June 25
1876 The legendary Battle of the Little Big Horn occurs in southeastern Montana. On this date, in 1876, a large combined group of Cheyennes, Sioux, Arapaho and maybe even a few Metis, defeated an assault by the 7th Cavalry in southern Montana, resulting in the complete elimination of one prong of a split assault, and the retreat and desperate defense by two other elements of the command. The 7th's effort was part of a summer 1876 campaign on the northern plains, which had seen a the defeat of a combined unit of elements of the 2d & 3d Cavalry, 4th and 9th Infantry, and Crow and Shoshone scouts in southern Montana several days earlier. Both Plains Indians victories marked the high water mark, and the rapidly receding tide, of Indian power on the northern plains.
Little Big Horn is by far the most famous of American Indian battles, and almost defines them for the average person. It remains one of the most written about of all American historical events. It was a huge shock to the American psyche at the time, and resulted in the Army being expanded by 2,500 men for Plains service.
In terms of actual casualties, the 7th suffered about 52 percent casualties of the force that was deployed, in a battle that saw fighting at widely separated points, several miles distant, including 16 officers and 242 enlisted men killed. One officer and 51 enlisted men survived the battles with wounds. The battle is mostly remembered due to the fact that the every man in Custer's immediate command was killed, which makes up the bulk of the casualties. This may be a bit unfair, as it somewhat discounts the effective defense put up by Reno and Benteen's men in a separate location.
Of interest, 22% of the 7th Cavalry was detached prior to the expedition on other duties, a fairly common occurrence. 166 men and officers therefore were not present on the campaign, and missed the battle.
Some may wonder why I have included this even in a Wyoming daily history blog, as I included an item about Colorado's Sand Creek Massacre yesterday, but these are all regional events, which had an enormous impact on Wyoming at the time. For the Indians in particular, the territorial borders did not exist.
The battle remains the greatest single defeat, and the greatest single loss of life in a single battle, in the post 1865 Indian Wars. It is not, however, the U.S. Army's worst day during the long struggle with Native Americans. That day was the Battle of the Wabash in 1791 in which the Northwestern Confederacy of Native Americans decisively defeated the U.S. Army with the Army loosing 656 men to the Natives 21 in spite of the forces being evenly matched. It was by some measures the worst day in American military history.
This is also the most written about even in American military history of all time. Only the Battle of the Bulge and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor rival it, which shows what a major psychologic impact it had on American culture and historical memory. There are, of course, a number of reasons for that which remain worth considering for a number of reasons.
To start off with the battle was, of course, a major shock at the time that it occurred, although it was no unprecedented. Fetterman's detachment being wiped out on December 21, 1866 outside of Ft. Phil Carney provided an earlier example which its always temping to draw analogies too. That particular battle, which resulted in the loss of 81 soldiers and armed civilians at the hands of some of the same combatants, and at the hands of the same tribes, actually had a more dire immediate effect on the survivors in that the post was so remote it was in serious danger of being overrun, had the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho bothered to attempt it, which they did not. 81 men, of course, is considerably less than 242.
A big part of the shock was due to the early press reporting. In spite of the Fetterman Fight, the press and the public was not prepared for such a singular defeat at the hands of Plains Indians, even though Custer's detached command was considerably outnumbered at the time of the attack. Custer was thought of as a real Indian Fighter, which he in fact was not, and the result was nearly inconceivable, resulting in a lot of fanciful speculation. To add to this the surviving officers had a built in incentive not to be responsible for what occurred, and indeed in the 7th Cavalry's case, they really were not. That didn't keep, however, some from trying to blame them just as Custer was elevated to an absolute hero. As time went on it was fairly clear to the U.S. Army what had happened, even if it wasn't necessarily to civilian writers. Early histories, moreover, assumed a level of knowledge about certain things, particularly horses, that later historians lacked, resulting in both of them omitting them. All of this contributed to a sense of romantic mystery that endures to the present day.
Evan as that mystery has endured, however, Custer became a symbol for the entire American effort against the Native Americans, from 1620 through Wounded Knee, a fact that his peculiar character lent itself to. Hated by many of his men, and detested by many of his fellow 7th Cavalry officers, he made a ready and easy scapegoat that further allowed some historians to assign personal blame to him for what occurred on this day in 1876.
In truth, what occurred at Little Big Horn is really obvious if a person is actually familiar with the conditions of frontier campaigning, which unfortunately many of the post 1930 or so historians have not been.
Alfred Terry had detached Custer's command on June 22, 1876, because it was a cavalry command and he needed a force to cover vast distances quickly. Cavalry suited that purpose. But even as it did, it was saddled with certain distinct limitations, the most pronounced being the very thing that gave it mobility, the horse.
American cavalrymen, like European cavalrymen, and the cavalrymen of ever modern army (and yes this was a modern army) assigned one mount per man. Officers often had a second. This was not, it might be noted, the historical norm. Mongols, for example, had multiple mounts per man.
In fact, Native Americans had multiple mounts per man. And so did cowboys when working cattle, in spite of what the movies may have falsely told us. The cowboy norm was seven mounts per man. The Native American situation depended upon his personal wealth, often measured in horses, but to be an effective warrior he needed more than one. Indeed, the entire culture of horse raiding is explained by this.
The reason for this is that horses "break down". In a campaign, at first, this is not a factor. But by June 21, 1876, when Custer's command was detached, his troopers, and their horses, had been in the field for weeks. By that time the horses were undoubtedly fatigued.
