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Post by Yan Taylor on Nov 16, 2011 7:40:13 GMT -6
Jag, when I posted that last post, I didn’t address it personally to you, I meant it for the whole board, others have been adding views to this topic (Rosebud has advised me over the Indian accounts also), so I meant it as a whole, not an individual statement, when I said I was sorry for using Indian accounts you must have thought I was addressing you, and not the whole board. So all this presumptuous stuff you mention is wrong.
About the Ford B scenario, I meant that Custer could have been facing as little as 20 Indians, but again, he could have met more, I don’t know, maybe the 20 turned into 200 in rapid time.
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Post by rosebud on Nov 16, 2011 9:11:20 GMT -6
Just to mix things up worse.
In the phone book before Twomoons we have this.
Two Bears
Two Crow
then Twomoons.
If anyone wants. I will give the phone numbers and you can give them a call and ask why their names are so messed up. Now if Dark Cloud is right and Two Moons was named after the second moon of the season or some such thing. Then his name would be
Second Moon .........To me it does not matter, as long as we know who we are talking about.
Rowsss But..
That is how many Indians say Rosebud
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Post by wild on Nov 16, 2011 12:24:25 GMT -6
Jag
Of course I'm serious.
The cavalry of 1876 was a joke.It was capable of nothing more than a secondary role and could not of itself determine the outcome of a battle.
Take an infantry regiment.It has a certain military value.Give each soldier a horse to look after.How much will the fighting value of that unit be reduced?How much would dragging a herd of horses around reduce it's ability to maneuver and force the issue?
The stand alone skirmish line will provide nothing more than force protection. It is in effect a shield behind which the main body of troops can advance or retreat.
To use it as an offensive ploy would be akin to taking a nut to a sledgehammer.
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Post by El Crab on Nov 17, 2011 0:48:33 GMT -6
What is a skirmish line with infantry?
And how is infantry supposed to pursue mounted warriors on the run?
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Post by wild on Nov 17, 2011 4:04:36 GMT -6
What is a skirmish line with infantry?
Skirmishing was standard practice for infantry of the day.Used to harrass and unnerve opposing formations and also to flush out or spring enemy ambush positions.
And how is infantry supposed to pursue mounted warriors on the run?
You know, Uncle Sam could have just ignored them.There was far more deaths due to the culture of the Wild West than to Indian transgressions.
As our friend DC said sometime back Buffalo Bill and his ilk did more to end the way of life of the Indian than any military operation.
The LBH was an unnecessary battle.
How did Uncle Sam defeat the insurgency in Iraq?He bought the insurgents.
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Post by quincannon on Nov 17, 2011 9:43:02 GMT -6
Crab: You have to beat them before you pursue them. As it turned out George did neither. A whole regiment down in that valley, dismounted, or even on the bluffs dismounted would have still forced a battle. The hostiles would have still had to come out and fight, and a consolidated dismounted regiment, considering that it was properly trained, which it was not, would have kicked the snot out of them.
