Is there a good map of Reno's timber?

[Dark Cloud]

I've said as much, Mr. Harris. I have no basis for debating Varnum, and tend to believe the officers anyway for the reasons you say we should. I think you've misunderstood me, possibly because after years of this it begins to feel like one long argument to me and I assume you've read it all, which is silly on my part.

I don't think the firearms issue is important at all, actually, and those who find it so are trying to fabricate a reason for Custer's fiasco that doesn't involve Custer. And when I mention - after reading long explanations of ballistics and rapidity of fire - we don't even know what his regiment's primary ammo was, if found cases were in the battle or salted later, and say that it's a grand suspension of thought to conclude that any cartridge not Army issue or Custer's found on the field must have been fired by Sioux during a 2 hour period in 1876, and that no amount of noodling the phrasing or evidence can make it so, people get annoyed.

And, not to be Captain Bringdown, supply orders wouldn't do it. I think Varnum and Sgt. Ryan mention that cavalry traded ammo with infantry with the same ease that soldiers traded assignments, so it'd be almost impossible. Which is what I mean about the prissyness of getting all that info - the papperwork of orders and distribution - because in the end, it means nothing in solving the issue of who had what ammo, whose shoulders were numb from firing it, and what were they thinking firing so far away.

[markland]

DC wrote:

"Push to shove, it turns out we don't actually know what powder load the 7th mostly carried and used, yet on various boards great detail about trajectory and range and such are discussed and how the carbine could have affected the battle. I'd think knowing the load would be necessary for such discussions, but I'm a civvie. Some authors use .45/55 for all carbine cases, some .45/70."

DC, you stated "...the powder load the 7th mostly carried and used...," not whether a handful of troopers for some unknow reason ($$?) traded with infantry for their cartridges. To fulfill your original request, it is necessary to look at the minutiae of annoying supply invoices. Not that it would make any difference except to the poor slob's shoulder who was using the .45-70 in his carbine.

But, all in all, I happen to agree with you that the arms carried by the cavalry on June 25th were not the difference makers.

[Dark Cloud]

What request?

Varnum was under the impression that most had the 70 grain load, or that's my impression from his piece in Graham, where he notes the zing of the heavier loads coming his way. As I read it. Again: I have no clue.

[markland]

darkcloud said:

What request?

Varnum was under the impression that most had the 70 grain load, or that's my impression from his piece in Graham, where he notes the zing of the heavier loads coming his way. As I read it. Again: I have no clue.

Sorry, I thought you were looking for factual information regarding the ammunition that the majority, if not all, of the troopers were issued. Thanks for the clarification! You saved me about twenty bucks and several hours of looking at old ordnance depot letters received trying to find bill of lading numbers for shipments of ordnance supplies to Ft. Abraham Lincoln as well as the time and hassle of filling out the correct form to order the materials from WDC.

Be good and try not to terminally P.O. too many people!

Billy

[Dark Cloud]

Apologies; never occured to me that I'd be responsible for money and/or time spent.

Varnum doesn't seem to be under the impression that only a handful of soldiers had the 70 load. I believe he said "we" took 70 (don't know if he meant his company or his scouts or what...) and he assumed the others had as well, buttressed by the zing rather than zip story from Sioux with Custer guns. My point, thought, is that even if you obtain the paperwork on what was issued, it isn't necessarily indicative of what anyone carried, shot, or used that day.

Understand, I'm not demeaning that research at all, although I'm very surprised it hadn't been done years ago by the gun enthusiasts, especially those who posit the carbine as key in some manner to Custer's defeat. I'm merely pointing out that it wouldn't, given Varnum's opinion, actually prove anything. And because I see in all the post Scott/Fox related works definitive statements that cases found were .45/55 or .45/70, I use it as a handy illustrative example of prissy precision in description covering for lack of actual knowledge. Nobody, in my memory, has described on the page the cartridges as 'either' one or the other, but AS one or the other, and the repetition of detail in this and other areas gives the unwary the impression there is more known and settled than there could ever possibly be.

If you know the make, date of manufacture, and actual artisan who made a knife found in the vicinity of a skeleton with cut marks on the bone that are not incompatable with the blade of the knife, and if you can spin plausible tales about metal work, and demonstrate great and detailed knowledge about the dental fillings, and if you can further inundate with detail not really relevant, the unwary - say a jury - might not realize that that even though it's possible the accused had such a knife at one time, there is nothing connecting the corpse, the knife, and the accused whatsoever.

All I'm saying. And when applied to the Custer fiasco, many of the same issues apply, and if uncontested, serve as supporting 'evidence' in other investigations in history. It builds and becomes conventional wisdom, and as such I think it dangerous.

