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Post by shan on May 3, 2023 9:52:10 GMT -6
NOGGY,
I think That Rain in the Face story probably sums up why so many people distrust Indian stories thinking them all to be fantasy. But don't blame poor old Rain in the Face. He wasn't to know that his translater may have got hold of the wrong end of the stick, or that he wanted to compress two seperate events into one. Apart from anything else, just ask yourself this. What did he ~ Rain ~ know about waves beating on the shore to be able to introduce such a poetical metophor? He'd never seen the sea in his life up to that point, and whilst he may have later on, we can't be sure, I don't think he ever became familar enough with English to be able to use it in that way.
As you surmise, he was talking about the Reno part of the fight when he reffering to the Rees singing their death song, wheras the rest of his account ~ the waving of blankets and the squaws chasing the horses ~ may have been be about the Custer part of the fight.
Shan
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Post by brahms4 on May 3, 2023 11:01:32 GMT -6
Lol! Martini is Italian - what does he know about Buffalo hides? Martini is "a thick-headed,dull-witted Italian"!-"...just about as much as cut out to be a cavalaryman as he was for a king!"-Frederick Benteen
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Post by herosrest on May 3, 2023 11:08:31 GMT -6
In regards the buffalo skin waving, I seem to remember that the very first account by Sitting Bull in Canada mentioned this in the camp although the account doesn't seem to have published until many years later. This was the Custer was a fool who charged to his death - we ambushed him; account of the battle. Rain in the Face gave a similar thing. True.....Sitting Bull also said that some were sent to try and negotiate with Custer. I wonder if they were the same ones sent to negotiate with Crook on the Rosebud? Rosebud Probably The stuff that i'm aware, Vestal and others, as the chaos broke out and the what shall we do eyes turned on SB, he sent out One Bull to parley if possible. A ruse maybe, to buy time and sensibilities.... but Reno had his orders. They precluded a coffee break of chatting up Sitting Bull's sister. The fight was on. At Rosebud, Crazy Horse had drawn a line in the river and told Crook, I believe it was, if you come, we will fight you and hand you your bottom. He knew what he was on about.
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Post by herosrest on May 3, 2023 11:10:20 GMT -6
Martini was a messenger. Drummer boy in Italy. Trumpeter with a bugle in US. From the way things are looked at today, what the point of writing the message for him.Can you read it? Benteen couldn't.
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Post by herosrest on May 3, 2023 11:11:43 GMT -6
Capt. John G. Bourke's diary, Vol 2, 21st July 1877. These corpses had been buried exactly where they fell by General Terry’s and Gibbon’s Commands over a year ago, but had been washed out by rain or dug up by wolves: it was hard to go ten yards in any direction without stepping on portions of the human anatomy and skeletons of horses, singly or mingled together. Colonel Sheridan, of Lieutenant General Sheridan’s staff, was out here a fortnight ago to take up the bodies of the officers and also to re-bury the remains of any of the soldiers that might from any cause have been exhumed. The extent of the field was a great obstacle to the accomplishment of this task which indeed may never be done, unless the skeletons of the animals are likewise buried. Pieces of clothing, soldiers’ hats, cavalry coats, boots with the leather legs cut off, but the human feet and bones still sticking in them, strewed the hill. Well down the ravine of which I write was the grave of Captain Tom Custer and below that still another, surmounted by a sapling, in whose paper I read the name scrawled in a rude hand, on the leaf of a pocket diary, (bearing the printed day, “May 26th[”]) “BOSTON CUSTAR”. This interesting first hand observation goes some way to explain the map produced in 1891 by R.B. Marshal, published 1907 (I believe with river flow provided by Walter H. Graves who irrigated the valley) but not how Capt. Custer's marker then moved to Custer's Hill. It may be, that the brothers were buried sisde by side, but this obviously confuses anyone attempting to reconstruct the battle from marker positions. MAPMap detail - linkI'm kinda glad I haven't dug up the source for E Troop dead yet, I am flying by and back into a ton of stuff long huddled into and since quietly patted down growing daisies. On the matter of Wagner's count for E Company men, there never were 6 markers related to the battle, near the stone house.There are actually about 4,950 markers there to day that have accumulated since the cemetery was inaugorated and there have been burials of remains found on the battlefield in those plots but not six company E men, per F. Wagner III's tidy little mind. Battle markers circa 1988Here's Stephens Grey on it link.
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Post by herosrest on May 3, 2023 11:28:24 GMT -6
p366, Vol 1.
