Gully and E troopers

[desertlobster]

Smith was found on LSH. And there weren't a lot of bodies found between those on LSH and the gully.

How did those troopers make it all the way to the gully without losing many troopers?

Coming from Ford B, isn't the gully on the route to LSH? Why wouldn't it be the case that those troopers somehow were last in line and were overrun by a mass of Indians crossing the stream. While the rest of the 4 companies made their way towards the higher ground?

Can somebody give some approximate distances relating the locations of ford b, the gulley, and LSH. Also, what's the distance between the ford and Calhoun's position.

[biggordie]

lobster:

If you get a decent topo map of tyhe battlefield, say the 1891 USGS, you cam figure out any distance you might be interested in, for any reason - including Reno's battlefield etc.

Gordie

[Ryan]

hey lobster, welcome to the boards!

You have just hit on one of the biggest mysteries of the LBH - how did those men get into the gully?

First off, what is the gully? Most historians think that means Deep Ravine. But does the definition of Deep Ravine mean only the ravine proper, or also the drainage and/or entire basin below Last Stand Hill? Eyewitness accounts, for example, place scout/interpreter Mitch Bouyer in the Ravine, yet his body was found on the divide between Deep Ravine and Cemetery Ravine, just above the drainage. Thus, bodies believed to be in Deep Ravine may be in an area much larger than the actual headcut where the 28 E Company bodies are said to lie. This means that, technically, E Company may not have been(and probably weren't) singularly decimated in the actual ravine. Bodies were not only found in the headcut, but also in the drainage above; about 13 bodies in a line outside of the ravine. Now, the ravine at the time of the battle was between 12-14 feet deep. Men with horses couldn't get out of the ravine if they were coming from Ford B, but they could get into the ravine if they were running on foot and jumping into it from the drainage basin above. With bodies half in the ravine and half out, this points us more towards a battle ridge origin, not a Ford B origin.

Many Indian accounts strongly suggest that soldiers ran from Custer Hill to the ravine area. They don't always give many details; we don't know if it was an organized deployment or not (for sure), although generally historians suspect there were two different "exoduses" from Last Stand Hill. One consisted of the E Company movement - about 45 men, running on foot towards the river, with about five horsemen riding South by skirting Deep Ravine (see Two Moon, Young Two Moon, He Dog, Iron Hawk, Rain in the Face all substantiate this movement) and riding along Calhoun Coulee (none of them made it off the battlefield, obviously). Historians believe this was E Company because numerous bodies from E were discovered and identified in what is assumed to be Deep Ravine (Cul-De-Sac formation in which a pocket of E company men were found, including Sgt. Fred Hohmeyer). The second movement consisted of around 7-15 men, survivors of the Custer Hill episode (Wooden Leg, Tall Bull), seeking to join remnants of E Company in the environs of Deep Ravine. I have never seen Indian accounts that describe E Company men getting trapped and killed in a ravine on the way back from Ford B or Ford D. Nothing is ever mentioned in either Sioux or Cheyenne accounts. Only mention of men in ravines is of men coming from Custer Hill down TO the river (Respects Nothing even says that fighting on the hill had ended before the soldiers in the ravine were killed). Also, bear in mind that most warriors were battling Reno upstream...there wasn't a substantial enough force to have destroyed E Company that early on in the episode. The men in the ravine, regardless of their tactical intent (if there was any), were among the last to be killed in the fighting.

Many Indian accounts also describe the gray horse troop along battle ridge - they appear very prominently in both Sioux and Cheyenne tradition. Refer to John Stands in Timber's account, which describes the Gray Horse troop movements moving from Custer Hill along Cemetery Ridge (where they eventually skirmished for as long as 20 mins). They not only went to Ford B, but evidently rode much further north with Custer along Battle Ridge. This also means that as a company, E troop was not decimated early on at Deep Ravine.