I think the assumption that any 1876 or pre-1876 cases not cavalry issue (or matched to known weapons of Custer or a few others) found on the field must be definitively Indian and used in the battle to be absurd on its face, given so much post 1876 detritus as yet unexplained. Wouldn't any plausible explanation for the post items, especially the cases, also logically apply to a certain amount of the items now considered part of the battle?

Well, yes. But more and more, the archaeology is being quoted and passed down as having solved issues it really has not.

[fred]

darkcloud said:

But more and more, the archaeology is being quoted and passed down as having solved issues it really has not.

Agreed, but archeology & its advocates have never-- in my knowledge-- claimed they have solved these issues. They have merely postulated workable & plausible scenarios. It is the less learned & more impassioned enthusiasts who grab these theories & suddenly claim them to be de rigueur. The same thing has happened to John Gray's work. Even though it has never been fully subjected to critical analysis, it is now deemed the standard, as far as "time" goes. Another example of how this continues is in Greg Michno's Lakota Noon. Michno clearly states (well, maybe not so clearly) that he is only using Gray's timing analysis as a template in which to organize & fit his various Indian movements, yet he is now automatically thrown into the Gray camp as far as timing is concerned. When most people criticize Gray, they unfairly include Michno. A close reading of Michno, however, points out some 30+ instances that claim the battle started in the "noon" time-frame, not some time after 3pm.

Best wishes,
Fred.

[q]

Fred "Agreed, but archeology & its advocates have never-- in my knowledge-- claimed they have solved these issues."

Why then did you state the reverse on another thread here?

It is obvious that your knowledge of rivers, streams, oceans, artifacts, wrecks and the like is right up there w/ your knowledge of the LBH & Custer moving 5 companies to Ford B to attack, paying no attention to the archeological evidence that says otherwise.

[Dark Cloud]

It's not the Scott's and Fox's who overclaim. Just read the stuff on this board and others. We're told this troop went here or there and did something before something else happened. Based on what? Well, the interpretation of the archaeology, by which is meant granting import to the few casings found, now elevated each year more into fact by repetition. Buttressed by Indian "accounts" which are iffy to the extreme.

Grey's work hasn't been subject to "critical analysis" because those who want to prove him wrong fear they cannot and won't risk the public humiliation after the huge buildup. There are too many links to break. That's what annoys people, and they've yapped around his ankles for 16 years or so, implying error, never proving it. I don't agree with him about a lot of his conclusions, but as he says a five (or ten?) minute difference here and there doesn't ipso facto fail his matrix.

A close reading of Michno also reveals many things, mostly about Michno. "Noon" is not a term Indians would use, one. They might say midday, or a midday meal, or indicate where they recall the sun, which their translators (does Michno list the translators for his supposed Indian testimony?) might term noon, correctly or not. Or it might mean the middle of their day from wake up to dark, which could make it anytime in the afternoon, or just mean a period on either side of the sun's high point to cover a period of hours. Linear time (linear measurement of any sort, they gave distances in terms of day parts needed....) was not a prominent part of nomadic life, and we ought not to assumed direct word equivilances.

Or, they could be as wrong as anyone else under trauma and stress, but you cannot automatically assume they meant 12 noon. Also, many of these tales were collected many years after the battle, and people tend to meld stories so they don't conflict living in closed communities. To base anything on Indian stories is dubious.

Recall, their count of the dead was over 400, supposedly. Quantifying was not a strength of their society.

In the Ward Churchill investigation last month, Russell Means (and others) told the committee that when he was young he was told by a grandmother not to cooperate with anthropologists. He's not that old, but the well based suspicion of whites among the Sioux, and the carefully chosen words of those Indians who recalled 1876 has to lessen their instant believability.

Evan Connell's SOTMS was purposely referred to, by the committee, as having fictionalized content (Churchill tried to blame Connell for a falsehood), and it's all part of a campaign of counter-revisionism about the history of the American West. Solidifying a Last Stand and the Custer as Roland motif would be considered a victory.

[markland]

DC, is that Churchill investigation on-line anywhere? It seems like it might be entertaining reading.

Thanks,

Billy

[Dark Cloud]

Markland,

Rather than try to paste it here, emailed my download to you as I could not find it today on the 9News site. Probably up somewhere.

[Diane Merkel]

Give it a rest, Suzy Q.

Grown men can learn from very little children for the hearts of the little children are pure.

Yes, you are a child, but your heart is not pure.

Fair warning, One Tin Soldier.

[crzhrs]

Aha . . . that's who it is. One Tin Soldier is someone I have heard/seen of before. Can't remember what the posts were and where . . . but the name is ringing bells loudly . . .

[Diane Merkel]

There are a couple of others also, one of which will be very familiar.

[Dark Cloud]

Now, are those IP numbers handy and edifying or what?

[Diane Merkel]

;D ;D ;D