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Post by wild on Aug 12, 2024 15:53:46 GMT -6
Hi Mike In estimating how long the battle lasted on Custer field you must consider how long the Indians spent looting and gathering up the spoils of a job well done. 5 companies together with their accoutrements, 200 carbines, 200 sadles, 200 jodhpurs [slightly soiled.] papal medals and carving up the wounded .[theywere all carved up] ...allthis takes time. more time than the actual "battle". Best Regards
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Post by shan on Aug 13, 2024 4:33:19 GMT -6
Yan,
I too have spent too much time down this particular rabbit hole, but then something I've not given much thought to prods me into seeing things slightly differently. This question as to how much ammunition Custer had, and how long it would last turns out to be one such.
As I've already said, Custer's force lost close to half its horses in fairly short order which meant they had no access to the ammunition the animals were carrying which was a disaster. Had they managed to hang onto those horses, then that might have led to him considering whether he should try to make his way back to Weir point, but that's another question.
With regards to what was happening whilst Weir was scanning the horizon. I still think that the fight was drawing to a conclusion with the last of Keough's men fleeing towards Last Stand Hill -- by the way, I'm pretty sure Keough himself was already dead by then -- but then due to the smoke and dust, not to mention various landscape features which prevented Weir and the others from seeing any futher, what they were witnessing wasthe mopping up operation on Calhoun
Just to re-iterarate what wild was saying. I couldn't agree more. Most of the warriors, apart from being elated by what had happened, were too busy looting and arguing about who had the rights to what to worry about those soldiers who'd recently appeared on the distant hills. They'd seen them, or at least, had probably been told that they were there, but once it became obvious that they had no intention of moving towards them, they felt that they could wait for awhile whilst they got on with what they were doing.
That being said, I've read several Indian accounts which imply that there were so many warriors trying to get in at the kill, that there was no room for those who'd arrived late at the battle to find their way in amongst them. So I would suggest that it could have been some of those warriors who made the first moves towards Weir point, and that given what many of those soldiers had just been through, or at least, had heard what some of others had been through, fearing that the same was about to happen to them, they initially thought they were seeing more Indians moving towards them than there actually were.
Either way, I completely reject the idea that Weir and the others were up there for two or more hours. I'll agree to an hour maybe but not much more.
Shan
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Post by johnson1941 on Aug 13, 2024 5:03:49 GMT -6
Adding some observations:
{Hare} found Edgerly out ahead but says Edgerly did not hold his advanced position more than 10 min. M, K and H cos. were strung out along bluffs behind Co. D parallel with river but no co. quite up to Co. D.
Note Hare was later in getting there then Edgerly & Weir. But maybe not too much later - D had gone down Cedar and looped back around etc. Other troops were already moving too. Anway seems "10 minutes" is way too quick. 2 hours way too long. \/
Edgerly "We moved along on that bluff for a short distance, when the Indians commenced to fire on us. The troops were all dismounted, formed on the top of the ridge and returned the fire. This firing was kept up about half an hour, when the troops were drawn back to their original position by order of Gen. Reno."
Varnum A... Yes, sir, as I described before. I went to the position of Captain Weir’s company at the far point of the ridge downstream. ...I should think from the time I was with Captain Weir on that point back to the time the position was taken on the hill and the line formed where we remained that night was an hour and a half. That is taking in the time of the retreat and formation of the line in position at the time of its deployment into line and getting the packs in.
Godfrey "Looking toward Custer's field, on a hill two miles away we saw a large assemblage. At first our command did not appear to attract their attention, although there was some commotion observable among those near to our position. We heard occasional shots, most of which seemed to be a great distance off, beyond the large groups on the hill. While watching this group, the conclusion was arrived at that Custer had been repulsed, and the firing we heard was the parting shots of the rear guard. The firing ceased, the groups dispersed, clouds of dust arose from all parts of the field, and the horsemen converged toward our position. The command was now dismounted to fight on foot.
Weir's and French's troops were posted on the high bluffs and to the front of them; my own troop along the crest of the bluffs next to the river, the rest of the command moved to the rear, as I supposed to occupy other points in the vicinity"
Wylie "Accordingly the men were dismounted and the horses led behind the hill. The Indians soon came up in great force and the men were mounted up and started back along the ridge in column of twos on a walk. After going some distance the Indians had arrived on Edgerly peaks and opened up a hot fire."
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Post by wild on Aug 13, 2024 7:28:58 GMT -6
Another consideration as regards the lenght of the battle is that the markers speak to the command being hit simultaneously along its entire line of march. it was a train wreck.Nowhere do we see a semblance of order or cohesion. put in naval parlance the Indians crossed their "T". The Indian axis of a attack caught them sideways on and went through them like sh1t through a goose. Probably Keogh lasted a bit longer than Custer having close to 80 men "massed" around him and Indians speaking of an officer trying to bring order to the shambles.
