Battle of the Little Big Horn...................

[John Kuhns]

True. Custer thought the guns would slow down his advance up the Little Big Horn and he did not want that burden.

[JBinIll]

True. Custer thought the guns would slow down his advance up the Little Big Horn and he did not want that burden.

When discussing Custer and the Gatlings at Little Big Horn you have to consider two things.One,the Gatlings were mounted on field carriages like artillery pieces pulled by a limber and horses.Two,the terrain.How usefull would they have been in the terrain around the Little Big Horn area with the broken ground encountered?Custer rightly determined that the ground was unsuitable for there deployment and trying to keep up with a mobile fast moving Cavalry operation would have been impossible.A horse and rider can move across ground that a carriage mounted piece cannot.

A lot of recent acheological evidence also points to the Native Americans being far better armed with cartridge and repeating firearms than has been speculated until recently as another contributing factor in Custer's defeat.

[John Kuhns]

There is a good book about Crook's fight in the Rosebud which was the prelude to the Battle of the Little Big Horn. I believe it is titled "Into the Rosebud" loaned by a friend of mine a couple years ago. Another book, written in the 20s, which he also loaned but I cannot remember the title was based in part on historical accounts obtained from interviews with Sioux warriors who participated in the battle. It too is a good read and very thorough in its analysis.

Yes, the even the books I reference also mention the Indians were far better armed than the Army expected. Crook discovered this much to his dismay 8 days prior to Custer.

[John Sukey]

Funny, the army had no trouble hauling mountain howitzers around on broken ground. Even ONE gatling gun could have made the difference.
But then, Custer had a high opinion of himself. For that matter, he should not even have been there as he was still under sentence of Court martial for abandoning several men in his hurry to "get home to Libby"

[Festus39]

It should also be noted that Custer turned down an offer to command the 9th, and that both the 9th and 10th had lower desertion rates than the pride of the Army 8th US Infantry.

Not hard to figure out the lower desertion rate. A deserting white soldier could blend in with the other whites on the frontier and assume another life.
A deserting black soldier on the frontier would stand out from the others. He would also be giving up regular food, clothing,camaraderie,and very likely more status than he ever had in his life.
Festus

[JBinIll]

Funny, the army had no trouble hauling mountain howitzers around on broken ground. Even ONE gatling gun could have made the difference.

There was a large difference in the carriages and deployment of the M1841 Mountain Howitzer and the Gatling gun.The Mountain Howitzer had small diameter wheels and a wider track width than the Gatling.It used a redesigned Prairie Carriage for transport by pack animal or pulled by a single animal using shafts attached to the gun.They still upset crossing rough ground while being pulled as evidenced by field reports one being at Big Hole,Montana in 1877.

The Gatling carriage at the time was similiar to full size artillery carriages towed by a limber.Period pictures show the wheels as being as high as a mans shoulders.Tactical deployment at the time was similiar to deployment of field pieces.

One Gatling gun would have had little if any effect in my opinion.Custer split his command up and when attacked dismounted and fought on foot against a mobile mounted enemy over broken ground where it wouldn't have been hard to avoid or overun a gun in a fixed location or caught in the process of limbering up to move.There was no "last stand" like those heroic Budweiser advertising pictures you used to see in the taverns.Archeological forensic evidence from the shell casings found on the battlefield shows Custer's men were running for their lives and were for the most part run down in detail and killed by a mounted enemy while afoot after dismounting to fight.Add to that he was outnumbered about three to one with half the attackers armed with firearms and half that number thought or shown to be armed with repeating rifles of one sort or another and his goose was cooked from the outset mostly due to his ego and glory hunting.

[John Sukey]

Reinforces my statement that Custer had a very high opinion of himself. If he had only waited for Terry, but no he wanted all the glory, "Them injuns always ran away before" Only this time he wasn't facing Black Kettle, so he IGNORED the information from his scouts.

[Bill D]

No doubt about it, Custer was a bold Indian fighter. But then Custer had been a bold Confederate fighter also. In Mr. Lincoln's army, cautious generals didn't last long.
Yes, Custer's experience on the plains was that the Indian would probably rather flee than stand to anything other than overwelming odds in his favor. Custer's experience was gained, not only at Wa$hita but in other skirmishes with the Cheyenne and Sioux and as a matter of fact, was correct - Indian tactics dictated that flight was much preferable. Especially if the family was involved.
Custer had no knowledge of a couple of very important facts. First, of course, was the whipping that was dealt to Crook's southern column at the Rosebud a few days earlier, and second was a lack of intel as to the whereabouts of Terry's column. Custer felt, in the absence of information, that he had to strike to keep the tribes from again fleeing. His largest mistake was in dividing his command into three parts prior to attacking the village. With Reno attacking the lower end of the village, the initial inclination of the Indians was to flee. In fact, their ferocious attack on Reno was for the purpose of getting their women and children time to escape. Custer's attack on the upper end of the villiage blocked this from happening and forced the combined tribes to fight.
It wasn't just Black Kettle who might have chosen to flee, the Indians camped on the Greasy Grass River would also have run if Custer hadn't forced them to stop and fight.

[Bill D]

Funny, the army had no trouble hauling mountain howitzers around on broken ground. Even ONE gatling gun could have made the difference.
But then, Custer had a high opinion of himself. For that matter, he should not even have been there as he was still under sentence of Court martial for abandoning several men in his hurry to "get home to Libby"

And where would Custer have deployed his one Gatling? At the lower end of the vilage where Reno was barely able to get his butt accross the river and up the bluff to Reno's Hill. If you've ever been on the ground there, you would see it was not a good place to set up a Gatling - especially in the face of a whole damned bunch of very angry Indians. Reno is very lucky to have saved as much of his command as he did.
If Custer had taken his Gatling along with his command, he would have found himself trying to deploy it in the middle of the river where he first met resistance. There was no time to deploy it until he reached his final stand and by that time his command was so scattered and disorganized as to have made no difference.

By the way, Custer was at the Big Horn, not because of leaving troops to go home to Libby (That was an entirely different time and in Kansas). He was returning from Washington where he had foolishly gone to testify against the President's brother in a post sutler controversy. President Grant was a whole bunch pissed at Custer.

[Bill D]

Bob -

Thanks for posting the letters and etc. by your relative that was a member of the 7th at the Big Horn engagement. If I might add a few points, the frontier cavalryman was an interesting specimen. He was one of the most neglected fighters in our entire existence. As late as the 1876 date of the Custer debacle, frontier troops were still being issued Civil War surplus clothing, tack, and even rations. All of which had been furnished by wartime profiteers bent on screwing Uncle Sam at every turn. The uniforms were cut too small, much of the tack was substandard and the food was either spoiled or infested with weavels or maggots.
At the time of your relative's photo, he would have been issued a dress uniform with helmet. He would also have been issued garrison uniforms, stable clothes and for campaign, he wore his old and worn out clothing, sutler purchased hats and whatever else he could scrounge that was useful. Custers army on campaign looked more like a group of mounted bums than a fighting force. The only thing that he took a lot of pride in and cared for very well was his horse. If his horse developed a problem that would keep him from being ridden, the poor trooper walked and cavalry boots were not made for walking.
A good book to read on this subject is one by Don Rickey entitled "Forty Miles A Day On Beans and Hay". I guarantee it will give you a whole new respect for our frontier army.