June 20: Ass-Chewing Tuesday

[fred]

Sorry to be a bit crude with the title here, but what more fitting way to greet the dawn and the later arrival of George Custer to Reno's camp.

This, to me, is one of the most significant and overlooked events of the campaign: Custer’s ire at Reno. If Custer would have been mollified had Reno, with only six companies, attacked the village, he must have believed Reno could have whipped the Sioux. It appears Custer was not convinced the Indians were significantly stronger when the Seventh Cavalry found them on the LBH, than they were when Reno found their encampments on the Rosebud. Therefore, Custer must have been very confident when he set out to attack them with his entire regiment.

So what, then, was the significance and the job of all those scouts, all those sign-readers, all those advisers?

And what about those Indians. It has been three days since Crook was sent packing... where are they now, what has befallen our red brethren, how many fought Crook-- how many didn't! Are they any stronger today than they were yesterday?

What affect did Reno's discoveries-- or lack of discoveries-- have on the campaign strategy? Hmm-m-m!

[fred]

June 20: Custer arrives at Reno's camp. "Warm" greetings exchanged.

[conz]

Out of Bray:

"About June 20 a party arrived from Spotted Tail Agency. They had seen Terry's Dakota column marching west along Heart River three weeks earlier. For two days, Hollow Horn Bear had followed the troops as they negotiated the Badlands. Combined with Hunkpapa reports of a new steamboat landing on the Yellowstone, stacked with supplies and forage, the news led Crazy Horse and the chiefs to conclude that while Gibbon's Montana column pegged the Yellowstone, the Dakota column would be outfitted to push against the Northern Nation from the east. At last the dusty whirl of prophecy was hardening into fact."

Clair

[AZ Ranger]

Shavetails and Bell Sharps
The History of the U.S Army Mule
by Emmett M. Essin

"Loose packs and bad packing took a toll on the mules; most developed festering sores and within a few days. Other became lame. By the time Custer's and Reno's commands united , most of Reno's pack mules (66 trained and 24 not) were in poor condition."

[conz]

Reno says in his autobiography:

"I was chastised by General Terry for going to the Rosebud. I do not think his discomfort was so much with me as with the fact that the information I brought forced him to change his plans. Custer also condemned my actions, saying that I ran too much risk of being discovered. Both seemed to hint that I was 'glory hunting,' when in fact I had neither the ammunition nor the supplies to have taken on the hostiles. What I really did was to prove that Terry's plan was futile and by forcing him to revise the plan saved him a great deal of embarrassment.

"One of the most important bits of intelligence was never known to us. The signs we found were all signs of the winter roamers only; the summer roamers had not yet joined them. This fact caused everyone to grossly underestimate the ultimate size of the village we would encounter on June 25 at Little Big Horn."

[crzhrs]

According to Terry, he was upset because Reno had gone further than ordered and feared Indians would discover soldiers in the area.

Custer was mad because if Reno had gone that far he might as well have attacked the Indians.

____

According to Reno he did not have enough firepower to attack with far less men than Custer eventually had.

Custer, later went "that far", attacked the Indians and got bit.

It looked like Reno was damned if the did or damned if he didn't.

[fred]

Scouts and troopers in an officer's tent...



Best wishes,
Fred.