Wiki of Gray's Timeline

[Diane Merkel]

I'm pleased to say that I have put the last of Gray's tables from Custer's Last Campaign into the wiki. See the link below for a quick reference to Gray's timeline. You all are encouraged to add other participants' timelines so we can easily identify the inconsistencies. Just please use a different color or style of font so that we can distinguish Gray's work from others' testimonies.

www.seedwiki.com/wiki/lbha/timeline?wpid=576395

To access the main page of our wiki: www.seedwiki.com/wiki/lbha/

[erkki]

This doesn't quite fit into the wiki:

Problems with Gray's timeline begin with his assertion that officers' watches were set to local time based upon the fortuitous coincidence of actual sunset with Wallace's notation that they went into camp at 7:45 on June 24. "Sunset" can mean the technical moment when the sun drops below the horizon; but in common usage it refers to a time late in the day as the sun dips toward the horizon. This seems to have been the case for informants regarding the time they went into camp on June 24.

The rule of thumb in history is that the earliest evidence is the best evidence. The earliest statement about the time the regiment went into camp on the Rosebud on June 24 is that of Galenne who noted in his journal for that date that they went into camp at 6:00 p.m.(That Fatal Day p. 17). Edgerly wrote his wife 7/4/1876 they had encamped at 5:00, (Scalp Dance, 1985:24). Herendeen, July 7, 1876, ‘About four o’clock we came to the place where the village had been apparently only a few days before, and went into camp two miles below the forks of the Rosebud. The scouts all again pushed out to look for the village, and at eleven o’clock at night Custer had everything packed up and followed the scouts up the right hand fork of the Rosebud.(Custer Myth, 1953:257, A&J journal p. 40-7/7/76 Hutchins Army & Navy Journal 2003:40). In late recollections, Hare, De Rudio, and Roy also thought they went into camp about 5:00 p.m. on June 24 (Hammer Custer in '76 February 7, 1910 p. 64; DeRudio, ibid. 2/2/1910; Roy 9/16/1910 Hardorff Camp,Custer and the LBH 1997:66).

Memory of past events is most accurate on the smallest scales of past time (scale effect): hour is remembered more accurately than day, day than month, month than year. Friedman finds memory for time of day accurate within an hour excluding the possibility of chance. Memory for time of day emerges much earlier in childhood than memory for long-term time patterns, suggesting that it is more deeply rooted and more stable over time, and this is consistent with studies showing that time-estimation of durations (intervals) is a highly individual process affected by emotion, activity, etc.which becomes important when we come to estimation of how long before the pack train was up or Reno started after Weir. Koriat, et al. summarize psychological research in this area.
"Temporal information, however, appears to have a special status and to be represented and processed differently than other aspects of past events. According to the emerging consensus (see, e.g. Friedman 1993, Larsen et al. 1996) people do not store and retrieve temporal information directly. Rather, they reconstruct the temporal location of past events on the basis of fragments of information remembered about the content of the event (temporal cues) and general knowledge about time patterns....Error patterns...reveal the reconstructive nature of temporary memory." Koriat, Asher, Morris Goldsmith, and Ainat Pansky "Toward a Psychology of Memory Accuracy." Annual Reviews Psychology 51:481-537.

Other references include:
"A Follow-up to ‘Scale Effects in Memory for the Time of Events’: The Earthquake Study." Memory & Cognition 15.6 (1987): 518-20; Block, Richard A. "Prospective and Retrospective Duration Judgement: The Role of Information Processing and Memory," in Time,Action and Cognition. Dordrecht; Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1992:141-152; Block, Richard A. and Dan Zakay "Retrospective and Prospective Timing: Memory, Attention, and Consciousness" in Time and Memory 59-76; "Experiencing and Remembering Time: Affordances, Context, and Cognition." in Time and Memory, 1989 333-363; Gibson, James J. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979, especially page 89.

Gray's timeline reaches perhaps its apogee with Yates' arrival at Ford B at 4:18 p.m. At that moment, Bobtail Horse pointed three Indians on the bluff beside the ford and said "They are our enemies, guiding the soldiers here (Tillett Wind on the Buffalo Grass, p. 30)." The three Crows met Benteen near Ford A at 4:10 according to Gray, 8 minutes before Bobtail Horse saw them.

[AZ Ranger]

Wallace also recorded that at 5:00 PM the command moved out; crossed to the left bank of the Rosebud; passed through several large camps. From this start to whatever the end time is 12 miles.
If the stop time is 7:45 PM that is approximately 4.4 miles per hour and the fresh trail explains that pace. If they stopped at 6:00 PM that would be 12 miles per hour a very unlikely speed or there start on the 12 miles is before 5:00 PM. What is the privates recorded time for start of the last 12 miles? Without his start time a single time really doesn't help.

Wallace was the official itinerist and at least the two times he recorded are within the rate of travel expectation. Wallace recorded darkness as falling at 9:00 PM on the 24th.

I also would find it hard to believe that military men don't know what sunset means. If you can still see it, then it has not set. I guess because I use sunset a lot in my work and rely on my GPS for location specific sunset it seems simple to me. Even when I was a marine I knew when the sun set.

AZ Ranger