I also agree with Richard in that this battle need not have been fought. That was not in the cards though with the type of thinking that existed with our cavalier heros of that day. Liddell-Hart expoused the theory of the indirect approach in the 1920's and people laughed at him. Now it is incorporated into all of our strategy. You remove then enemies ability to make war, the old DC Buffalo Bill comment, and there need not be combat
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Post by "Hunk" Papa on Nov 21, 2011 16:37:39 GMT -6
I believe that all those that believe that Reno was a coward or drunk have hard time explaining how moving toward Custer with a drunk coward in charge would benefit Custer. Since brave Weir's company turned around then why would a drunk coward be expected to go further? The Indian could always move quicker to the village and the crossings on their side of the river. AZ, as I do not subscribe to either description of Reno my only comment here is that the Major was not at any time in charge of the move to Weir Point. He was bringing up the rear when the forward units started to fall back. And therefore fell back with them. Personally I don’t believe it was a pure error as your context implies. It was more a result of a pre-conditioned cultural arrogance, not applicable solely to Custer. As far as I am aware, Custer’s scouts warned him that there were too many hostiles to fight, not that they had a particular bellicose spirit that day. White Man Runs Him in the Custer Myth page 16, “Q. Did the Scouts think there were too many Indians for Custer to fight? A. Yes; from Garryowen down the valley were camps and camps and camps…” and page 23, “We scouts thought there were too many Indians for Custer to fight.” The Arikara Narrative page 78, “The Arikara scouts understood that the Dakota medicine was too strong for them and that they would be defeated by the Dakotas.” Yet on page 92, the Crow scouts are reported as wanting Custer to attack at once. Mitch Boyer too referred only to the enemy numbers, not any belligerent signs being displayed. Perhaps he might also have drawn a different conclusion. Approach Indian camps more cautiously to ensure there were no hidden surprises? Hence sending Benteen to check on the possibility of other camps to the south? By making sure he had all the Indian camps to his front, he could plan accordingly. Comparisons between the Washita and the LBH are really rather pointless. The LBH was unique and I believe that should be the basis on which all the analysis of what Custer faced should be made. At the first Yellowstone fight, the Indians would only have cemented their view that a surprise attack against an inferior number of soldiers would make those soldiers fall back into a defensive position. That action would also have taught them that Custer, if in fact they knew it was him, could rapidly turn defence into attack because ultimately, it was the Indians who broke off the fight and fled. A rather jaundiced view I think. He won a victory at the Washita then made a strategic withdrawal in the face of a new threat from greater enemy numbers. The first Yellowstone fight is dealt with above and the second one was mostly a long range affair where again, the Indians retreated. Other than those examples, Custer himself spent 1867 trying to bring the Southern Cheyenne and others to battle without success, so he had first hand experience of why the army did not expect Indians in their villages to make a fight of it. I don’t think that there was much thought put into whether or not the troops were battle ready as no battle was foreseen and in any engagement there might have been with warriors screening the escape of their families as usual, the troops had been sufficiently effective in previous confrontations to mask their general lack of training. My regards. Hunk |
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Post by "Hunk" Papa on Nov 21, 2011 16:41:11 GMT -6
I don't need to detail what Reno should've done. Just about anything was better than what he did. Reno had 175 soldiers and scouts heading into the valley. He lost some of the scouts, who stole ponies and headed away with their loot. Which was what was expected of them. But he still had 3 companies and the scouts who stayed. Probably around 140-155 armed persons. His actions to extract his command from the valley resulted in 40 KIA, and another 15 or 20 left in the timber. You're really going to stick to your guns and say that's the best anyone could hope for in that situation? How about ordering the trumpeters to blow the commands. That's why they're there and why they have those shiny brass instruments. That would be better than what Reno did. Which was yell his intentions to anyone who could hear. Let's start there. Reno should've used his trumpeters. In fairness to the Ree scouts, they had been specifically told by Custer to get as many enemy horses as they could, so Reno did not lose them, they were only doing what they had been told to do. Nevertheless, many of them did stay to fight and in some cases die, so Reno had 163 effectives when he stopped to form the skirmish line. The rest of your remarks we have discussed previously. Your point about the trumpet calls is well taken and is borne out by several RCOI witnesses. This matter also underscores the testimony that described chaos and confusion in the timber before the so called charge. If a commander is not cool headed enough to use a standard army procedure to rally his men, it does not bode well for any decision he is going to make. Whether or not the rank and file soldiers had more skill than to flee on horseback is surely tied into the skill of their officers in ensuring that tight discipline was maintained in whatever action the men were expected to take. The eruption out of the timber and wild run to whichever place of comparative safety presented itself first involved no discipline at all. In such circumstances, the RCOI descriptions that it was ‘every man for himself’ is a telling indictment of the breakdown in the command structure. Yes, it makes sense. What I think you are driving at is that sometimes people surprise even themselves by how much better they can be than the usual opinion they have of their own capabilities. There are moments in their lives when they can either be inspired or lose heart. It would appear that Reno became anxious then lost heart. I believe that moment destroyed his life. Hunk |
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Post by "Hunk" Papa on Nov 21, 2011 16:47:26 GMT -6
He certainly had restricted fields of fire once in the timber, that is a given. The main purveyors of the myth that there was ‘hundreds of the enemy in his rear’, were Reno himself and Moylan. Other witnesses begged to differ, so for example we have Gerard:
Q. State whether you saw any considerable number of Indians passing to the left and rear of Major Reno’s position before he left the woods, passing around to his left and rear.
