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Post by fred on Jan 13, 2011 11:41:34 GMT -6
I say this in a massive fit of petty bitterness because the scenario offered is not mine. But in reality I favored any plausible scenario that most embarrassed the poseurs. This works for me. I just won't admit it. The scenario is yours as well, simply because you accept it as plausible. You needn't be the originator to take a modicum of credit. Frank Werber was as much a part of the Kingston Trio as Dave, Nick, and Bob (and by the way, your treatise on them is still the best I have ever read)-- and John-- yet he wasn't the one singing the "tunes." After 12 or 14 years of some fairly solid study, my ideas have come together and this is all part of it. Will agrees with much of what I have posted about this and the on-going phases of the battle-- and vice versa-- but only because they appear rational, reasonable, and logical to men who know something about the military. Both of us-- and pardon me if I am speaking for you, Will-- would change our opinions or theories immediately were new evidence to arise. I might throw AZ into the mix, as well, though I am not sure of his post-Cedar Coulee opinions. Actually, to be honest with you, I am not sure if I have ever disagreed with a thing "montrose" has ever posted. Kinda weird! Best wishes, Fred.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jan 13, 2011 14:19:06 GMT -6
Well. No, not really. I do accept it as plausible and can object to nothing about it, but I still prefer my own, and this atop the feeling we can't ever know anyway. But when you and AZ and Montrose are happy with it, there's little or no reason further to entertain conz and keogh's absurdities and lacerations of minimal common sense.
I'm just so pleased to be rid of the absurd melodramatic options that offend military values while wildly proclaiming the oppostite, and which actually cast Custer in as bad a light as the pregenitors had hoped to cast others. I still think it an action where, for merely once, the 50-50 calls went bad against Custer, as others. Nothing more. A battle lost, is all, not a message from the Cosmos.
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Post by fred on Jan 13, 2011 15:03:15 GMT -6
Well, yes, really. I have a few new things to bring to this picture, but only in so far as I believe they are new. Others are the ideas or theories of smarter men than I, maybe enlarged upon or presented in such a way as to make them appear to be mine. That's a fine art, you know, and it makes one look like the genius he isn't. So much for posterity.
As for the import of the whole affair, I have always thought it was one step above an unsolved Arthur Conan Doyle short story, things I have read almost interminably. To me there is a fascination far outweighing the relevance or the importance of the whole thing, and it is made the more so once one studies it and one sees all the uncertainty, the recriminations, the innuendo, the personalities, and the fierceness of the event, all within a such a short time-span. Add to that the "mystery"....
I have to tell you, too, it amazes me to see today's personalities and how they shift....
Best wishes, Fred.
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fz1
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Post by fz1 on Feb 14, 2011 20:29:47 GMT -6
I agree that Custer has no intention for Benteen to support Reno. This is a ridiculous theory. Custer needs 2 things from Benteen. Custer needs Benteen's men and he needs more ammunition. That's it and that's all,boys.
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Post by Margaret on Feb 15, 2011 19:26:08 GMT -6
^no, I'm afraid that's not it and all boys, not for me anyway and I don't find it a ridiculous theory, although a reader might find aspects of the following to be so:-
Are we to suppose that, if Benteen had been a little quicker, let's say half an hour earlier, and Reno had held out half an hour longer, what would Benteen have found as he met the diverging tracks?... as he admitted himself, ''here we have the horns of a dilemma'', but in this scenario there wouldn't be any dilemma as he would have seen and heard a major battle raging in his front across the river, but Custer's trail to the right would simply have led him who knows where and for how long..? Are we to assume Benteen would have viewed the fight and said ''oh well I'll give that a swerve and follow Custer's trail over the north fork and up the hills - see where that goes...''? - no I don't believe that for one minute. Benteen was the support and he would have pitched in with Reno as I believe he was expected to do, in support of Custer's plan which only he seemed to know.