Lt. Bourke studied the Custer battlefield on July 21, 1877, and recorded in his diary: 'a frightened party of 30 or 40 men, still running, strove to gain the bank of the river. They were killed like wolves. As we made our way along the ravine, we stumbled upon four skulls in one collection, a lone one in another, another under a littlebush and still another picked up by my orderly...... Sticking out from the ground in the ravine was the body of a man, still clad in rough garb of a scout, boots and bullet riddled hat still by him. There was nothing to give the slightest idea as to who he might have been.
Note 7 - related to Custer's attack on the village gives: 'Custer had sent the remaining companies, under Capt. Frederick Benteen, up the valley to locate any other Indians who might be in the vicinity, and also to head off any who might try to escape to the south.'
I'll be moving on to 1878, shortly and 5th Infantry and Cavalry visits to the battlefield, looking for what I seek, and reminding myself why Ford D theory is robustly unsound and profoundly misleading. You know, Curley owned that where the ford was/is. Funny that he never mentioned Crazy Horse using it.
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Post by noggy on May 3, 2023 12:43:15 GMT -6
NOGGY, I think That Rain in the Face story probably sums up why so many people distrust Indian stories thinking them all to be fantasy. But don't blame poor old Rain in the Face. He wasn't to know that his translater may have got hold of the wrong end of the stick, or that he wanted to compress two seperate events into one. Apart from anything else, just ask yourself this. What did he ~ Rain ~ know about waves beating on the shore to be able to introduce such a poetical metophor? He'd never seen the sea in his life up to that point, and whilst he may have later on, we can't be sure, I don't think he ever became familar enough with English to be able to use it in that way. As you surmise, he was talking about the Reno part of the fight when he reffering to the Rees singing their death song, wheras the rest of his account ~ the waving of blankets and the squaws chasing the horses ~ may have been be about the Custer part of the fight. Shan I love the NA accounts, but look at them as just as much of a gospel as those from the whites I think the mistake we often do when reading them is that we almost "investigate" the details in them, rather than looking at the bigger picture. Bu now we all knoq that much could have been/was lost in translation, some things where for several reasons never told, and then you had straight up fabrications and cut and paste-journalism from those who talked to them. Michno has some great points on this, I believe especially regarding Vestal. or was it Camp? Can't remember now. All the best, Noggy
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Post by herosrest on May 3, 2023 18:35:59 GMT -6
Still hunting my source. However, eight of those terminted from Company E's E Troop were of Irish origin, as also three amongst those of Yates' company. But this isn't 10 and I doubt any were recognised other than NCO's.
Rain in the Face left several interviews and comment about him by participants was not rare. He missed the Reno fight in interviews which make most sense. He drew a map you know and that makes interpretting him a little easier. Some wag at an Expo RitF attended boozed him up on fire-water and the reward was an account of the battle and his kills. His offer of demonstrations was reluctantly declined.
The problems related to Gall are post battle politics with him returning to the US before Sitting Bull, and then being preferred as a significant Sioux, over SB which didn't sit well with the Supreme Leader's devoted following. Sitting Bull was not trusted even though he sure had the hots for Annie Oakley and adopted her I think.
I may give up on this hunt but it has proven rather enjoyable re-visiting hard studied basics after what is a long time.
Very few enlisted men killed during the Custer fight were recognised and those were mainly NCO's which is how it was decided which bunch of corpses belonged to which Companies.
Boston and Thomas Custer did not die on LSH but you all already knew this, right?
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Post by herosrest on May 4, 2023 3:08:05 GMT -6
Certainly, there was no way that 'Bull' was going onto a reservation. Not without an immense fuss which is precisely what he did. The Winter Roamers were not for the different 'Freedoms' which the Great Father offered 'them'. It's a pity they never got their heads around gold, precious metals and property sales. My view is that Sitting Bull set out to do, as he did, repeat the Fetterman Fight expecting a similar political settlement as Red Cloud's War. Life had moved on though and he did not gain appeasement but rather total war. I have stood on the hill many more decades back than I care to remember. I won't be back now at my stage in life. Hell of a place to die and pretty dumb choice for a defensive stand so, something' was not quite right. Where the hill ends.... you make me smile. Where does it start..... The source on the younger Custers is several. The captain, in my view was moved up onto the pimple to lay beside his brother. I think that enoughof the Custer gang fans and respectful EM's were left that such was accorded their commanders. The principal source is Crook's adjutant, ADC or whatever he was. Accomplished diarist ala Bradley, John G. Bourke of 'On the Border with Crook' note. There is comment in his diary for July 21st, 1877; as follows. The text of the relevant volume of his published diaries, is HERE - text search the pages for 'CUSTAR'. I'll quote: ' These corpses had been buried exactly where they fell by General Terry’s and Gibbon’s Commands over a year ago, but had been washed out by rain or dug up by wolves: it was hard to go ten yards in any direction without stepping on portions of the human anatomy and skeletons of horses, singly or mingled together.