A. All that I saw was from a one hundred and fifty to two hundred. A portion of the time, of course, I couldn’t see what was taking place when I was going from this point in the timber down to the right of the skirmish line.
Q. State whether that large body of Indians that you saw in the bottom had passed around Major Reno’s rear.
A. No, sir, I think not. It would have taken them a longer time to pass around the timber than it took me to go forty or fifty yards in the timber.
Q. How near did the Indians, or any of them, come to Major Reno’s command, before the skirmish line was moved into the timber?
A. I don’t think they had got within two or three hundred yards.
And Herendeen:
Q. Where were the Indians you saw?
A. They came around to our left and went into the timber. As there was no firing on the line they came closer and closer. There was firing from the line across towards the bluffs but it was long rifle range, and the Indians came riding around on the hills and in the bottom, about one third of the way from the “C” to “A” working in that way towards the timber, and when the fire of the troops ceased, they came straight across to the timber.
Q. How many did you see come in there?
A. Twenty or 25 and they were still coming when I rode into the timber. They did not come together but came straggling along.
Q. Were the men then on the skirmish line?
A. I could hear them firing. When I came out my attention was attracted by the Indians coming out. I could see them coming on the hills.
Q. In considerable numbers or not?
A. Scattering, not a great many.
Q. Did they continue to come in considerable numbers?
A. They did not seem to increase in number any.
Davern also spoke of Indians going to the rear in ones or twos, but all of this was happening AFTER the skirmish line had been withdrawn to the timber edge, handing the offensive to the Indians. Reno was not in the timber for any reason other than he had gone into it with most of G Company as a result of Wallace’s erroneous assertion that Indians were after the horses there. Reno never came out of the timber and my reply #78 in the Gobbledegook thread gives a fuller explanation. Here, it suffices to say that he had lost control of his command by so doing as subordinates were making imprudent decisions in his absence, hence the hasty withdrawal of the skirmish line.
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Post by "Hunk" Papa on Nov 21, 2011 16:53:13 GMT -6
I take everything that Hunk says very seriously and I do not think that his post above disappoints. It puts the finger on a very big problem. Thanks Q, I very much appreciate your comments. I have highlighted part of your above quote because it gets right to the heart of the matter and harks back to the point I was trying to make in the post to which you referred above. In 1876, after 10 years of post-CW fighting against the Plains Indian tribes, mostly with either success or perceived success when the tribesmen scattered before them, the U.S. Army did have an attitude about their enemy. It was an attitude fathered by disdain and mothered by arrogance that produced a bastard child called complacency. That child became so embedded in army thinking that it coloured the decisions of commanders in the field. We can see what Custer should perhaps have taken into consideration, but he was pre-conditioned to expect a village population, note, not a gathering of warriors only, to react in only one way, especially as anticipated that they would have had early warning of his approach. What Custer expected, was not that the Indians would prevail, but that they would make threatening sorties against his forces until the families had escaped. He might have been expecting a fight, but certainly not a battle. There is a big difference between the two. Richard: You anticipate on both offense and defense. On defense it is more the anticipation how do I catch the fly in the web. On offense it is more of if I do this he will do that, or possibly one of a number of thats, making the right choice, but anticipating the rest. A good example of the latter is El Caney, where Lawton moved around the San Juan Heights to remove a threat to the flank, thinking he could do it very quickly and rejoin the San Juan fight and add decisive weight to the battle. He moved with his division of over 7000 against about one tenth of that number of Spanish. He anticipated a retreat by the Spanish at best, and an easy fire fight at worst. He anticipated it would take a couple of hours. Instead he got a stand up fire fight lasting all day, sustained a great number of casualties, and left the forces in front of San Juan Heights to get pounded and pummelled. He anticipated one thing on offense when he should have planned for ALL of the what ifs. I do not disagree in general with what you have said, but again, I have highlighted a telling comment from your above post. Is it not true that in the heat of combat, decisions have to be made quickly? If so, was it possible in the example you give for Lawton to have had an overview of the entire scene of action on which to base a plan for all the what-ifs, short of a helicopter observer via radio? This is where I feel we are in the realm of hindsight wisdom as indeed we are, in my opinion, in some of the criticisms of Custer’s tactics at LBH. On the ground, at the time, knowing only what Lawton (or Custer) knew, would we have made a different choice? I could not agree more with regard to your remarks about the hostiles. They were caught flat-footed. At the risk of being pedantic, I would tend to change your description of ‘in the battle’ to ‘in the maneuvers,’ because to my mind, it was prior to actually fighting the Indians that the Custer Battalions lost the initiative. Thanks again. Hunk |