Archaeology hasn't yielded the 28 bodies, but there is plenty of evidence of fierce fighting in the basin below Custer Hill. It is highly controversial if a skirmish line existed here or not (I don't believe there was anything of the sort here), but there are lots and lots of Indian bullets (some indicate they were fired from as far away as 500 yards, from behind the troopers along Battle Ridge) and very few spent government cases (only two carbine cases collected in sample). This to me suggests that troopers certainly passed through this area under duress, and did not last long enough to have established a defense here; this partially corroborates the accounts of troops running from Custer Hill into the basin. Now as far as bodies go, there were less than a dozen reportedly found in upper SSL. But about 13 bodies were found "in a line" just outside the ravine in lower SSL...and about 28 were found in the gully. 6/6 markers in the SSL sector yielded human remains, including the marker just above the headcut. So, about the only thing we know archaeologically is that fighting did occur in the basin, that it may not have been a "skirmish line" but it was certainly a trooper position, and that trooper's bodies were buried just above the headcut at Deep Ravine. Best guess is that the E Company deployment came very early on in the Custer Hill episode, perhaps before Custer was completely surrounded at a time when most warriors were emerging from the Keogh fight, and maybe it even originated from Cemetery Ridge at/around the time of the Gray Horse Stampede (which probably occurred around the collapse of right-wing contingents at Calhoun Hill). Most historians believe they were trying to distract/force back warriors from the basin area to enable riders to go out for help. Others think they were moving to establish a skirmish line, or to find shelter in the brush near the Little Bighorn River. Whatever the case, their momentum carried them near the divide between Cemetery Ravine and Deep Ravine, at which point they were forced towards Deep Ravine, perhaps by mounted warriors now moving in from the northwest from the flats to Cemetery Ridge, pouring over battle ridge from the keogh sector, and unfortunately for them, coming north via deep ravine.

Don't know about distances in relation to Ford B, but bear in mind that Calhoun Hill is about a half mile from Custer Hill; Deep Ravine would be a peculiar place to cross, when F Company had no trouble accessing Deep Coulee and the high ground beyond. Deep Ravine is about 2,000 feet from Custer Hill. Hell of a run, but with the exception of counting coup, most warriors fought under cover, firing from behind sage brush, hillocks, ravines, and just about any form of natural cover they could find. When a body of men came galloping/running towards them, they almost always backed off. That's what they did when C Company came down towards Finley-Finckle Ridge, and that's what they did when Benteen led his clearing parties down Reno Hill. Seeing 45 men coming at you might just make you back off, and that also probably explains why there are not many immediate casualties in the basin below Custer Hill.

[biggordie]

About the gully and the 28 bodies: the "standard story" is that these 28 were men from E Company, with maybe a few additions, that they had got themselves into the ravine/gully and could not scramble out, that they left claw marks on the side of the ravine whch was so steep that they fell back down, that they were all killed in there by warriors standing above them, that the stench was so great, and the condition of the bodies as to putrefaction etc, so horrible that the men doing the burial would not go down into the ravine, and hence that they shoved and kicked dirt and sod down upon the bodies, and that that was what passed for interment there.

When it is pointed out to people who hold onto this fantasy that there has never been a single bone found in Deep Ravine, no atifacts of any probative value, no bullets, no arowheads, no cartridgew cases, no weapons - in short no nothing - and nothing along the rims of the ravine to indicate that anyone stood up there shooting down into the ravine - these people say "Oh, yeah!! That's because they were taken out and buried outside by the 7th Infantry grunts, and that's where all the markers on the SSR came from, and why there are no bodies in Deep Ravine.

The fact is that the "evidence" of the removal rests solely upon the account of Dennis Lynch, who might or might not have even been there, and this account is absolutely refuted by Captain Will Logan of the said Infantry regiment, who stated that it never happened, that no bodies were ever remooved by hs guys, and that the bodies they buried were all buried where found.

In addition, one must wonder [mustn't one?], how these bodies, in their awful state, where skin reportedly slipped from bones, and joints dislocated when a body was touched [Casey Stengel], which stunk so much that their own buddies would not go down to them, could have been so easily picked up and brought out by the infantrymen, who, I guess, had some special powers of climbing unscaleable ravine walls carrying dead weight in the form of the bodies.

Gordie

[bc]

The problem I have with the body condition in deep ravine is that they should be no different than anywhere else on the Custer field. Other than 2 day old bloated and mutilated bodies, there shouldn't be that much of a problem moving them. Bodies just don't pull apart and/or putrify that quickly. Once rigor sets in they are going to be stiff. Custer probably had to be buried deeper cause he was in a kneeling position laying over a couple bodies. They could have flattened him out but they wouldn't treat him very reverently doing it.

If they bodies were down in a deep ravine, they would have had some protection from the direct sunlight. It rained some on the night of the 25th and during the day of the 26th, but not enough to affect the bodies and all the others would have been rained on also.

Some or many of them could have been thrown in the ravine from the top by the squaws who stripped them and mutilated them. There might have been some in the bottom playing possum like a few on LSH. Then when the squaws came up the ravine and began mutilating and scalping, the possum players could be the ones who began clawing at the sides to get away.