Colonel [Michael] Sheridan, of Lieutenant General Sheridan’s staff, was out here a fortnight ago to take up the bodies of the officers and also to re-bury the remains of any of the soldiers that might from any cause have been exhumed. The extent of the field was a great obstacle to the accomplishment of this task which indeed may never be done, unless the skeletons of the animals are likewise buried. Pieces of clothing, soldiers’ hats, cavalry coats, boots with the leather legs cut off, but the human feet and bones still sticking in them, strewed the hill.
Well down the ravine of which I write was the grave of Captain Tom. Custer and below that still another, surmounted by a sapling, in whose paper I read the name scrawled in a rude hand, (on the leaf of a pocket diary, (bearing the printed day, “May 26th[”]) “BOSTON CUSTAR”.
Sticking out from the ground in the ravine was the body of a man still clad in the rough garb of a scout: boots and bullet-ridden hat still by him: there was nothing to give the slightest idea as to who he might have been—and this was the Custer battle-ground or slaughter-ground!
Evidently, Custer’s men broke at the point where Lieutenant Crittenden was killed, stampeded on the knoll where brave Keogh turned to make his stand, and, what few remained alive, ran like frightened deer for the river from the little bluff where Custer died. It is what it is, and considerably preferable to the hurried, disjointed and varied influences of 7th Cavalry's and Terry's staff whose versions of what they found cover all angle through the 360° by 360° which constitute a rubber ball's dipolodaurus. I use dipolodaurus since I have never found a word in language to explain and context what I wish to say. How many degrees are there in a ball? Is it 129,600? Do you care? &th Cavalry were by degrees, self serving and that is what it is and what it should be. Reading that rune is the art of life, death and warfare. Maybe? There are more than one hill and markers litter them and surround them. Those towards the river are in a ravine? But then that's markers and they tell a Sweet story. I find it incredibly difficult to argue against Bourke's diary note, made during his visit there with General Sheridan, a couple of weeks after Col. Sheridan had collected the Officer's remains. It's a sa and sombre place where I walked to the Reno monument and back, was daft enough to do it without water, did have binoculars (a must) and got bitten stepping off the road down on the mouth of Deep Coulee and Greasy Grass Hill. An abiding memory was ringing in my ears until I realised it was the trains. Oh yeah, it's windy.
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Post by herosrest on May 4, 2023 3:28:07 GMT -6
Charles King turned his hand to Crook's fighting and produced a decent book - Campaigning with Crook and Stories of Army Life in his slightly romantic style. CHAPTER IX - THE FIGHT OF THE REAR GUARD, works quite well. Regards. King reminded me of an unusual history. Excerpted: ' This officer performed a series of remarkable exploits, showing outstanding leadership, tactical skill and utter indifference to danger. He commanded a forward platoon and fought his way forward over 3,000 yards unsupported by other arms and against a defence strongly organised in depth. During this operation his platoon destroyed numerous enemy posts but on three occasions sections were temporarily held up.The opposition were the four battalions of Luftlande-Sturm-Regiment 1, during the invasion of Crete. Maleme airfield to Odessa - 850 miles by air.
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Post by herosrest on May 4, 2023 7:49:12 GMT -6
I'll hunt it up, it is there in the tun of soldier accounts. As many people buried him as decided they were there and escaped to remember decades later. Let's hear it for the Big Horn Ram - linkAt the end of the day, it comes down to Bourke, finding a stake on the field a year on and with the identifier for the brother. I assume it was similar with the Captain. I'd guess also that the stakes were in place before the body was moved, or the marker placed by Sweet was done in respect for the family. This is LBH and it is a can of worms. It isn't neat and tidy and never will be. It seems to me that Bourke was (neat and tidy) and with no reasons to prevaricate, postulate, or dream stuff up. It's good to chat.
