A Whole Bunch of Dead Indians! Wow!

[AZ Ranger]

I think Fred has a list of names.

[Dark Cloud]

Lew, you don't have to go beyond the post CW Indian Wars for comparison. The battle casualties among the Indians, in aggregate, were always relatively low (as among the settlers and whites, with one exception), and it would require more than wishful thinking to claim much higher percentages at the LBH.

Further, the casualties from the Rosebud would have to be flensed out, and then what must have been a fairly large friendly fire percentage of whatever number is agreed to factored in.

AZ, it's been a pleasure to read your stompings of the Benteen ankle biters on the other board. Don't want to damn you by siding with you, but well done.

[crzhrs]

Battle of the Rosebud:

Twice as many US soldiers and auxiliaries vs. 800-1,300 warriors.

Casualties were very low on both sides with US expending thousands of rounds ending up killing around 13 warriors. Number of rounds fired by Indians and the use of arrows not known but US casualties very low.

At the LBH Indians were not going to risk casualties unless non-coms were at risk.

Against Reno the warriors did not charge en mass but tried to conceal their movements by raising dust. Only when Reno stopped did they begin an offensive and that was only a flanking movement. In the timber warriors tried infiltration by concealment, not wanting to risk losses.

Only when Reno ran did warriors become emboldened.

Once Reno was entrenched, again Indians tried infiltration rather than mass charges which would have resulted in heavy losses. Once soldiers showed some courage by counter-charges warriors resorted to long-range sniping. (NOTE: if village/non-coms were at risk the warriors may have risked themselves to save families, but by then Reno was no offensive threat).

Against Custer Indian accounts say they used infiltration and long-range arrow fire to take a toll on soldiers, rather than full-force mass charges. By then Custer was on the defensive, was not a threat to the village/non-coms and warriors were not going to risk themselves foolishly. Of course there there may have been some young warriors who wanted to prove themselves by daring deeds who may have ended up casualties.

I don't believe warriors were going to risk their lives at this point, so I believe their casualties were not high.

[wolfgang911]

Jul 17, 2009 11:06:51 GMT -6 crzhrs said:

I don't believe warriors were going to risk their lives at this point, so I believe their casualties were not high.

especially as everybody wanted to be there to talk about such a great day in life, wipe out a whole regiment, does not happen often in a warrior's lifetime (allthough CH had 2 with fetterman )
And most would preferr '"I fought at the LBH" rather than "my dad died at the LBH "(as DC stated earlier on NDN exagerations).

So now we all plus or minus Conz agree that casualties were low can we finely seal the coffin witho how many warriors were present, also often exagerated. From 1 to 3.
Conz would say 300 dead indians for 3000 warriors just to make the Long Hair look better ;D

[AZ Ranger]

I don't think Conz needs high numbers either way. The lower the total warriors the more critical the Reno and Benteen actions become. With 3,000 warriors it would not matter how many stayed with Reno. If it gets less than 1,500 then it begins to matter. Low numbers of Indian casualties would indicate something went wrong on the cavalry side in a major way.

[AZ Ranger]

Thanks DC

I think that in order establish someone's behavior outside the norm either high or low requires a higher standard of proof. It is easier to blame others in their actions or no actions causing the defeat rather than state the Indians committed less mistakes and they were victorious.

AZ Ranger

[conz]

For the record, my belief at the moment is that:

There were about 100 dead Warriors at the end of that first day at LBH, and about 300 more wounded. I think 100 more died of their wounds over the next month, for a total of about 200 Warriors killed as a result of action at the LBH battle.

I believe there were about 2,500 Warriors of all Tribes of military age at LBH fighting the 7th Cavalry.

Anyone who wants to believe that there were 40 named Warriors, from ALL the tribes there, that died that day on the battlefield, must tell us how many died of their wounds in the next few weeks afterwords, and how many were permanently crippled and could no longer fight or hunt.

What is THAT number...the true loss to the tribes as a result of the fighting? If you come up with that number, I think you are as accurate as you need for my model's purposes.

Clair

[wolfgang911]

can you please specify where your number of 2500 warriors of military age (20-40 range ?) comes from and how many indians and lodges you need to conclude such a presence
according
to your model
yes sir

so your "model" also states that 1 out of 3 wounds is lethal not including those dead right on the spot
= 300 wounded + 100 dead = 400 shotwounds / 200 dead first month =
1 out of each shot hitting an nDN of the cavalry was a kill! bravo! good markmanship and good model ;D

[conz]

Jul 19, 2009 17:37:06 GMT -6 wolfgang911 said:

can you please specify where your number of 2500 warriors of military age (20-40 range ?) comes from and how many indians and lodges you need to conclude such a presence
according
to your model

Don't need to...several historians have done that for me! Just pick up any LBH book off the shelf, and chances are you will see this number, as it is fairly well accepted.

As for lodges, about 1,000 for 2,000 Warriors or so, and about 500 lone bucks is probably as close and accurate a number as you will ever get with the evidence at hand. If it is much different from reality, that doesn't really change things much about how and why things happened, I'd say.

Only theories that depend upon the number of Warriors for their explanation are obsessed with the numbers, and that is shaky ground to base your model on, since the evidence is so shallow.

so your "model" also states that 1 out of 3 wounds is lethal not including those dead right on the spot
= 300 wounded + 100 dead = 400 shotwounds / 200 dead first month =
1 out of each shot hitting an nDN of the cavalry was a kill! bravo! good markmanship and good model ;D

Yes, about one out of three "hits" is immediately fatal to a Warrior, I will judge. Now I'm talking about "hits" strong enought to knock the Warrior or Soldier out of action for that fight...there are many smaller "flesh wound" hits that aren't serious enought to stop them from fighting. One such hit is fatal within a few minutes of occuring, and another is fatal within weeks. A few of the last of the three hits will result in permanent debilitation of the Warrior as a fighter or hunter, and the remainder of wounded Warriors will return to fighting status. That is from anecdotal evidence from the Plains Wars, and from historically-derived rules of thumb for military history in general during this period.

