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Post by AZ Ranger on Jul 15, 2006 14:56:39 GMT -6
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jul 15, 2006 16:11:46 GMT -6
doharris,
You've done nothing for which to apologize, and your observations are absolutely responsive to the thread. Don't think I'm being self adulatory so much as suggesting lack of response is not anyone dissing you, is all. You may have missed the dramatic announcements of those leaving the board because of my presence in the past. Some dressed in uniform for them and videoed them and are on YouTube for your streaming delight. You'll laugh, you'll cry, they're part of you.
I don't know about the Suicide Boys, except that the Cheyenne in days past had Dog Soldiers who did the same sort of thing pre-horse. They staked themselves to the ground so they could not run and fought to the death. After horse and gun, it made amazingly little sense and gained nothing, so it had fizzled out, but the tradition was there. So, it could well be true in some sense.
We remain alert, however, to the sudden moving of events around the field to keep Custer on the offensive till the very end. Lame White Man's attack at one point was over by Keogh, the Oglala Crazy Horse's equally impressive "bravery runs" during which it was demonstrated the soldiers could only hit things be accident, all have proven variable as to location.
And, of course, this is common mythology, is it not? Still.....
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Post by Tricia on Jul 15, 2006 17:19:54 GMT -6
Just to add here, but isn't there a strange Custer paradox to the suicide boys--that their deaths (I heard a reference to over 200 of them at an *official* Cheyenne event at LBH this year) attest to a greater offensive presence to the Seventh ... especially near the end of Custer's battle? There seem to be several LBH buffs who believe that the given/accepted Indian deaths were far too few when opposed by an accomplished military unit such as the (read as Custer's) Seventh. I think this might echo DC's above post, but thought it important to state myself, though I tend to believe the NA take on things.
Regards, Leyton McLean
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Post by Diane Merkel on Jul 15, 2006 20:59:35 GMT -6
I normally stay out of such discussions because I would only demonstrate my ignorance on many matters.
You all have raised great questions that don't have easy answers. Perhaps the lack of response is because no one can BS his way through these issues.
I didn't realize that there was but one source for the Suicide Boys legend, yet it is the latest fad at the battlefield. (There was definitely a different tone there this year. Suddenly, 130 years after the battle, Sioux and Cheyenne stories heard for the first time are our Gospel.)
I hadn't thought about the dirt and hope that you will continue to ask, "What happened to the dirt?" The question will be ignored by many because it kills the Fox theory which, we know, means you are an evil person. Many of the Fox fadists are now lurkers rather than posters because some of us don't care to play their games. Even those who professed personal friendship have stopped posting because I refused to ban DC. His crime? Walking to the beat of a different drummer, I suppose, or thinking for himself.
Sorry for the intrusion. I just wanted to voice my reaction to the fantastic food-for-thought you have raised here. Please continue.
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Post by d o harris on Jul 16, 2006 1:19:10 GMT -6
AZ--The link you posted depends upon John Stands In Timber for authority.
There is one other source I know of. Herman Viola recorded The Story of Louis Dog as told by his granddaughter Florence Whiteman. It appears in Viola's book "Little Bighorn Remembered," pp46-49.
"As the warriors were running around getting ready, a man got up and took his drum and began singing. He was singing the Suicide Song. And all these warriors who were getting ready, they were putting on their best moccasins, so that they could die in their best. They were getting their horses ready too. They came running to the man who was playing the Suicide Song. They began to dance to the song. If you dance to that Suicide Song, it means you must stay out there to the very end, because you have made a vow to win or die. That's the purpose of the Suicide Song." In this version there was no dance the night before the battle, but a spontaneous response to an attack on the village. And it isn't exactly a pledge to engage in a Kamikaze style attack. It is a pledge not to withdraw short of winning. Margot Liberty, John's editor and co-author, candidly admitted no other Indian informant had mentioned the suicide vows. I have difficulty believing if promises of suicide were made that the fact would have eluded Grinnell who was close to and respected by the old-time Cheyennes.
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Post by d o harris on Jul 16, 2006 3:02:09 GMT -6
DC--I plead guilty to a poor selection of words. Self-adulatory doesn't get it.