Maybe someone will refresh my recollection with a picture, but I don't remember any deep ravine deep enough not to climb out of except very close to the river and that might be deep coulee for all I remember.

bc

[Ryan]

Well said, Gordie. Actually, I did hear on Battlefield Detectives that they did find Indian cartridge casings along the crest of the Ravine, according to Dr. Fox (that's right out of his mouth, but I have never read that in any of his publications...gotta look at his maps of bullet/cases locations in SSL sector), which suggest Indians were shooting into the ravine at targets. But in any case, nothing has been found in the ravine - the whole trench digging story is tedious, but basically they determined that the gully was FAR deeper than it is today...if bodies are there, they likely lie in situ - and they probably haven't been removed as some folks claim they were.

The decomposition would have made physically removing the bodies next to impossible, but also too - deep ravine was 12-14 feet deep! Imagine lifting these nasty, rotting bodies and hoisting them out of this cul-de-sac. Did they use a lift crane?? Of course the bodies were left were they were, if for no other reason than the fact that where they were was pretty inaccessible.

Even if bodies had been tampered with, there would still be bone fragments, buttons, bullets - some sort of archaeological record - as you mentioned.

"Alright boys, lift those bodies out. Unload those vacuum cleaners out of the wagons, and suck up every fragment you can find. One day, a long long time from now, there are gonna be these guys. And these guys are called archaeologists. And they are gonna try to find these bodies and evidence of them. I want this place cleaner than a pope's crypt. Let's move it people!"

[desertlobster]

Does the "Deep Ravine" match up with Kanipe saying that the bodies were 2000 feet from Custer's monument?

Somebody else said the bodies were in Crazy Horze gully. Are the names interchangeable?

[biggordie]

bc:

It wasn't me that remarked on the condition of the bodies, it was witnesses who helped to bury them. As far as rigor goes, that is what it does - it goes away after a certain length of time. The onset and departure of rigor are often used by MEs to estimate times of death, who apparently can tell when it's been there and no longer is.

My understanding is that rigor starts immediately after death, becomes more apparent over time, up to about 36 hours after death, and starts to disappear as the muscle tissue starts to decompose. Since the burials took place some 60 odd hours after death, and the bodies from all accounts were in an advanced state of decomp, I'd guess that rigor was not much of a factor - at least nobody mentions it [that I can recall].

I think I'll go get a snack now.

Gordie

PS Fox also claimed that they 100% knew where the bodies were. I guess they are still there, unless I missed the book containing the "new and startling information."

[bc]

Here is McDougall's testimony from page 477 of RCOI:

A. I only went to where I presume the skirmish line was killed. MaJor Reno then ordered me to take my company and go to the village and get implements to bury the dead. On returning, he ordered me to bury Company E, the one I had formerly commanded for five years, and to identify the men as far as possible. I found most of them in a ravine.

Q. Here is a ravine marked H on the map. State if that is the one.

A. That is where the most of Company E were found to the best of my recollecttion; about half were in the ravine and the other half on a line outside.

Q. What appeared to have been the nature of the conflict there?

A. I have no idea. All the men were lying on their faces and appeared to have been shot mostly in the side.

Q. Were the evidences such as indicated to your mind a stand had been made there?

A. I thought they fought the best they could, and probably were attacked from both sides

Q. Where was the skirmish line you speak of?

A. About a hundred yards from the ford where I crossed.

Q. Can you locate that ford?

A, I think that is the place marked B.

Q. How far was that skirmish line from the river?

A. I can't tell that. I can't give even a good guess.

Q. On the knolls and ridges as far as you observed did there appear to have been an organized resistance; or to have the appearance of a rout or panic?

A. I did not see any bodies but of the one company in the ravine. I did not go over the field at all. I buried that company and started on the march to where Gen. Terry was encamped.


Looks like McDougal has about half in and half out of the ravine about a 100 yards from the ford McDougall crossed to get into the camp.

bc

[Ryan]

BC -

The bodies were pretty nasty. There are accounts of men attempting to lift the bodies and skin becoming detached from the muscle. The bodies were so decomposed that they could hardly be recognized....although most of the officers were identified, and a few of the noncoms, a majority of the enlisted men were NOT identified because of their condition. I don't think the bodies were moved on any location of the field - and certainly not Deep Ravine, which was 12-14 feet deep at the time.

[biggordie]

bc:

Aside from the hundred yards from the ford bit [which he immediately disavows, two answers down], McDougall's testimony neatly corroborates the current placement of the markers along the SSL. He obviously was mistaken about the ford used being ford B, as there were no skirmish lines anywhere near that ford, and the nearest bodies found were some 600 or 800 yards away, depending upon who was doing the estimating. I think DeRudio said 200 yards, but still no skirmish line, just a body [and maybe a dead horse].