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Post by herosrest on May 4, 2023 11:12:24 GMT -6
All I have ever said in posting these boards is entirely in line with your own entirely astute view. However, it is not as simple as you make it out. I'll not drag it all out again but the period of the halt on Reno Hill was a piece of string for exactly the reason of the blame game. I got some time to skim my inventory of soldier accounts and... of course, top of the list is that old (fred's) nemesis Dan Kanipe. He rode to the battleground with Benteen on 27th, and was unable to identify his company commander. I have absolutely no reason to believe that John Ryan accompanied Benteen on the 27th, but stranger things happened. He did though, identify Tom Custer which I must therefore assume was the following day and was involved in the hilltop burials. He really does seem to be one of those guys we really need to sit down with over a few beers for a weekend session. Nothing yet definitive on the kill sites for Boston and Tom Custer, but it was something I was aware of long time. A specific and relatively unkown group of Company M and others undertook the burials and there is scuttlebutt all over it, because of who the Custer's were to the EM. I'll nibble away at it but am myself sufficiently confident with riverside deaths that I accept it as the more likely. Fred and myself disagreed unambiguously over Kanipe such that his crucifixion of the guy with a detailed 14, maybe 15 specific points article, was responded to in pinpoint accuracy, point, by point, by point and then some. Again i'll not get into it further but this that revolves around the argument and difference of opinion I have with George Kush over Cooke's ampersans. Time out...... JD & dry cider time. I do enjoy a good snakebite!
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Post by johnson1941 on May 4, 2023 11:35:15 GMT -6
Meanwhile, back to THE Ravine, via Moylan...
Harper, Gordon. The Fights on the Little Horn Companion: Gordon Harper's Full Appendices and Bibliography (p. 1502). Casemate Publishers (Ignition). Kindle Edition.
And then more - of course! - about missing bodies... whew...
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Post by herosrest on May 4, 2023 11:55:07 GMT -6
I think it is a lot more neat and tidy than some would like it to be. Some facts will never change. Weir makes it to what is now Weir point where he is met by Indians leaving the Custer battlefield to fight Reno and Benteen. The shorter the battle, the simpler it gets. And this was a short battle. Some would like Benteen an Reno to be sitting on the hill doing nothing for hours while poor Custer is fighting for his life. That is when it becomes a LARGE can of worms. Even many of the Indians say they never got to the Custer battle in time to be of any help. If the truth be known....I would be willing to bet about anything that no Indian that fought Reno in the valley ever got involved with the Custer battle. By the time they got there it was already almost over. I would say that in later years, many Indians 'say' they were in both battles but that will not mean they are telling the true story. They might know what took place because of stories they have heard and the story itself might be true. It does not guarantee they actually witnessed the event. I think authors and interviewers place Indians in positions regardless of the story the Indians told. Rosebud The classic proof, if it is seen as such is High Eagle, Tim M cCoy link who found that every Arapaho he met, was at the battle but proved tediously light on detail like the terrain, time of year, and Teton Chief at the time. He did though, identify five Arapaho who definately were present and participated - corroborated by Cheyenne participants and some Sioux also. The Sioux nearly put them death, as also Little Wolf's band which followed 7th Cavalry up the Rosebud and arrived after the Custer fight. This may have been influenced by the Sioux killing and scalping one of the Cheyenne war chiefs. Everyone and their mother fought at LBH by the 1920's and i'm sure that a few who have a few too many on Friday nights can still make that claim across both sides of any divide which remains. Brother, I killed your brother and am so incredibly sorry, now.
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Post by herosrest on May 4, 2023 12:04:39 GMT -6
Meanwhile, back to THE Ravine, via Moylan... Harper, Gordon. The Fights on the Little Horn Companion: Gordon Harper's Full Appendices and Bibliography (p. 1502). Casemate Publishers (Ignition). Kindle Edition. And then more - of course! - about missing bodies... whew... Hi '41, Moylan is describing a movement 'across the ravine. Down one side and attempting to climb out the other. That's how it strikes me. I guarantee that neither Moylan, or Reno, or McDougal for that matter, were down in that trench examing those remains. Hence an NCO or two, were identified and hey presto Bob's your abracadabra. Some participants say that a gaggle of soldiers fled the hill at the end and were despatched in flight along the route taken. Nelson A. Miles mentions this in his account of the 1878 investigation, which he qualifies in various ways steadfastly ignored ever since, for various reasons. If you look at the marker trail from Keogh as it spills over the ridge onto riverside, if it does, it sure looks like a trail headed straight into and over the ravine. Why someone would do that is beyond me. Maybe they were chasing their horses. Who knows. When you work it out, let me know when you publish.
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