Moreover, American cavalrymen were mounted on American Horses, big cavalry mounts that were strong and adept at covering ground, but also horses bread for more temperate conditions. In the East, there was always plenty of feed, but that was not true in the West. As a result, horses "broke down" quickly. Once a mount "broke down", a cavalryman was converted into a foot soldier for the rest of the campaign, attached to the baggage train.
The Army was well aware of this problem and studied it constantly One solution was to pick up local mounts, like those the Indians were using, and like those used by cowboy. "Range horses" were really ponies, but were tough and acclimated to their conditions. Like any horse, they would break down, but they'd endure much more than American Horses would. In some commands cavalry units going West swapped out American Horses for Range Horses, much like Marines deploying to combat during part of the Vietnam War swapped their M16s for M14s.
The Army had also long attempted to address this by severely limiting the weight load of a horse. Cavalrymen themselves were limited in height and weight. They were short, generally not being taller than 5'6", and the were light, generally not weighing more than 140 lbs. The McClellan saddle they used was very light weight. They carried very little. Even at that, however, they were faced with the problem of horse fatigue.
Indeed, while cavalry was critical, the problems it faced were so severe that at one point one Army commander lobbied for only having infantry. That was extreme, but it shows the difficulty that could exist. In contrast, Crook routinely mounted his infantry on the pack trains mules, mounting them on the mules, a double tough animal that wasn't as fast as a horse, but which was faster than walking, and saved fatigue on the nervous infantryman.
On walking, cavalrymen walked a lot in order to save their horses. This differed greatly from the native practice. Natives in transit didn't walk at all.
The Cheyenne, Sioux and Arapaho, in contrast to the Army, had all Range Horses and large numbers of them. This avoided the problems noted above, but in a camp of this size, it meant that they had to move every few days as they'd wipe out the forage. Ultimately, they couldn't keep a camp this size together at all.
Custer's command spent the night of June 24 in the Wolf Mountains. At 3:00 a.m. his scouts climbed a peak called "the Crow's Nest" and at first light, 5:00 a.m. they sighted it. It was 15 miles distant. The 7th Cavalry started its advance on the camp at 8:00, an hour after Custer was informed of the camp's presence. It took the 7th Cavalry four hours to cover the ground. Once the command departed at 8:00, it was committed to action, albeit with no plan in place, as the risk of the natives detecting the dust of the huge number of horses was too great not to advance to conclusion.
At noon Custer's command had a good view of a portion of the camp and he divided his command, detailing Maj. Reno to hit what would have been the left flank, from his prospective.
This brings up a couple of things that need to be addressed in any discussion of the battle. One thing is that there was no reconnaissance of the position being attacked whatsoever. This probably isn't surprising, however, even though reconnaissance was a function of cavalry. Once committed at 8, as noted, the command was committed and there was no choice but to go forward.
But was committing itself a mistake. Terry suggested, but did not command, that Custer wait for Gibbons and Terry to advance from the north. The location of Terry and Gibbon, however, was completely unknown, and it was clear to all that a large camp would move. Native camps, moreover, were notoriously able to move without being detected. Custer had some justification for attacking when he could. By the same token, however, shadowing the camp, was a bit of an option, although the longer the cavalry was nearby the greater the risk that it would be attacked itself. Custer's decision, therefore, was not unreasonable.
Added to that, Custer did not really have very much experience in Indian warfare. Nobody in the post Civil War Army did. There had been men with vast frontier fighting experience n the Army prior to the Civil War, but the war had consumed them in one form or another, and they were not the field commanders of the post Civil War Army. Custer had campaigned against natives before, but those campaigns had been largely ineffectual with no trace of the natives being found. The exception was Washita in 1868 which had been a near disaster and a moral travesty.
Custer had, of course, a lot of Civil War experience. Every officer in his command did. That, however, was not particularly useful on the plains.
The second part of this is that once the location of the camp was determined, Custer had a choice of hitting it from one side, with a unified command, or trying to effectively surround it, and hit from both sides. He opted for that latter option. In theory, that was a good decision, but it depended on the right flank being found and hit with no reconnaissance.
Once the decision was made, it took from noon until 3:00 for Reno's troops to charge the village. He hit alone, with Custer's command detached and its location unknow to Reno. It's known now that Custer personally advanced down to the river several times to try to determine where to hit the Indian village, only to find that he was not yet on its edge. It took Custer an hour to find a location to attempt to charge the camp.
All of this means that as this was occurring the entire command was mounted on horses that were fatigued to start with. During the last phase of the operation horses would have been kept at a fast gait the entire time. From something like 2:30 until 4:00 every mount in the command was at a canter or faster.
Reno's charge immediately stalled out and he was forced to have his troops dismount and fight a defensive action from 3:00 to 3:40, at which point the survivors retreated in the hills, to be later joined by Benteen who was bringing up the pack train. This means that Custer actually committed his command after Reno had already retreated. The native camp covered an expanse of three miles. not a great distance, but a difficult one for cavalrymen because of it hilly terrain, where as the Sioux and Cheyenne were on the flat river bottom. The native combatants, mounted on fresh mounts, were able to cover the distance from Reno's failed retreat to Custer's new charge in no time. Reno in contrast was effectively immobilized, in spite of later criticism that he should have attempted to ride to Custer's aid. In reality, he could not have and that would have resulted in the elimination of his command as well.
Custer's command was destroyed over a period of an hour, much longer than popularly imagined, with a huge volley of fire being heard at one point. The last of his troops were overrun at about 5:30. Native combatants thereafter drifted back to where Reno was to take potshots at his dug in troops. They kept it up all the next day until they decamped and departed the night of June 26.
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