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Post by yarnnelg on Mar 19, 2020 19:59:15 GMT -6
i was looking for information on the condition of Custer's body as a self interest pursuit. This site elevated my interest tremendously. Having been on the battlefield three times and actively hunted in the area, the comments increased my desire to seek learned answers to questions I have long sought information on pertaining to tactics and outcomes on the battlefield. I trust my questions will satisfy my hunger for something that resembles a near truth.
I am a retired Product Sales Manager who worked in the electric utility industry. The oldest of three military brats. I reside in Alabama, home of my mother, father and Grandparents. We all went to Auburn, where our Grandfather coached football with Shug Jordan. He was responsible for recruiting and coaching the 1957 National Championship team.
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Post by Colt45 on Mar 19, 2020 20:45:13 GMT -6
Welcome to the site. Always glad to see a new member.
The reports were that Custer's body was not mutilated as were many of the others. Whether this is true or not is unknowable. Many feel that the tale of Custer not being mutilated was created for the sake of Libby, and for preserving the image of Custer as the gallant hero fighting on. You can imagine how his image would change if it were known he were cut up as badly as his brother Tom was.
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Post by crzhrs on Mar 20, 2020 8:36:50 GMT -6
It's hard to imagine that Custer's body wasn't in the same condition as many other soldiers when found. All the dead on/near Custer Hill had been lying in the sun and heat for 2 days. There were battle wounds, insects, scavengers and more than likely mutilations.
Godfrey in a letter to Cyrus Brady stated an arrow was inserted into Custer's penis.
Since LSH was near the Cheyenne village and Custer was rumored to have relations with a Cheyenne woman the Cheyenne may have taken revenge on him. It was also stated that Cheyenne women punctured Custer's eye drums with sewing awls so he could hear better in the next life after they told him not to attack the Cheyenne again.
Regardless of the stories by the Cheyenne Custer's remains would have been in terrible condition.
I agree that the condition of his remains were covered up not only to protect Libby but to protect the Custer image. It was bad enough Custer and his entire command was wiped out but to have his body chopped up and disfigured would have been to much for the country to bear.
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Post by noggy on Mar 21, 2020 4:58:26 GMT -6
Welcome!
Well, it has never been universally claimed that very single other corpse was mutilated. Custer might just have been...lucky (not really) in not being mutilated or just mildly mutilated, like a receiving a few cuts and having a fingertip removed. Had he been severely mutilated, it would have been kept from the press and Libby. But wouldn`t any of the soldiers who saw the body have noted something about it in their private recollections like diaries or whatever which were never meant to be shown to journalists etc? There is a story that Custer was found with a arrow stuck up his penis. I do believe Godfrey told it, and he was there. Pretty sure Libby went through life never hearing about that. Perhaps there just was some sort of gentleman`s agreement to never fully describe the state of their regimental leader? If even Benteen never wrote about it, I guess we`ll never know.
All the best, Noggy
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Post by fred on Mar 21, 2020 8:14:25 GMT -6
i was looking for information on the condition of Custer's body as a self interest pursuit. This may help... Gibbon, J., COL—Custer “was lying in a perfectly natural position… and, we were told, was not at all mutilated, and that, only after a good deal of search the wounds of which he died could be found.” Roe, Charles F., 2LT— Roe claimed Custer and nine men and officers were found lying behind their horses on a high point of the ridge. Sheridan, M. V., LTC—Custer and his officers were found on “a rough point or narrow ridge not wide enough on top to drive a wagon on. It was not a position where successful resistance could be made. Across that ridge were five or six horses apparently in line, and looked as though they had been killed for the purposes of resistance….” McClernand, E., LT—2C—“Custer’s body must have lain as high as the top of the monument now is.” Adams, J., PVT—H—"General Custer had two wounds, one in the right side of the breast, the other in the left temple above the eye. The blood was still oozing from the wound and running down his face [on June 27] and, his mustache being turned into his mouth, the blood coursed through the mouth and out at the lower side. He was not scalped nor his body mutilated in any way except one cut in his thigh, about four inches in length, which evidently had been made after the General’s death. The body was naked save only for stockings." Custer was stripped naked except for his socks. There was also an eight-inch gash, “clear to the bone,” in his left thigh.