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Post by wild on Aug 13, 2024 8:00:31 GMT -6
The trouble with many of our friends here is that they think that it was a battle of manoeuver. it was no such thing. For openers It had no command and control system. It was a simple follow my leader system with Custer being the only source of control. None of the officers knew Custer's intentions. Keogh commanding 3 companies and being 2i/c had not a clue as to the plan. In the age of rapid firing weapons unsupported cavalry were useless even as mounted infantry. You dont take a horse to a firefight.
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Post by mikegriffith1 on Aug 13, 2024 8:14:15 GMT -6
It's worth noting that some Indian sources (Austin Red Hawk, Shot in the Face, Big Road, and Iron Bull) put the duration of Custer's fight at three hours (Richard Hardoff, Lakota Recollections of the Custer Fight, pp. 39, 45). This agrees with what the officers told Lt. Maguire two days after the battle: two to three hours. It also agrees with the picture that emerges from key elements of the soldiers' accounts once you peel through the falsehood and deception that some of them spun. Recall that Gerard said that the firing to the north that he heard lasted two hours.
But a number of the witnesses at the RCOI, led by Reno, Benteen, and Wallace, falsely described Custer's fight as lasting as little as 15 minutes and no more than 90 minutes. Reno and Benteen made the ludicrous claim that Custer's command was already destroyed either when Martin brought the written order to Benteen or when Reno left the timber, which would mean Custer's fight lasted no more than 40 minutes, a preposterous scenario. Custer's fight did not even become serious until after Reno fled from the timber, after the Indians who had mauled Reno's retreat left to take on Custer.
As for ammo, Custer's fight was not always intense and thus did not always require the use of much ammo. For a good part of the time, his fight involved light/sporadic firing from long range. Indian sources indicate that only some of Custer's men ran out of ammo and that this did not happen until the last 15-20 minutes of the fighting. Indian sources say that even in the last minutes of the onslaught, some of the soldiers were still firing rifles or revolvers but that others had run out of ammo. Soon after Benteen failed to arrive when expected, Custer's men were likely ordered to conserve ammo. However, when the fighting began to become desperate, all concern for ammo usage would have vanished. So, yes, collectively speaking, Custer's men had enough ammo to fight for two to three hours.
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Post by johnson1941 on Aug 13, 2024 9:43:45 GMT -6
Might need to re-think this...per Martin Custer got to the ford while Reno was in action...but what part of Reno's action do they mean? "These men said the Reno began his action around 9am....it was about noon when they annihilated Custer and his men."Likely not a big diff one way of the other, depends when different phases actually started. They also do not have Custer at the river. " these latter soldiers were coming down on the ridge in three divisions. They did not come down to the river"UGH!! Where's the TIMELINES!!!
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Post by mikegriffith1 on Aug 13, 2024 11:21:30 GMT -6
Might need to re-think this...Custer got to the ford while Reno was in action...but what part of Reno's action do they mean? "These men said the Reno began his action around 9am....it was about noon when they annihilated Custer and his men."Likely not a big diff one way of the other, depends when different phases actually started. No need to rethink anything. The Indians in question said that Reno began his fight at around 9:00 AM (by their figuring of time), and that it was about noon when they annihilated Custer and his men. That's right around three hours, just as the officers indicated to Lt. Maguire, and it's in the ballpark of the time that Gerard gave for the duration of the heavy firing that he heard. Also, in footnote 20 on page 45, Hardoff concludes that the Custer battle lasted three hours. You missed some key information on page 41, the page from which you're quoting. You missed Hardoff's long footnote on this point on the page (footnote 12). Hardoff observes that many Indian sources say that some of Custer's soldiers fought an engagement "at" the river. Hardoff further notes that "at" or "near" does not necessarily mean "at the river's edge." What's more, Hardoff points out that modern field research indicates that some of Custer's men were deployed near the ford, i.e., at the flat near the river, and along the heights of the north bank of Medicine Tail Coulee.
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Post by wild on Aug 13, 2024 17:11:19 GMT -6
"The Indians in question said that Reno began his fight at around 9:00 AM" I dont think the Indians had quiet that precision of marking the rotation of the earth. More likely they based it on the bowel motion of their ponies, LOL regards
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Post by johnson1941 on Aug 13, 2024 20:16:41 GMT -6
Lol! All relative I guess!
Gray had Reno charge starting at 3:03 and Hare leaving Reno for Weir at 5:15.
Harper had Reno around 2:50 and D reaching the Peaks at 5:10; though he has M, K and H heading down at 5:40 after the pack train arrived, but Edgerly said he saw them coming on the bluffs after his loop around in cedar, before going to the Peaks, so one or both of those may not work.
