A Whole Bunch of Dead Indians! Wow!

[crzhrs]

During the Rosebud battle it was estimated 13,000 rounds of ammo were fired. Crook's command had 1,300 men. The results: not many dead Indians.

Many Indians said they found plenty of unused ammo after the Custer battle. Still no definate proof of high numbers and we can't "assume" Custer's men killed Indians because it was a hard fight or the soldiers fired volleys.

As far as taking ground--that wasn't the tactics of the US military fighting Indians. It was to keep them on the move, not letting them rest, hunt, recuperate from battles.

[fred]

clw said:

And I don't think John and the Lakota he's working with can fairly be termed neo idiots and their views dismissed as revisionist garbage. CSS turns everything he touches into **** and unfortunately their work fits his agenda so it gets colored with the same brush.

This is extremely odd. Try as I might, I cannot seem to find John Doerner's name in my post referring to "neo-idiots" and "revisionist garbage." [Actually, for the uninitiated, Richard Fox' book and a long telephone conversation with John Doerner back in 1998, was what really got me going on this entire subject. I owe a debt of gratitude to both, though neither are aware of it.] Those two phrases were aimed directly at CSS and his ilk.

So maybe, before we jump to all these conclusions, we should first figure out what we are talking about.

Best and final wishes,
Fred.

[conz]

crzhrs said:

Logic doesn't always work.

Was it logical that Custer and his entire command would be wiped out?

Logic goes out the window in warfare and Indians were not going to risk lives unless absolutely necessary. That to me sounds more logical than Indians running en mass into the guns a la Civil War battles.

No need to despair...Indian warfare follows causes and effects just like all the rest of warfare does. Nothing happens for no reason...there is logic to what happened at LBH, according to the time-honored rules of warfare.

Nothing happened at LBH that hasn't happened innumerable times before in the history of human conflict.

Clair

[conz]

gocav76 said:

ConZ, Your 220 Indian dead is just not possible for the following reasons. From Time magazine "US forces have fired so many bullets in Iraq and Afghanistan - an estimated 250,000 for every insurgent killed - that American ammunition-makers cannot keep up with demand. As a result the US is having to import supplies from Israel." During the Korean War it took on average 5000 rounds to kill or mortally wound the enemy. These are well trained soldiers with lots of rifle range training. Other battles and wars the ratio of shots fired to casualties were also quite terrible. If I was to believe your figure of 220 Indian dead (lets say Reno-Benteen accounted for 30 dead) then Custer's 210 men killed or mortally wounded around 190 Indians. Since every man was not on the firing line and some used little ammunition, how then was it possible for Custer's men to score a least 1 out of 50 shots? The math just won't work for your theory.

Its a good point, and lets extend this line of reasoning a bit more...

Firstly, we have a short battle without automatic weapons. That instantly and irrefutably will reduce the ratio of wasted ammo to hits just by mechanics.

And remember that we are not just measuring dead here...it is enough to measure how many Indians were "hit," and then died or permanently maimed due to poor medical capability. Remember the Natives aid "almost everyone was hit," and that's saying a lot, I think.

How many rounds could have been fired? I think that the regiment probably fired off half of all their carried rounds overall...some burned all of it I'm sure, and many very few rounds at all. So let's start with "half" of what they carried. Note that Reno's men burned most of their ammo in the latter battle and second day, and I'll bet they expended a lot of long-range shots with little effect. So let's stay with the battle "proper."

600 Soldiers, 100 rounds each, with 50% fired, comes to 300,000 rounds expended at the Natives. If you use a higher ration of 5,000 rounds (remember that's automatic weapons) expended per enemy casualty, that comes to 150 casualties by my count.

In closer combat, that ratio goes way down...bullets per casualty. Without auto weapons that goes down farther still.

Even with much less expenditure of munitions, you can presume a higher casualty count.

So I think we are within the realm of probabilities, here.

Clair

PS...remember in Iraq and Afgan we try NOT to kill people...makes for bad press. We shoot most of our ammo to scare, not to kill. We often kill a lot of people by accident, though...about one per quarter-million shots <g>

Then there is one Soldier that has 92 kills with about 100 shots, IIRC.

[conz]

crzhrs said:

During the Rosebud battle it was estimated 13,000 rounds of ammo were fired. Crook's command had 1,300 men. The results: not many dead Indians.

Hmmm....how reliable do you think that expended ammo count is? That was a fairly long battle. Do we really think that each man expended an average of 10 rounds apiece? Unlikely.

How many Indians were killed at that battle? 30-40? Again, that is died that day...double it for severe casualties. So maybe 60 permanent casualties from supposedly 13,000 rounds comes to 216 rounds per casualty. That would be extraordinary combat shooting, I would say, and is highly unlikely.

Lets say that it took a minimum of 1,000 rounds (very good indeed) to get one serious Native casualty. At about 60 known casualties, the means that some 60,000 rounds had to have been fired by Crook's force at the Rosebud battle, eh?

Many Indians said they found plenty of unused ammo after the Custer battle. Still no definate proof of high numbers and we can't "assume" Custer's men killed Indians because it was a hard fight or the soldiers fired volleys.

Aye, "many" had ammo. Some Indians said they personally found most ammo belts empty, and revolvers almost certainly were all empty...that would be nearly 3,000 rounds of revolver ammo alone. And revolvers would have a much higher ratio of kills to firings than carbines, for many obvious reasons.

How many Indians must have died from 3,000 firings of revolvers, mostly at very close range?