I do not regard lack of response as disrespect; rather, a validation of sorts. Too many who read about this battle are swept up and become dominated by suspect notions to the point of having a loyalty and dedication to idealizations that ought to be reserved for spouse and children. Nearly every thread eventually leads to Custer and his fight, which is the least knowable part of the battle. This allows free flowing imagination and requires almost no knowledge to wander between the extremes of The Last Man To Fall, a defiant Custer standing tall with revolver in one hand and saber in the other facing the massed hordes, and the depraved, mentally unbalanced glory hunter willing to risk the lives of hundreds in a reckless attempt to gain another battle ribbon.
The challenge I laid out, or attempted to lay out, was to open discussions on matters many feel closed. There are too many aspects of this affair accepted without question. If we have arrived at the point where we may question the existence of God, then sure as hell we are entitled to question Richard Fox, or any one else who attempts to live beneath the banner of "science." We are entitled to question the reality of the Suicide Boys, as expounded by John Stands In Timber. We are entitled to question any aspect of this affair that is accepted as a given. Frankly, questioning conventional thinking isn't an entitlement, it's an obligation.
And, I will always ask simple questions when they occur to me, and will await the answers, to qoute Adlai Stevenson, "until hell freezes over." WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DIRT?
As a matter of fact, this phrase is likely to become a litany, to be recited whenever anyone bases an opinion on the findings of archaeologists.
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Post by George Mabry on Jul 16, 2006 5:53:56 GMT -6
D.O., I'm not ignoring anyone. I enjoy getting on a topic and riding it right into the ground along with the rest of you. I just don't have any answers to your questions.
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Post by elisabeth on Jul 16, 2006 6:45:49 GMT -6
"What happened to the dirt?" is a great question.
There's another possible doubt cast on the archaeology. As early as the RCOI, the suggestion was there that the physical evidence didn't tell a reliable story. Several times, Recorder Lee raised the question of the cartridge cases, pointing out that it was a well-known fact that the Indians would have collected them up for re-use long before Terry and/or the burial parties got to view the field. What he was plainly driving at was that paucity of cases in any given area did not necessariy mean lack of resistance. (And indeed the logic of his argument would lead to the possibility that the areas where most cases were deposited, i.e. areas of toughest fighting, would be those most likely to be policed by Indians looking for an easy job of case-gathering.)
Lee, with this argument, was trying optimistally to counter the "a rout, a panic" version of events. He couldn't prove he was right, but at that same time, none of those questioned were able to disagree with his assertion about Indian habits -- even when it sabotaged the picture they were trying to paint.
At all events, it's one more question-mark over the supposed "science" ...
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Post by PhillyBlair on Jul 16, 2006 6:47:17 GMT -6
To follow up on all that has been said.....
This is not a religious post, please know that up front -- but I'd like to make a parallel that demonstrates our modern "scientific" approach to research. My background and research work is in the field of theology. Most of you have seen or heard of last year's academic clamor over the discovery of the "Judas" document, a third century Gnostic writing. Scholar after scholar raved about how this THIRD CENTURY document from a splinter sect of Christianity would shed great light on early Christianity. Now I am by no means a literalist in the theological realm and my views are actually quite liberal on many matters theological in regard to the origin of documents and related issues. But come on! An obscure document, 300 years after the fact, and revisionists are ready to rewrite early church history. Books are coming off the press at a record rate. Over what?
I say all of that to make a comparison to modern LBH research. I absolutely believe that archaeology IS science. It's a powerful tool. But why does every modern scientific theory have to begin with the assumption that everything before it was wrong? Pure science is supposed to be a theory that is already supported by evidence, and then more evidence is gathered to strengthen the theory (at least that's what I was taught in school). So why does every LBH study begin by dismissing all eye and ear witnesses (both Indian and soldier), taking segments of quotes out of context, and basically just rewriting history based on a few relics and stories that arose 100 years after the event (compare the "Judas" document to some recent Indian myths -- suicide boys, etc.)?
That's where I'm coming from on all of this. I thoroughly enjoyed Fox's work, Michno's work and many others. They were valuable in many ways. I just continue to be amazed at the ignoring of what is already there in the historical record.
Just had to add this. I'll probably be creamed for saying it, but I think it has merit.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jul 16, 2006 7:55:45 GMT -6
If people would actually talk and civilly ARGUE about religion, we would as a nation and species be better off. Argument - not drunken name calling - by informed and caring people is a good, good thing. They learn, bend, think. Which is to say......
