it would be, I would suggest, a very unusual man who could ride on by and ignore the wonderful spectacle being played out there on the valley floor below him. I'm pretty sure he stopped to watch for a moment or two, and that he may well have done so before he actually met Martini. In which case, what could he have told Custer? A cross section of time lines have Custer's force disappearing from the bluffs somewhere between 3.20 and 3.30. in which case some, or all of them must have seen Renos charge come to a halt, they may even have seen the skirmish line being set up. Boston probably arrived at the scene some 10 mins later, in which case he would have seen Reno's men either falling back towards the timber, or else witnessed them already occupying it. Neither scenario would have constituted an all out scene of defeat, a set back yes, but all out defeat, I think not. If this was the news he eventually gave Custer, I would suggest that it may not have come as a total surprise to the general. Having now seen the size of the village for himself, and have witnessed something of the fighting temperament of the warriors, the likelihood was that he was probably having to think on the hoof, with any previous plans blown away on the wind. Whilst it is interesting to try and fathom out the motivations of Reno and benteens subsequent actions, the real mystery for me is what on earth were Custers forces doing over the next hour or so. Someone, it may have been you Elizabeth, referred to Greys assumption that Custer's forces eventually re-united on Calhoun at 4.46, which begs the question, what on earth were they doing during the intervening hour and quarter? I'm afraid I just cannot go with the deploying waiting for Benteen theory, especially as most of us would agree that this seems to go against the itchy, got to be doing something personality trait most people ascribe to Custer. Most people, when trying to untangle this part of the battle, tend to examine what may have been the motivation of the main white charactors, Custer, Keogh, Cooke, Benteen, and Reno, tending to reduce the Indians to passive spear carriers waiting in the background, when in fact it may well have been they who were directing events. One last thought, and this may not be the thread to mull this one over, when one examines accounts of previous Indian battles,{ mainly against other tribes,} unless the enemy falls apart and runs, they tend fight until they have killed several of the enemy and more berserker warriors have had their chance to show off, or, until they get bored, or simply feel enough is enough and withdraw. The battle of the Rosebud would tick several of those boxs. When Reno ran, they were on him like hounds on a limping fox, but when he and Benteen dug in and showed some resistance, they kept out of the way for the most part. Why then did they not only doggedly pursue, but stay around to annihilate Custers force? I would suggest that they did so because they sensed that this force was not putting up to much of a fight, and was beginning to fall apart. Now whether this was because the command had lost a number of officers and sergeants very early in the fight, leaving the men disoriented and apprehensive, or whether Custer himself had been killed is a matter for debate, but I would suggest that our ideas of Custer being in control of events until the end of the fight is somewhat misguided. Shan
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Post by elisabeth on Jul 5, 2006 6:18:54 GMT -6
Shan,
You could be right -- and I'm sure you're right to remind us that there were two sides in this battle! I wonder, though, about the notion that Custer lost control very early on. Many Indian accounts suggest a long period of fairly harmless back-and-forth sparring before anything serious started to happen. This could have lured Custer into a false sense of security, leading him to think he had got things under control. Which in turn could have led him to think he could afford the luxury of either a recon, or an undermanned attempt to attack, at Ford D. (I may be wrong, but I'm more and more coming to think that that was the pivotal moment of the battle -- when Custer separates his forces and takes his eye off the ball.)
Isn't there a very simple explanation for the Indians sticking around to annihilate Custer? Unlike the Rosebud, unlike many other Indian fights, LBH wasn't fought on a field of the Indians' choosing. Left to themselves, they'd never have embarked on a pitched battle on their own front doorsteps. At LBH they had their families and all their worldly goods to defend. And as someone else (can't remember who) has pointed out, because this was such a massive gathering, there were no friendly villages to retreat to. They were all there. It was stand and fight, or give up and go to the agencies. They had no option.
I think perhaps one reason we concentrate so much on the white characters (apart from the fact that the Indians got the chance to tell their side of the story, while Custer's men didn't!) is that there's so much evidence of controlled deployment. Yes, there are patches of "a rout, a panic", but enough signs that someone, at some stage, thought they knew what they were doing to make it utterly compulsive to try to work out what the thinking was ...
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jul 5, 2006 6:41:43 GMT -6
Regarding the non-coms.
At the Washita, Custer grabbed non coms, but was so afraid of still being attacked, he feigned his own attack on other villages under Ben Arnold's suggestion. This does not have the earmark of surety with hostages. It was the threat to their own children that kept warriors at bay, not the threat to someone else's.
Second, let's have a show of hands. Who thinks Gall, having lost children and wife to Reno, would give the remotest rat's ass about Cheyenne civvies while he's in full revenge mode? Who would control and calmly explain to him the PC advantages of not offending allies? Or any of the Hunkpapas so inspired? Hostages only sometimes seemed to work when it was one village preventing that village's warriors from risking their families.
Like "Indians will always run", this hostage theory ought to be examined. How often did it work and under what circumstances? Because what this theory means is that I'll let the slaughter of my children slide because I might inadvertantly hurt people I don't know and who mean little to me in the custody of soldiers who really, really need to die now, and will be back if we don't kill them.
This non com scenario is trotted out and fluffed up because it offers an explanation of Custer's defeat, in aggregate with line dances of military display and three found cases. It's repeated so often, it's accepted as true. It may not ever have ever been true in circumstances as at LBH.
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Post by elisabeth on Jul 5, 2006 7:01:48 GMT -6
It appeals, perhaps, because it's one of the few ways most of us can think of that Custer could have countered the odds against him. After all, at Washita the Indians from neighbouring villages did hang back from attacking Custer when he had Cheyenne hostages, while they didn't hesitate to slaughter Elliott and party.