Note that there are a couple Indian witness accounts that relate that most every Warrior seemed to be wounded after the battle, and that every family had a man killed from it.

Marksmanship, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with this. Marksmanship gets you a hit, but it has little to do with how that hit affects the target except in very controlled sniper situations, where you can either aim to kill, or aim to maim. But that doesn't apply to firefights at all.

Clair

[crzhrs]

Based on the battle and how it unfolded it appears that not many warriors would be killed. It was a disorganized running rout for most of the fight and this would allow warriors to survive rather than die in huge numbers.

Hardorff goes into this really well in his "Hokehey: Indian Casualties" book. He takes all the statements and lists them by the highest to the lowest. When it comes down to it 30 to 50 warriors seem to have been killed. Some suicide warriors did, but not the older more experienced ones. When the command collapsed the warriors closed in and killed many with hand-to-hand combat. At that point the soldiers running were not putting up much of a defense and this would also result in less Indian casualties. I guess when it comes down to it, if you throw out the highest and lowest estimates given by a few Indians and keep the estimates in the middle, which includes most of the Indians, you get between 30 and 50.

The tactics used by the warriors was a good one. They infiltrated and attempted to get an advantage on the soldiers. They did not needlessly risk or expose themselves to enemy fire. Once the soldiers ran then it was a buffalo hunt of the first degree. The soldiers had always been trained to keep the enemy at a distance, while warriors loved to get close and fight hand-to-hand, and count coup. Once range was breached and the soldiers panicked and ran, the Indians had what they were familiar with, a buffalo hunt. They moved in and used their superior hand-to-hand combat training to kill many of Custer's soldiers. At a distance, based on training and the weapons, the soldiers had all the advantages. Once range was breached, the Indians based on their fighting skills and weapons had all the advantages. In the end the Custer fight was a close matter and that is why the warriors won.

There isn't a lot of evidence that the soldiers fired a lot in the archaeological record or Indian testimony.

[conz]

I agree with you on the basic tactical paradigm here.

Going back above, though, if 30 to 50 Warriors were killed that day (and this is what all the Indian lists of killed I have seen mean...just those killed on that day, before the sun set), then can we say that, statistically, another 30 to 50 died of wounds over the next several weeks, and another 10 to 15 were permanently debilitated?

If you agree with this analysis, than the real Warrior loss at LBH was from 70 to 115, by conservative Indian estimates...much, much more, by higher Indian estimates, of course.

Is that a significant loss to the Indians? Is it a "bunch," do you think?

Clair

[wolfgang911]

crzhrs let's give in some dead warriors to Conz as he can get a good night sleep, will make him fell good

I agree with your analysis allthough it is frankly oppossite of other intervenants earlier who speak about arrow volleys, pick out at a distance, creating dust etc and not really the bison chase as we do

conz all great chiefs and warriors had bullet wounds in their wintercounts and stil managed to do some serious damage, littel crow sure wasn't "debilitated" but i'm not doctor enough to state between - hit exit by markmanship and - hit dies a month later because of infection and blood loss

[conz]

Remember that Cavalry accounts of Crook's and Terry's chasing of the tribes a month after the battle is filled with comments that they could easily follow the tribes' trail by the stands of bodies left along it, as wounded Warriors died and were left behind.

Clair

[crzhrs]

<Is that a significant loss to the Indians? Is it a "bunch," do you think?>

Any loss was a signficiant loss due to the fact that the Indians could not replace a warrior as quickly as the US military could . . . that's probably why they were more cautious about risking lives unnecessarily.

If we say 30-50 died at the LBH, undoubtedly others who may have been wounded severely may have died. We will never know the numbers.

As for finding dead bodies along the way, they may have been the original 30-50 who died at the battle and were later left in scaffolds, "buried," etec.

"Crunching" numbers can be manipulated to suit anyone's agenda . . . as we have seen politicians do.

[Dark Cloud]

Trying to specify precise numbers of dead and wounded Indians for the LBH when the information normally used to inform both opinion and formula in such matters does not exist is silly. Still, it is yet fully illustrative of the Custerphile and his Fan Fiction inclinations. He doesn't want to be recognized as no more concerned with reality than Trekkies at Star Trek gatherings arguing the merits of fictional star ships and Klingon ships engaged in fantasy battle, but it's pretty much the same thing.

Picking roses of drunken anectdotes told by dubious characters decades after the fact combined with sixth hand Indian accounts crossed upon archaeological input buttressed with carefully cherry picked battle contemporary testimony (that supports any number of possibilities) isn't logical - especially when it mandates ignoring accounts that are no less dubious that contradict the chosen tales - and unlikely to produce a great insight or even a lesser one. It's a game of pretend, and should be treated as such.

We have general information, not assailed, of how many Indians and soldiers died in the western wars between the CW and Wounded Knee. The losses among those actually involved in the fighting provide flexible templates not impressive to either side, and LBH does not violate them. The reasons for this are obvious: neither the Indians nor the soldiers had much ammo to practice with, with predictable results. Anectdotes and official ledger pages from the period describe an Army of financial distress producing - by notional training - line units of inaccurately shooting soldiers and generally not well trained recruits, snowbirds, and societal benthics that the Army reluctantly had to employ.

What's the big mystery?