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Post by "Hunk" Papa on Nov 21, 2011 16:58:53 GMT -6
Boy, oh Boy. 1) This is probably going to cause a big ruckus. I keep hearing "most" of you guys say that they miscalculated how the Indians were going to react and they made a big mistake thinking the Indians would run. 2) That is just so wrong. The Indians did just exactly the things that were expected of them. The problem is the Cavalry are the ones that deviated from the expected to the unexpected and that let the Indians use the same tactics.......OPPORTUNITY.... 3) Indians are opportunistic fighters and they only used opportunistic situations to win this battle. Custer won at Washita. Did Elliot win at Washita? Elliot gave them an opportunity. And that is the same opportunity that Custer gave the Indians at the LBH. 4) Custer's plans were to charge the village. Yet no one charged the village. Reno did not charge the village, he pulled up short and dismounted. That is the end of the pressure on the camp. 4a) Custer heads north to charge the village, but instead of charging the village he deploys his troops on a ridge.....End of pressure on the Indians. No one is charging the village they are all sitting on hills. 5) So do you think Custer miscalculated the Indians or do you think that Custer over estimated the capabilities of the 7th? To me there is a big difference. 1) No ruckus Rosebud as you are absolutely entitled to your opinion. My opinion happens to differ but that is par for the course with this historical event. The entire Army command structure from Sherman to junior officers had no other belief but that the Indians would run given that opportunity. In his ‘Custer’s Last Battle’ Godfrey spells out precisely what the army thinking was on that subject. I have quoted the relevant passage in my Reply #236 on this thread. The point here is that it was an ingrained belief and accepted as the norm because of prior experience so far as approaching Indian villages were concerned. The LBH was unique and needs to be remembered as such. There was no doubt that on that one-off occasion the mood of the Indians was miscalculated but could not have been foreseen by any army force other than that of Crook who had experienced it first hand but did not see fit to warn anyone else. 2) Here again I cannot agree with you. The Cavalry approach was as usual for a daytime foray against a village expected to scatter. The 7th did nothing untoward as Custer manoeuvred until Reno beat his hasty retreat which greatly encouraged warriors already bolstered by their perceived victory over Crook. 3) The Indians definitely made the most of the opportunity handed to them by Reno which in turn had a knock on effect when the same warriors joined in the attack against Custer. But whilst Elliott at the Washita went off with a handful of men on a glory hunt, looked for trouble and found it, Custer at the LBH was making a reconnaissance in force to the northern fords when he was repulsed then obliged to retreat in the face of ever increasing enemy numbers. The two situations are not comparable. 4) You have a provocative debating style Rosebud. You state your opinions as if they are indisputable fact! Where is it recorded that Custer’s sole plan was to charge the village? If the whole purpose of the summer Expedition was to force the Indians to go to reservations, then charging the village could have scattered them like chaff. It seems to me that Custer was trying to ensure that he could end up with some hostages, an unlikely result if they scattered. You are right, no one did charge the village. Whether Reno was meant to charge the village is hard to establish as the description of the orders he received from Custer/Cooke vary from ‘charge, to ‘bring them to battle’ to ‘drive everything before you.’ In any case, Reno did not have sufficient men to make effective inroads into the village without finding himself with warriors at his back. I believe that he was meant to seriously threaten the southern end of the camps as a holding force and that the other two commands were to make their moves elsewhere. 4a) If your opinion is that Custer moved tamely from MTC to Battle Ridge, then he must have changed his natural character in a very short space of time. I do not think he did any such thing, did not hang about waiting for Benteen but made a move to the northern fords as described above. Obviously with Reno and Benteen sat on a hill, the Indians could all concentrate on Custer’s forces and at that point there was no pressure on them. 5) Neither. Custer could not be aware of a different than usual mood among the Indians so he therefore did not miscalculate what they would do. The majority of army regiments at that time overestimated their capabilities and the reason was very simple. The only enemies they had were Indians and if the white race considered itself superior to such people then the white army was by extension, superior to Indian warriors. |
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Post by "Hunk" Papa on Nov 21, 2011 17:04:36 GMT -6