Mr Custer, I think, had a conflict of interest going on in his head. On one hand I believe he sought the opportunity to bring a stalemate with the Indians by corralling as many hostages as he could from the north end, perhaps a few hundred would do, causing panic among the Indian men who simply wouldn't know which way to turn.... with a reinforced Reno down south he might have achieved this although not a very exciting prospect for the troopers with him, many I believe were looking forward to a good killing spree, but an interesting turn of events could have transpired here had he been able to get into position quick enough. Whether he got to Ford B or hovered around the ridges, indicators told him it was an impossible task and I believe he aborted it there and then.
From the divide onwards, I do not believe he ever thought or intended to try, to defeat the Indians militarily, but more through negotiation via threat, a tactic rarely attributed to him yet one he had used before.
The conflict with Custer is that I believe he had a Death Wish*, as it's known to exist for some military people. Quite a few I think from any culture who's dearest wish is to die in battle and one often finds this to be the case when they are on a last tour of duty or facing the prospect of returning home to, what to them would seem, a boring, mundane existence. I think these urgings developed in him over a long time and became more pronounced after the Washington fiasco.
Such people live only for the fighting and dying, the camaraderie, the killing, a perverse kind of excitement to some of us not so inclined. They know when they are going and their behaviour beforehand can seem to onlookers as strange, inexplicable, and out of character. I might include today's suicide bombers amongst this group.
We know Custer was not in favour with the Government, and possibly had marriage problems, heavily in debt, and involved in shoddy business deals. His prospects were bleak other than writing books or magazine articles, a political career or desk job which he didn't want, and hobbying with taxidermy. No more fights on the horizon, the wars were almost over, yet he seemed always desperate to impress.
I do not believe Custer would have relished a return home alive, and once he got to the coulee and saw Ford B, and knowing that Reno was in real trouble and without support, I believe he felt an obligation to save Reno with the feint attack, and henceforth, his Death Wish was very much on the cards. All his actions from then on lead me to believe this was his sole concern and he didn't care who he took with him.
A selfish, self centred individual, far from being defeated, he got what he wanted ultimately and I believe he died a very happy man.
*...it is thought by some that adventurer Steve Fossett had a death wish too. Will Hasley, an author who co-wrote Fossett's 2006 autobiography, said that the record-breaking adventurer and financier had been suffering heavily from guilt over tensions in his marriage and money worries. "I think Steve was drawn to fly there by a subconscious death wish. He believed it was time for him to go." According to Hasley, Fossett was "deeply conflicted". He said: "His wife Peggy wanted him to spend more time at home and stop risking his life, and he was torn between his love for her and his love for adventure."
....I can relate this to Custer.
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fz1
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Post by fz1 on Feb 15, 2011 20:08:18 GMT -6
Whoa! You've gone Waaaaaay beyond the Battle. Custer wants Benteen. He wants him to "be quick" and to bring the "Pacs". That really is it and all. Best regards,fz1.
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Reddirt
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Life is But a Dream...
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Post by Reddirt on Feb 18, 2011 18:30:53 GMT -6
Would it be possible to post your sources that may confirm Custer to have been a "selfish, self centered individual" who possessed a "death wish?"
While I agree that some individuals may choose unusual and exotic ways of performing suicide; being stabbed, pummeled and clubbed, shot with arrows, scalped, slashed to the bone by Indian knives, castrated, branches jammed down your throat,decapitated,etc. Custer's venue seems a tad drastic.
In the romantic novels we read of hero's who fought valiantly until the very end prior to being overwhelmed by the enemy and slaughtered. Stories probably based upon a grain of truth but over dressed with a flourish of descriptive hyperbole. Custer was not of this ilk (hero).
He was a human being, under orders to retrieve recalcitrant warriors and, whom had every intent to kill, capture, and or wound as many Indians as possible then return home.
I'm puzzled why you feel that a man so determined to kill himself would be so hell bent on saving Reno (or anyone else for that matter) by performing a military "feint" before getting himself expeditiously axed?