Another ploy that had worked more frequently than capturing non-coms was taking leading chiefs hostage. That's not often raised as a possible scenario, and perhaps for good reason ... but is it worth considering? Even Gall might have hesitated to become the man responsible for, say, Sitting Bull being hanged. If they'd struck lucky and captured a really prominent man, who meant a lot to all tribes present, could it have worked?
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jul 5, 2006 7:14:04 GMT -6
They likely didn't attack - not because of Cheyenne hostages - but because they had to see to their own and get them running.
I find these offered scenarios strained at best. The easiest answer is a blunted attack at or near MTC ford, a wounded Custer family member, retreat to regroup and administer aid under actual chain of command, followed by Indians overrunning successive defensive measures. Look where Custer was found: the top of a hill with about six others about him, the others spread down the hill and along the ridge towards Keogh. Look at all the officers and so few men from their companies about them.
You can make a case, using the same evidence, that this was exactly what Reno did. Only badly, to indefensible ground. To no point.
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Post by elisabeth on Jul 5, 2006 7:52:27 GMT -6
Yep, it's strained, I don't deny that; just that it's something Custer had done before with success. Generals (even brevet ones) being on the whole creatures of habit, we can't rule it out as something that might have been in his mind ...
The only trouble with the "easiest answer" is that it's a curious way to retreat and regroup -- to move to a halfway decent defensive position (Calhoun) and then to leave it, presumably carrying said wounded Custer family member, with only the smaller wing of your force, well before that defensive position has been overrun or even much threatened. And still curiouser if the Ford D trip happened.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jul 5, 2006 8:01:42 GMT -6
Retreat under fire, I should have said.
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Post by AZ Ranger on Jul 5, 2006 8:27:16 GMT -6
About the only thing the Army could draw from Washita is some false conclusions. It was a limited success with enormous manpower.
The Indians chose not fight. There was no pre-battle preparation by the Indians. Individual Indians do not have to fight and do not have a court martial for not participating. If given the opportunity to fight a smaller group of the enemy of course they would take it.
For a battle such as LBH the Indians were mentally prepared for it. They were told the army would be delivered to their village and they would have a victory. If your beliefs tell you will have a victory the choice to fight is easier than waking up on a cold winter morning to an alarm of attack.
It was the mental state of the Indians that determined the outcome of LBH. They knew they were going to have a victory therefore they fought. On this day the only thing Custer could have done to survive is to retreat or not be there in the first place.
As far as Custer being irritated and making mistakes, I don't believe it. Given the limited knowledge of what they were getting into, the plan of splitting the force into three to drive the Indian village(s) north and prevent escape was as good as any.
If the Army knew all intel before engaging the Indians, Terry would have not needed to split his force. He would have hit the village while Crook engaged the warriors.
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Post by AZ Ranger on Jul 5, 2006 8:42:52 GMT -6
Elisabeth- Even a Brevet General looking at the terrain, numbers of the enemy, firepower of both sides, and lack of reserve ammunition would not find anything to a cavalryman's liking in the location they were at including Calhoun. Unless you are on the offense and moving through the terrain, it was no place to be for cavalry.
My belief is in the end they were trying to withdraw and were destroyed in the order of the fastest horses and minimal organization.
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Post by elisabeth on Jul 5, 2006 9:21:20 GMT -6
AZ, sorry, I'm being dumb -- you're saying the fastest horses were in the lead, I presume, not that they were destroyed first?
So if I understand you correctly, you're saying they were trying to withdraw to the north, as a battalion? To beyond LSH?
It could fit; though we then have to account for the Cemetery Ridge deployment and the Deep Ravine bodies. Would your scenario have these events happening after their northward movement has been stopped, at or near LSH -- forcing them to use all available ground around LSH? Or how do you see it playing out?
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Post by mcaryf on Jul 5, 2006 9:52:07 GMT -6
When we discuss the possibility that Custer was chasing after noncoms we only have to consider it as something Custer might have thought of doing not what we would recommend. I entirely agree that the efficacy of hostages is questionable given the multi-tribe composition of the Indians. However, I think in the desperate circumstances Custer must have found himself and his whole force (including Reno etc) to be in, I do think it might have been a straw at which he would have grasped.
I would be reasonably confident that his initial intent in going to the bluffs was to get behind the warriors fighting Reno and take them in the rear. It is only when he sees the size of the foe and probably knows about the defeat/setback to Reno that the strategy has to change.
If we want to go back to square 1 then I think a strategy to attack the pony herd with most of his strength was actually much more likely to have yielded a degree of success rather than any noncom hostage scenario.
Regards
Mike
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Post by elisabeth on Jul 5, 2006 10:03:25 GMT -6
Agreed.
Ironically, that's where the Gatlings might have turned up trumps.
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Post by AZ Ranger on Jul 6, 2006 23:23:56 GMT -6
I believe the attempt was to withdraw north and probably as the remaining survivors and not the whole battalion. You could start at either end as far as the Indians finishing them off. It just appears to me looking at the grave markers that the officers which usually have the faster horses and Custer by nature would be in the lead ending up near LSH. Whether L company was a skirmish line to block the Indian advancement or part of another earlier action I don't know.
Cemetery Ridge could also be an earlier action or concurrent. The trouble I have is that some are trying to make evidence for finding of facts with over 100 years of contamination of the scene. Regarding those that ran to Deep Ravine, where were their horses found at? I don't know but if someone does that would help in formulating a theory.
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Post by elisabeth on Jul 7, 2006 4:47:05 GMT -6
Assuming they were indeed Co. E: I seem to remember that a number of Indian sources talk about gray horses being let loose towards the tail-end of the battle, from LSH, and running to the river.
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