Observing Christianity as an 'event' like LBH, we know that Christianity as an institution was based on forgeries and fiction, like the letters from Christ and Mary and Pilate, the poetry of the Sybyls and all that sort of stuff, and while I agree that one 3rd century document shouldn't shake the mountain, it is best to recall that the actual information claimed as solid.......really isn't much more than the Judas Gospel is. (As Voltaire satirized: "They will ask me then whether Peter was at Rome; I shall reply, to be sure, that he was Pope for twenty-five years: and the big reason that I shall produce is that we have an epistle from this fellow who could neither read nor write, and that this letter is dated from Babylon; there is no answer to that, but I should like something stronger. . . .")And to this atheist, unimportant. What is important is that the story carries great wisdom, beauty, and power, and treating everyone as you'd be pleased to be treated can't be said enough or fail to impress when you're kinda familiar with the world that the thought emerged from.
Recorder Lee has always rubbed me wrong, primarily because he is exactly the sort of guy totally familiar with the literary landscape who busied himself inserting Custer into it. I never noticed (thank you) that it was he who first inserted the thought that "it was well known" that Indians took cartridge cases (I expect points...)to reuse. Was it well known? Was it true, in the main, at all? Why, with all the brand new cartridges would they weigh themselves down with old? There was so much unused ammo that Wooden Leg found boxes of it six months later.
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Post by elisabeth on Jul 16, 2006 8:01:59 GMT -6
I don't, myself, know for sure whether it was either well-known or true. But those to whom he put the point agreed that it was both ...
Lee, I think, wasn't particularly out to glorify Custer. My impression is that he smelt a rat; was being prevented by his superiors from following it to its hole; but as a soldier, resented the way Custer's men were being maligned in order to get the Reno/Benteen axis off the hook. This was just one of his valiant little attempts to redress the balance. I don't see him as a fool, a romantic, or a propagandist, just a man placed in an impossible position trying to do the best job he could. But then I'm a naturally kindly soul ... (!)
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jul 16, 2006 8:19:43 GMT -6
No fool, and romantic only in the manner all Victorian educated folk were. He was a tool of Mrs. Custer and her clique. Custer's men were not maligned. Custer was.
I point out again I've asked at exactly what point should the mission become Saving General Custer rather than the one laid out by Terry? There are these foolish assumptions, because Edgerly said "of course we should have gone," that this is both true and meaningful. Was it?
Reno gets nailed by Godfrey because he brought up the possibility of abandoning the wounded to Benteen. But what if the Sioux were there three days later? Was it the duty of the 7th they all die to no point after accomplishing nothing, solely to say they didn't abandon the wounded?
Those are, academically, romantic notions at work, contrary to common sense and military point, but still hauled up the flagpole to demand everyone salute.
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Post by AZ Ranger on Jul 16, 2006 8:37:25 GMT -6
"In an effort to put an end to this practice, the Secretary of War ordered that officers exercise 'great care' to prevent Indians from procuring any empty cartridge cases that were thrown away. This was General Order No. 13, issued February 16th, 1876."
Don't blame Recorder Lee for this one. The troopers would crush the case if they had time by stomping.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jul 16, 2006 8:47:31 GMT -6
So..........why the concern over the used cases when you're giving them new weapons and ammo at the same time? In any case, no pun, was it true? By which I mean there was a lot of "well knowns" that were not true. Indians would run, Indians were liars, Indians were weak because their muscles weren't as defined as in some whites, Indians would never attack a cavalry regiment........
We know they sometimes did reuse at need, but given how much stuff of value they left for the dead and all, are we to believe substantial metal was hauled around "for later?"
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Post by greenpheon on Jul 16, 2006 8:57:57 GMT -6
Those who have not served in combat can't begin to understand the necessity of protecting the wounded, of coming to the aid of a fallen comrade. These men become your brothers, your family. Stop and think for a moment, would you run away to save your life and sacrifice your family?
Now, this is brought up over and over because people understand this necessity. Arm chair soldiers will never understand it. So, let it go and accept the fact that the dead were abandoned only reluctantly and where possible the wounded were never deserted. Its was as much a part of the military culture then as it is today. This attitude applied to every soldier, including Custer, and its why Benteen beat himself up until his very death. It is not a "romantic" notion, except in the mind of those who can not know or begin to understand. You have to live it to understand it.
Greenpheon
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