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tel
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Post by tel on Feb 18, 2011 20:01:47 GMT -6
I did a Google search on "Custer, Death Wish?" A simplistic approach but I wanted to see is anything interesting came up. Nothing to justify Custer having a death wish did... But this did... www.historynet.com/custers-last-stand-still-stands-up.htm"As many students of the Battle of the Little Bighorn have concluded, Custer's Last Stand is one of the most overly intellectualized and politicized events in American history. Some of the most basic facts have escaped the public's attention, while yarns such as Custer running for president of the United States have been invented. As a result, the public perception of Custer today probably falls somewhere near or below Attila the Hun. This misinterpretation of Custer has in turn led to many misperceptions about Custer's Last Stand. Because of what happened on June 25, 1876, the Custer name has become synonymous with defeat in the minds of many, but those individuals are not seeing the larger picture, particularly Custer's extraordinary Civil War career as a Union cavalry officer."
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Post by Margaret on Feb 19, 2011 11:47:06 GMT -6
^thank you for that, an interesting read although I didn't agree with some of it, particularly the inference that it was on the Crow reservation and that the Sioux had no right to be where they were. The Crow were being removed to the Judith Basin at one point I believe, but no mention of it from the writer there.
It did show Custer in a more favourable light, which I thought was fair enough.
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Post by Margaret on Feb 19, 2011 11:50:21 GMT -6
I see this as a psychological battle not only a military one, between two controlling manipulative people, neither of whom could accept anyone else controlling them, ever. Sitting Bull gave enough of his people hope and a pride that made them feel good about themselves, enough to gather around him in quantity, and make him the central figure, the most important Indian in his eyes. I see Custer as a control freak, where everything had to revolve around him, to do his bidding, and nothing, not anyone can interfere with his decisions. I see him as a selfish, self centred individual in possession of a Death Wish, I'm not claiming anyone else sees him that way.
I believe thousands of adults that day were under the heavy guiding influence of one or other of these two people and that it was really a battle between them, and them alone, for complete control of the situation they were all in, and the acknowlegement of victory that would go with it.... everyone else was a bit part player....
I think Custer had a Plan A and a Plan B, neither of which were ever known to his troops, the vagueness of whatever plans he revealed, stands out, no one seems to quite know just what he was trying to achieve and that I believe is because neither of his Plans would have been palatable to the men with him. He kept them very much to himself from the Crow's Nest when he realised that either one of these could be possible from the information he had to hand. I don't believe he disregarded what his scouts were telling him but rather, saw it as an opportunity - a possibility that he had been waiting for.
I see Plan A as an attack from two flanks with a surprise assault to get hostages and force a stalemate to sue for both time - Terry was only 24 hours away, and a temporary ceasefire through negotiation coupled with threat. I think this was his foremost plan, his duty and all he could hope to achieve, militarily. I do not accept that he thought, at the onset, he could or would attempt to try to defeat the Indian force through all-out battle within the village complex. I think he must have known this was not an option for him in an afternoon attack. I see Plan B as Custer's innate Death Wish being brought to the fore, the desire to die in battle but not just any old skirmish for Custer, a great battle, one that history would afford him what he felt was his rightful place. We are dealing with I think, not only an immensely vain egotistical man here, but a very intelligent one who so very much wanted to be admired by those most important in his life, his wife, the General's and an interested public who longed for a military hero once again. I think he cared little for his officers and men.
At the Coulee and near Ford B I believe he saw the impossibility of Plan A, that the situation had gone out of his control, he was never going to attack the warrior force and he couldn't get to the hostages, everything was now in the hands of Sitting Bull. This was the moment he was forced to call on Plan B. He has to bring it back under his command, his complete control of people and events but to keep his men from fleeing in a panic over the hills to the East or on the back trail as they may have still had time, he needed to keep them together, he saw a golden opportunity to get his Death Wish engulfed in an heroic scene of Glory. It is then he played the tune that brought the Indians running, meanwhile keeping his men onside with sham movements downstream, actions where it appeared he was readying for attack.
This was now to be a battle to be remembered, and I think he saw this as a great history in the making, one that gave him back the control but would result in his death, it would be fast and furious, but the end quick and decisive.
Sitting Bull won the military battle, but Custer won the psychology. I believe he conned his men and conned the Indians - they all did his bidding ultimately, and I think Custer was quite brilliant in this - a control freak without equal and one I admire greatly for having that ability, even though I don't like the man and wonder what his wife ever saw in him, but it's this psychology of him that fascinates me [or more correctly, a psychology I believe he possessed], not the military strategies, the who did what to whom, with what and where, an emphasis that I think most students spend too much time over. I expect some of his men hated him whilst they still had time to think, realising what he'd got them into, hated Benteen, hated Reno, felt they had been thrown to the wolves. I expect much cursing to have taken place in the later stages but Custer was most likely dead by then.