Clair

[gocav76]

ConZ' Your math is still not going to work. Indian casualties verses Reno-Benteen was not as many as against Custer's units. Sure a lot of fire in Iraq is suppression fire but the kill ratio doesn't take into account deaths by artillery or aerial bombing. Neither of these factor into the Indian losses at Little Bighorn. Thus the majority of the 220 Indian dead has to be from Custer's command. For every horse holder, noncom, or officer directing fire you have less men firing. For every loss,of a cavalryman, you have less firing. No way 210 men can fire enough rounds to inflict close to 200 Indian casualties. As for wounded later dying-look at charts from different wars. Most die from head or gut shot wounds. Are you saying all had mortal wounds. You can't blame medical attention or lack of. During the Civil War men lay wounded in fields or even at field stations for days before receiving medical attention. Also by using your numbers, the village would have already had at least 100 mortally wounded from the Rosebud battle. Add almost 200 more from the recent battle,and who was left to move the village? No, the math will not work for you-learn to live with a much lower Indian death total.

[clw]

If I mistook your meaning Fred, I do apolgize. Your opinion appeared to me to be applied to any who might think Indian casualties were much higher than most scholars believe.

[AZ Ranger]

Good point gocav76. The ratio of ammuntion to casualities is usually quite high on the ammo side of the ratio.

AZ Ranger

[AZ Ranger]

Now Fred is gone.

[Dark Cloud]

I read 25k units were fired at the Rosebud. We don't know how many Indians were killed or hurt at the Rosebud.

Other than Wooden Leg, crzhrs, what other Indian said lots of ammo was found, and were they repeating a tale or expressing first hand knowledge? I'm being picky about 'lots of Indians...' Some. Some Indians said lots of ammo was found.

However, lots of what conz contends is nonsense. There is no possible correlation between Indian casualties vs. number of revolver shots above wishful thinking, much like arrow training the horses. Given the panic and desperation, smoke and dust, any firing was as likely to hit another soldier, given the lousy training and near zero practice ammo. I don't know what the realistically predicted friendly fire hits would be under those circumstances, but must be pretty high.

I'd like to know which Indians said they found ammo belts empty, and if that surprisingly little known tale is true, how they or conz could know this was the result of soldiers previously firing them off rather than a peer getting to the belt before themselves to pillage? What Indians say this, and when and under what coldly objective circumstances was this obtained?

[alfuso]

DC

I recall reading (a century ago) that 25K rounds were expended at Rosebud but not necessarily fired. Seems a lot of the men firing from prone, would take out a handful of cartridges to fire and when the Indians moved on, they crawled forward, leaving their unused rounds in little piles. Some Indians later mentioned getting a lot of ammo from that field "in little piles" left behind

alfuso

[mcaryf]

Hi Clair

600 Soldiers, 100 rounds each, with 50% fired, comes to 300,000 rounds expended at the Natives. If you use a higher ration of 5,000 rounds (remember that's automatic weapons) expended per enemy casualty, that comes to 150 casualties by my count.

I think you will find that 600 x 50 is 30,000 not 300,000. It seems to have taken about 250 shots to get 1 hit for Crook and that ration would mean 120 cavalry hits.

Reno's 80 man skirmish line might have fired around 4000 rounds at targets who were not under cover so possibly killed and wounded at a higher rate say 16 -20. I would guess the casualty rate might be less in the Reno Hill fight where the warriors were more under cover except for bravery runs so possibly 12,000 rounds hitting 30 or so.

Custer's 215 men probably fired around 10,000 rounds and would possibly hit 40 odd warriors but some more might be killed in close quarter fighting and "blue on blue". So perhaps 60 or so casualties there.

The usual ratio of dead to wounded in modern wars is 1 to 10 but it might well be several times that in the era before modern medecine but then there might be multiple hits on one target.

Thus an eventual warrior and noncom death toll of around 60 would not be too far wrong on a statistical basis.

Regards

Mike

[AZ Ranger]

How many Indians must have died from 3,000 firings of revolvers, mostly at very close range?


The lack of 45 cases found is not consistent with those figures. The consistent theory would be they did not have time to reload the revolvers. 210 x 6 at most. Then you have to figure how many of those were fired at the troopers once they were taken from the dead trooper.

[Dark Cloud]

Crzhrs, you're correct, they had casualties among the live ammo of 25k but realistically less were actually fired, and maybe a great deal less. That was sloppy of me. What I should have said is: "How in the world and where in the world did the 13k figure come from?" By what method, testimony, whatever? I don't think I'd run across that before, and having a chemical animosity for remarkably round numbers offered as fact, I reacted.

Understand my anger about this stuff (didn't start out that way, but it is now anger), by which I mean the application of ephemeral prissy precision based upon wishful thinking to bolster the image of 'research' and 'science' when it's nothing more than a convenient story for someone's predetermined fable, is that it so easily becomes part of the accepted general tale, and gets quoted, possibly with 'a graduate of West Point says....'

I'm annoyed that conz will now have to excuse his crappy math and thereby have an excuse to fail to provide some names of the "many" Indians who found empty ammo belts. The pride of West Point, Ladies and Gentlemen.

[Melani]

fred, I'm the one who brought up John Doerner, since I know he is researching this topic. I am extremely sorry to see that you are gone, but I hope you will at least look at these threads from time to time.

I would guess that in the heat of battle, an Indian would grab the whole ammo belt, not stop to take the bullets out.