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Post by mikegriffith1 on Aug 14, 2024 12:59:03 GMT -6
Might need to re-think this...Custer got to the ford while Reno was in action...but what part of Reno's action do they mean? "These men said the Reno began his action around 9am....it was about noon when they annihilated Custer and his men."Likely not a big diff one way of the other, depends when different phases actually started. No need to rethink anything. The Indians in question said that Reno began his fight at around 9:00 AM (by their figuring of time), and that it was about noon when they annihilated Custer and his men. That's right around three hours, just as the officers indicated to Lt. Maguire, and it's in the ballpark of the time that Gerard gave for the duration of the heavy firing that he heard. Also, in footnote 20 on page 45, Hardoff concludes that the Custer battle lasted three hours. You missed some key information on page 41, the page from which you're quoting. You missed Hardoff's long footnote on this point on the page (footnote 12). Hardoff observes that many Indian sources say that some of Custer's soldiers fought an engagement "at" the river. Hardoff further notes that "at" or "near" does not necessarily mean "at the river's edge." What's more, Hardoff points out that modern field research indicates that some of Custer's men were deployed near the ford, i.e., at the flat near the river, and along the heights of the north bank of Medicine Tail Coulee. I should add that Gerard said he heard heavy, continuous firing to the north for about two hours, and that this heavy firing began 20-25 minutes after he heard a few volleys fired. Thus, his account indicates that Custer's fight lasted over two hours. I see Maguire's report that Custer's fight lasted two to three hours as determinative and compelling, mainly because it was based on what the officers told him just 48 hours after the battle, before anyone realized what they would need to lie about, and also because it agrees with several Indian statements about the fight's duration, and because it agrees with the accounts given by Gerard, O'Neill, and Thompson, among others. Many of those same officers who told Maguire that Custer's fight lasted two to three hours later realized that their statements were statements against interest, and so they markedly changed their stories and gave much shorter durations at the RCOI.
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Post by wild on Aug 14, 2024 15:55:08 GMT -6
" because it was based on what the officers told him just 48 hours after the battle, before anyone realized what they would need to lie about, and also because it agrees with several Indian statements about the fight's duration"
In a battle nonone is timing nutten. All concentration is centered on killing or being killed. Noone remembers nutten but what happens within a few yards of him. The best indication of how long the battle lasted is based on how fast a hungry Indian could eat his sandwiches Best Regards
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Post by johnson1941 on Aug 14, 2024 16:04:05 GMT -6
No matter how long we want to figure 'the Custer fight' (all? which part?), it still won't square the fact that EVERYONE who was actually there at Weir Point seeing what they could for themselves, said the Indians were mopping up.
I.E. Keough was most likely dead.
O'Neill We had listened to terrific firing both up and down the river, and realized that the loss must have been heavy. For myself I thought that when the firing had ceased in the direction Custer had gone, it meant that he had retreated to Major Reno's position. I think it was about 5 o'clock when we heard the last shots from Custer's direction.
Harper, (maybe too early)... "In the meanwhile, of course, Weir and Edgerly had long since reached the high ground down the bluffs, at approximately 5:10 p.m."
Yep.
Re: Girard, 2+ hours. Curious - Does the 2+ hours of firing he heard towards Custer’s line of march include the attack on D at Weir Point?
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Post by mikegriffith1 on Aug 15, 2024 3:52:00 GMT -6
For a detailed presentation of the evidence that Custer's fight lasted two to three hours, I recommend Bill Rini's article "How Long Did the Custer Fight Last?" You can find it here: sites.google.com/view/custerfightduration/homeAfter several pages of quotes, citations, and analysis, Rini concludes as follows: Of the 29 accounts listed above, 12 participants estimated or strongly suggested that the Custer fight ended about 5:00 p.m. or later, and 14 participants indicated the Custer fight per se lasted between 2 to 3 hours in duration. We can compare this to three participants who estimated the Custer fight only lasted about an hour, and four who claimed it lasted an hour and a half. It is likely that these seven participants were referring specifically to the Keogh sector of the field, which ended earlier than the action on Last Stand Hill and beyond, out of hearing range of those participants. The same thing can be said for the handful of participants who estimated the battle ended earlier than 5 p.m. These Indian participants likely left the battlefield during the final destruction of the Keogh battalion, and for all intents and purposes, the battle was over for them at that time. It is apparent that the majority of our participant accounts tell us that the Custer fight lasted somewhere between 2 to 3 hours in duration, likely 2 hours and 20 minutes, as Gerard tells us, and Pvt. O'Neill concurs, with the fighting on Custer field ending about 5:00 p.m. or a short time afterwards.
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Post by johnson1941 on Aug 15, 2024 4:58:01 GMT -6
Good stuff!
So knowing Weir and Edgerly got to Weir Peaks after 5:10, this all makes sense! Again confirms everyone who was there were indeed watching the death throes.
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