I realise this is all very 'left field', and a theory that won't make anybody any money in books or articles, nor give anyone an exalted reputation on internet forums. None of this is of great importance.
I believe I have got into his mind, and Custer and only him could tell me I'm wrong, could prove me wrong. One has to be confident in one's convictions. Everyone else can disagree of course, and dismiss my claims any which way they choose, but they cannot prove I'm wrong no more than I can prove I'm right.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Feb 19, 2011 12:56:51 GMT -6
helford,
Not only could Custer argue with you, but so can I and anyone more or less read up on the West, something you need to do. You make way too many violations of logic and fact, here. It's as if you just discovered a 1930's book on psychiatry or just read one of Freud's early 20th century analyses of the powerful and dead which ironically revealed, in history's cold light, Freud's stuttering ignorances more than deep insights into his subject. Anyone at your level (or virtually any level....) who truly thinks he's entered the mind of a historic figure and knows the man is much more deluded than you purpose Custer as being. You may not have a death wish, but a strong case can be made you're masochistic. As a sadist, I'd never hurt a masochist, but jeez:
First, Sitting Bull wasn't the 'leader' in that he had zero control over anyone outside family, and that can and has been argued. That's well accounted by his peers through the years. He was greatly admired, and his word and views carried weight, but this was not a battle between he and Custer. He was not, in any case, a war chief any longer. No doubt he thought well of himself, but most successful men do at that age, I'd think.
Your description of Custer is baffling, as you'd hope it would apply to any military officer, especially in battle, where orders have to be obeyed. But he was no control freak beyond that, and lived a life of chaos at home with animals everywhere and had an anarchic toleration of unofficial dress in his men. He loved practical jokes and theater and excitement. Those are not the stigmata of control freaks, if the term is accurately applied.
You can see him with a death wish, but you'd be hard put to evidence it. He understood publicity and he understood the politics of career advance, neither of which makes him mentally unstable, which the term 'control freak' would imply. I don't think he wept overlong at death and casualties outside his own family, but after the CW what vet did? That was god awful and the nation was traumatized beyond analysis, Custer among them.
Your various announcements of 'belief' would need evidence, otherwise you're constructing a religion and not a factual account.
Your Plan A postulates a surprise attack on the camp, which ignores Custer's stated belief they'd been seen and the Indians would be alert. Not having a clue as to the exact geographical location of the camp - and Indians do not have flanks, but respond as an amoeba without a central command structure - it would be a waste of time to overformulate a plan till he had sufficient info.
If he didn't want to fight within the complex, why attack from two sides?
If the Indians were at all organized, how and why would they allow Custer to putter 15 miles down a canyon ideal for ambush and defense and attack their camp where they were, in aggregate, surprised and women and children were killed?
Custer, if anyone, seemed to enjoy life a lot. What actual evidence exists he wanted to die?
What did his wife see in him? A ticket out of Monroe and into the big time with a (then) babe magnet husband inundated by the press and a national audience. It's not like she was a great beauty, although no known mirrors shattered at her image, nor any funerals compelled up side streets.
"I realise this is all very 'left field', and a theory that won't make anybody any money in books or articles, nor give anyone an exalted reputation on internet forums." Um. No, it's not. What you don't realize is that this is all very old, and the book "Glory Hunter" (1934) covers much of the same ground (with the same level of success) with the exciting insertion of "water phobia." "Little Big Man" isn't far removed, either.
As so much of psychological and psychiatric diagnosis has been found to have genetic and physical causes, these sorts of things have been buried and rethought. But first, be accurate in the evidence you accept for consideration. So far, you don't do that.