Edgerly, W. S., LT—GAC, TWC, and Cooke lay at the highest point of the ridge. Only a few dead on top of ridge. Custer’s body was naked, but not mutilated. He had cut his hair short before he started on the march.
Pickard, E., PVT—F—“Custer was not scalped. You will see pictures of Custer’s last stand in which Custer is represented as having long hair, but this is a mistake. His hair had been cut just before starting on the campaign, a few weeks before."
Windolph, C. A., PVT—H—“Custer was lying a trifle to the southeast of the top of the knoll—where the monument is today. I stood six feet away holding Captain Benteen’s horse while he identified the General. His body had not been touched, save for a single bullet hole in the left temple near the ear, and a hole on his left breast. He looked almost as if he had been peacefully sleeping. His brother Tom lay a few feet away. He was terribly mutilated.” GAC was the only body not mutilated.
Hammon, J., CPL—G—“Custer was shot through [the] head in left ear, through left breast [and] through right forearm.” Helped bury GAC. Hammon was also one of the men who signed GAC’s life insurance papers.
Porter, H. R.—Doctor—“We found Custer’s body stark naked and clean as a baby’s. He was shot in the head and breast…. I cut a lock of hair from the head of each officer and gave it to their families on our return home.”
Godfrey, E. S., LT—Fred Gerard had preceded the troops to the killing field. “He found the naked bodies of two soldiers, one across the other and Custer’s naked body in a sitting posture between and leaning against them, his upper right arm along and on the topmost body, his right forearm and hand supporting his head in an inclining posture like one resting or asleep. There was no sign for the justification of the theory, insinuation or assertion that he committed suicide.” Custer had been shot in the left temple and the left breast. “There were no powder marks or signs of mutilation.”
O'Neill, T., PVT—G—“I was a member of the party that buried General Custer.... I do not suppose Custer was in exactly the position where he fell when we found him, for he had been stripped naked, not even a stocking on. The last stand was made on what we call a ‘hogback hill.’ It appeared to me that the General had been placed by the warriors in a comfortable position, his head higher than his feet, lying on his back, arms by his side, features calm, without any distortion. One bullet wound on the body and one through the temples were visible. The wound on the body seemed to enter on the left side, a little behind and below the left breast, the bullet traveling between the back and breastbone, and coming out on the right side near the lower ribs. This wound was apparently made by an Indian on horseback, while the General was on foot. The other wound was squarely through the temples, and from the absence of powder marks, left no doubt in my mind that it was inflicted by an Indian on foot, and on the same level as the General."
"There was not anyone in the burial party who thought the General shot himself. Nearly all other officers and soldiers were scalped; also the bodies were slashed with knives.”
Goldin, T., PVT—G—Goldin saw Custer’s body on June 27. He thought a smaller caliber ball than a .45 made the wounds. “There were no powder marks about the wounds at all…”
Gerard, Fred—Said Custer’s body was on the side of the hill, shot through the head behind the temple.
From Evan Connell/Benteen, F., CPT—"[Custer] lay just south or southwest of the monument. He had been shot twice: in the left side beneath the heart and in the left temple. Either would have been fatal, but he probably was killed by the shot in the side because this wound was bloody. The hole in his temple was clean, a shot meant to guarantee that he was not feigning death. There was also a wound in his right forearm, but this might have been caused by the bullet emerging from his body. Benteen, who took a close look, did not think the wounds were caused by .45 caliber bullets, so it seems likely that he was hit the first time from some distance by a Henry rifle or a Winchester."
Ryan, J., 1SG—M—Custer was not scalped.
Kanipe, D., SGT—C— Custer had been stripped of his clothes. Custer was shot in the left breast, near his heart, a single shot.
Wallace, G. D., LT— Around Custer, “[f]our or five of them [the men] were piled up in a heap beside a horse and the body of General Custer was lying rather across one of the men…. They had struggled but I do not think for any great length of time. They had apparently tried to lead the horses in a circle on the point of the ridge and had killed them there and apparently made an effort for a final stand.”
Logan, Wm.—Montana column scout— Logan claimed he was one of five men tasked with burying George Custer. He said Custer had two wounds: one in the left side [… correct…] and one in the right temple [… not correct]. The side of his face was badly powder burned. Logan said, Custer was “stripped naked, scalped, mutilated, and with more arrows sticking in him than in the body of any other man on the battlefield, with the possible exception of that of his brother….”
Best wishes, Fred.
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