DC. An excellent post, concise and to the point, which maybe more than mine will be. When one look at the number of topics that get discussed ad infinitum on these boards, posts that tend go on so long because people feel have various corners, or maybe theories they need to defend, which in turn tends to lead them to try and describe this or that individuals actions on the day as if those men had had the luxury of sitting back and taking time out to decide which was the best course to take. Likewise, those debates that are often about the main actors states of mind can never really be untangled because we have a totally different mind set to them, besides, I suspect the men themselves wouldn't have had a clue what they thought, being far too busy trying to survive rather than worry about whether history would judge whether they had made the right decision or not. It is often the simple things that get overlooked in these debates, your example of the problems that the warriors in a large village would have simply trying to get a mount is an obvious one, but it tells us far more about the way the battle unfolded than worrying about Reno's lack of courage on the day. Likewise your summary of Custer’s failure to act either quickly, or decisively enough. We can string together all the theories we like as to why he ended up where he did and when, but stand back and look at it objectively, if he was indeed making decisions after MTC--MTF, then they weren't very good ones given that they led; not only his own death and the men under his command, but to the death of those one would think he had a special interest in saving, namely family and friends. Shan David, I am a little surprised by some of your comments as I had thought that your correspondence with a late mutual friend of ours would have at least given you pause about what Custer was doing post-MTC. There is a big difference between his not doing anything and being prevented from doing what he had in mind. You comment as if he was the sole arbiter of what happened that day. I suggest that 2,000 plus Lakota and Cheyenne warriors had some influence on how things panned out. I am also astonished that you have picked up the baton of ‘trying to get mounts in a large village.’ The LBH was a unique situation. Nothing prior gave any intelligence that would have been of use to Custer, including the matter of horses. To say otherwise is to apply hindsight wisdom. I see it has been posited that there were two horse herds but there were actually five, including one on the eastern side of the river. Some were close enough for warriors to get to their horses others were not. Custer could not have known that many of the warriors were not keeping their favourite mounts close as they usually did. Boyer had told Lt. Bradley after the Reno scout that from the signs in the abandoned village sites, it was clear that the camps were prepared in defensive mode with horses inside the camp circles. There was no way of knowing if that was also true at the LBH camps as all that could be ascertained was that there were far too many horses to enclose all of them in the camp circles as the Crows had seen the large herd on the bench lands from the Crow’s Nest. Furthermore, the other poster’s suggestion that Killdeer Mountain was in any way similar to the LBH is ludicrous. Sully claimed that there were 5,000 or more warriors but the Indians’ estimate was lower. Sully had 2,200 men which included infantry as well as cavalry and howitzers. When Sully approached Killdeer the Indians were waiting for him there, mounted up ready to fight. Even if they had not already been mounted, there was plenty of time for them to collect their horses as before any fighting took place there was a parley at which agreement could not be reached. The fighting then commenced, mostly at long range and with effective use of the artillery. After about 5 hours Sully made his final advance, pounded the village with artillery fire and the Indians fled, leaving behind hundreds of tipis and other supplies, but tellingly, no horses. Hardly, I suggest, comparable with the LBH in any way. I am also sad that you appear to subscribe to the notion that we are all wasting our time discussing anything on this forum on the basis that there is nothing new to find. I would be surprised if any poster here truly believes that he or she is going to uncover something never revealed before, but I am quite certain that our discussions do from time to time lead us as individuals to make fresh adjustments to our prior beliefs. That in itself makes these boards a valuable asset, but if indeed they are a waste of time, then why does the promoter of that suggestion still continue to post? I had always considered that the message boards were not only for discussions of our pet subject but were also there to encourage those new to the subject to help them learn more. It must then, be a sad commentary on the viability of the boards, that we are told not to waste any more time on the subject and that in the process, a fresh young mind was recently driven away by scorn and ridicule. Sincerely, “Hunk” Papa (Gordon Richard) |
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Post by "Hunk" Papa on Nov 21, 2011 17:10:00 GMT -6
Thanks for the compliment Richard, but I fear that ‘plausible’ means that I am being damned with faint praise!