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tel
New Member
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Post by tel on Feb 19, 2011 13:53:59 GMT -6
Conjecture is okay. But let us accept it as that. We all have our internalized version of Custer. I believe I have worked with or for a few Custer's in my career. Given my version of Custer, I didn't like it and perhaps I can understand why Reno and Benteen didn't ride to the sound of the guns (certainly not beyond Weir Point). In my world, you either a Custer insider or you weren't. Custer made sure that almost all of his gang were in his battalion and had they won, they would have been the heroes. But they didn't win and so they all died. Reno and Benteen, who were outsiders, got to live. If you need proof just look command structure of CEFIL (Custer's Battalion). Weir was left out and regretted it. But then he may have been having an affair with Libby (but there's no proof of that, just my conjecture). I am not interested in satisfying Darkcloud's penchant to conjecture but challenge everyone else when they conjecture. We all get to conjecture. I have walked the battlefield many times. In my mind's eye I can see the problems with the way the Custer fought his battle. I have stood at the Crows Nest and not been able to see the Indian Camp. I can see why Custer divided up his troops but also why he shouldn't have. I believe that if Nelson Miles were commanding the 7th that day, it would not have been defeated. But then this is all conjecture. That's the fun of it.
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Post by Margaret on Feb 19, 2011 15:41:54 GMT -6
^That's it, conjecture. I agree, it's pure speculation on my part, but if I'm satisified with it then it should not be a problem for anyone else. I'm not trying to convert anyone, it's an open forum and I put my thoughts to paper, so to speak. No one has to agree with it and frankly I wouldn't expect anyone to.
Yet, I feel a sense of release, a feeling of not needing to look any further for answers to questions that really cannot be answered other than by speculation. Come back in 50 years and you'll find a different set of people, on another kind of media perhaps, still arguing the why's and wherefore's as they are here today and elsewhere. No one really gets anywhere with it, things just get sent back and forth, from one to another. People must draw their own conclusions, that's if they wish to conclude and I'm not sure they do. I feel I have.
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Post by Margaret on Feb 19, 2011 15:43:15 GMT -6
...a masochist.. I don't mind that as I'm not altogether sure quite what you mean by it...
I understand Sitting Bull was not a war leader, he didn't need to do any fighting, I was considering the psychological influence he had over the people, which held them together. He was a great man and no one else had the capacity to do this with the Sioux, at that time. He was wily, he had motives, an agenda and he used his people to further his cause. He was pulling the strings of manipulation.
Custer's appearance towards the north end was a surprise. I used the term 'flanks' incorrectly but I thought the meaning was understood. I don't believe, as I thought I made clear, that he was 'attacking' from two sides, that is, an intent to attack the warrior force, but rather an assault against the non-combatants.
Yes I'm sure Custer enjoyed life a lot, had many interests. That's just it, I think people with the Death Wish do, they can seem happy contented people with everything to live for. I believe he was also very happy to die - given the right conditions.
It is true I have incorporated elements of theories long since gone about the glory seeking Custer, even a touch of the Errol Flynn's about it, but at least I give him leeway and make it his plan B, it was not I think, what he started out to do. The opportunity presented itself, it gave him no other choice, but instead of being dictated to by it, he turned it around and controlled it, and I think, relished it.
It's perverse, but who knows our innermost thoughts, Darkcloud.
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Post by bc on Feb 19, 2011 15:57:09 GMT -6
Ms. Helford. I've been reading this death wish stuff and don't see it that way at all. It's an assumption of risk and overcoming your fear of dying.
Everyone who joins the military accepts some risk for loss of life. Going into battle increases that risk. How one deals with that risk and the amount of risk to takes directly correlates to your fear of dying.
Custer's proclivities in front of enemy bullets didn't change since the first battle of Bull Run. He increasingly risked his life throughout the cw and beyond. He was in the front of his forces when most of these actions occurred when other commanders would stay back.
If Custer was trying to die in battle at the LBH, he would have been leading a charge directly into the face of the enemy. From all appearances he didn't do that and in fact died on LSH or close to it. He probably took less personal risk in that battle because his command was separated. A guy with a death wish would have charged headlong into the last surge of NAs.
I would put him in a fearless category. How rational his degree of fearlessness is another story. But that is what was expected of a cavalry leader and why he allowed to go to begin with along with having the tactical ability to achieve victory in battle.
bc
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