McDougall's description of the troopers being shot in the side also fits with the SSL, but would be rather doubtful were the bodies in Deep Ravine. He also says "I buried that company," whereas some others say they simply kicked dirt and sod down on the bodies. I think McDougall was stating exactly what happened.

Gordie

[Dark Cloud]

Given the conformation of organized salting by the supervisors, in "Striken Field", and starting early, nobody including Fox can claim a cartridge casing is an "Indian" casing/case.

What they mean by that is they have an item manufactured before the battle that isn't an Army round or known to belong to the private arms of the officers there. That's it. There are far too many sources for such cartridges that it's a reach to claim any as from the battle for sure. There have been suicides and firing on the field since the battle, and assumptions the Army scrupulously cleaned up after official salutes or admit to unofficial, or that Indians that winter didn't fire into the visible corpses for practice and karma, or that kids didn't want to shoot on the battlefield when they could get away with it, is just not real world. Ammo was kept for years and years.

After all the hubbub, the cartridge cases can't really prove squat except they were found there.

McDougal doesn't sound specific or committed about anything, just wants it over. "I only went to where I presume the skirmish line was killed." Wow. There's specificity.

[bc]

Guess I'd have to read those accounts, Commanch. I'll keep looking through the RCOI. I don't think there would be that much decomposition after 2 days. I put the recognition and skin detachment issues in with mutilations being the cause and not decomposition. Now the 1877 reburials is a whole different issue. Any skin and meat left would definitely be decomposed. Maybe those accounts come from the 1877 or 1879 reburial parties.

Another issue I have is the bodies being in a ravine 12-14 feet deep and then it gets so filled in you can't find it anymore. I'm not aware of any other ravines filling up like that and the whole area is a series of ravines/drainages. This isn't like going back to Beecher's Island 150 years later. There have been various marker details on the battlefield over the years since day two and if the ravine filled up there would be documentation and plenty of other ravines that have filled in also.

I could also see that skirmish line as a two rank line. One closer to the/a ravine than the other one. Half in one rank, half in the other. The closer rank could have jumped in at the last minute or thrown in by the squaws.

The fact that McDougall said they were all face down suggests something. Not normal if being shot in battle. And not normal for a helter skelter stripping and mutilating by the squaws. Is there a particular band of squaws that would leave them all face down?

The fact that McDougall said they were all shot in the side is indicative of running in file through a band of NAs.

My model has the NAs using all ravines as a way to get to LSH, Battle Ridge, and Calhoun hill. Any soldiers running up or down a ravine would get a surprise since it is already full. If I was a troop commander and saw NAs infiltrating the field up some ravines, I would send skirmishers to said ravine to stop them.

b(eing) c(keptic)

[busted spur]

I didn't want this to be my first post here. Really I didn't. Using Google I found some information here: etd.lib.ttu.edu/theses/available/etd-07012008-31295019476919/unrestricted/31295019476919.pdf

I greatly condensed it to this:

Perimortem trauma occurring to the body at the time of
death can expose the underlying tissues of the body and
create an artificial opening to the body cavity. Blunt
force trauma and gunshot wounds will expose the moist areas
of the body and attract insects… Otherwise, insects focus on the natural openings of the body such as the mouth, nose, eyes,etc… The attraction of insects will cause the body to decay at a faster rate…If the trauma is significant, it can greatly affect the rate of decomposition.

Overall, these studies indicate that rodent and carnivore activity increase the rate of decomposition.

Stages of Late Soft Tissue Decomposition
The first stage of late soft tissue decomposition is termed
the fresh stage. This stage begins with the death of the
individual… and continues until visible bloating occurs… This process begins with autolysis, which is the self destruction of cells by enzymatic self-digestion…The initial effects of autolysis can only be seen microscopically, histologically, and later through skin slippage. The first visible sign of autolysis is skin slippage, which can first be seen at approximately 48 hours after death.

The second stage, early decomposition, begins with skin slippage, discoloration of the body, bloating, and maggot activity.

After the occurrence of bloating, the second stage of late
soft tissue decomposition begins. This stage is termed the
bloated stage and is marked by the obvious bloating of the
body and ends when the bloating ceases.

The third stage of late soft tissue decomposition is the decay stage. This stage begins when the bloating ceases and the remains are relatively dry.

I understand that heat can accelerate the process. So with the animals, trauma and the heat, I believe that the bodies would have been in very bad shape in 48 hours. I am not an expert but you can read every detail at the link and form your own opinion. YUK!

b(usted) s(pur)

[biggordie]

And with that I am off for a midnight snack - I think beef tripe and rice pudding should do fine.

Gordie

PS And I waited two years for this?