No, they were certainly not harmless, but taking the highlighted words out of the context of 1876 thinking gives them a martial resonance that was not intended then. ‘Brave’ and ‘warrior’ were used to differentiate those who did the fighting from the women, children and old people. They were not terms of either praise or respect. ‘Savage’ was even worse because it dehumanized them and justified the white feelings of superiority and God given right to prevail against such ‘creatures.’ This is in the same vein as ‘gooks’, ‘slants’ and ‘Charlie’ which were terms used in the Korean and Vietnam conflicts.
Well, I guess I should be pleased that you actually accept something I say! You misunderstand my meaning however, if you believe that I was using those descriptions to excuse what decisions Custer took, as in reality those terms were at the root of all army attitudes then and were the very reason they had little regard for the Indians as a fighting force.
In fact, Professor of Anthropology at Harvard, Richard Wrangham, in his paper, “Is Military Incompetence Adaptive?” draws attention to the prevalence of such attitudes in military conflicts. He states that positive illusions tend to promote victory. Soldiers suppress negative thoughts or feelings and tend to adapt to a strategy of self deception, which increases their intensity of violence. This leads them to have higher expectations of the outcome of fighting than are realistic – self-deception influenced by conditions such as the familiarity of the opponents and moral ideologies.
In other words, the army commanders in 1876 saw what their subconscious prejudices induced them to see, not the realities. Custer was no exception, but he was not in isolation.
What you say about the regiment is ideally true, but in the post-CW U.S. Army not practically achievable. We went over the shortcomings of the army of that period in the ‘Cavalry Training’ thread and the various reasons for those shortcomings so they need not be repeated here. The 7th Cavalry was no exception.
Your comment that “Emotional feelings towards the enemy should not have influenced the operational systems of the unit” is again the ideal, but again was not true in practice. In any case, we are not talking about emotional feelings toward the Indians, but mid-19th century white prejudices towards a supposed inferior race, which did, albeit unwittingly, influence the Indian fighting army’s attitude to their opponents.
In hindsight, what happened can be described either as an operational shambles as you say or the inevitable outcome of living with a closed mind mentality.
I hold no such view. Those are your words, not mine. My views were explained at length in my previous post, much of which you have chosen to ignore, but are further expounded here. I would also challenge your use of the word ‘battle.’ It is my contention that Custer was not expecting a battle. Some defense posturing from the warriors at best then the usual attempt to scatter. His thinking would not have been that he was as you put it, dissipating the regiment’s strength, but rather that he was utilizing his forces to achieve the best chance of the surround tactic most commonly used against Indian camps.
You could've been a contender ;D
Be with you again in due course.
Hunk
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Post by fred on Nov 21, 2011 19:11:00 GMT -6
"Charlie" was not a pejorative. It was a name we used instead of "Viet Cong" or "VC"; just a nickname, with no disrespect intended... at least not initially. Of course, one could turn the word "saint" into something demeaning. "Charlie" merely differentiated the VC from the North Vietnamese who we called "NVA" or "NVAs." The terms "gook" or "slant-eyes" were pejoratives. So was the term, "slopes," another word commonly used. I never heard "slants" (without "eyes" attached) until now.
Best wishes,
Fred.
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Post by El Crab on Nov 22, 2011 1:57:26 GMT -6
Victor Charlie. Just the phonetic alphabet. No more.
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