Today In Wyoming's History: Battle of the Rosebud Battlefield, Montana.

Today In Wyoming's History: Battle of the Rosebud Battlefield, Montana.: 

Battle of the Rosebud Battlefield, Montana.

The Battle of the Rosebud was an important June 1876 battle that came, on June 17, just days prior to the Battle of the Little Big Horn.  Fought by the same Native American combatants, who crossed from their Little Big Horn encampment to counter 993 cavalrymen and mule mounted infantrymen who had marched north from Ft. Fetterman, Wyoming, at the same time troops under Gen. Terry, including Custer's command, were proceeding west from Ft. Abraham Lincoln.  Crook's command included, like Terry's, Crow scouts, and he additionally was augmented soon after leaving Ft. Fetterman by Shoshoni combatants.

The battlefield today is nearly untouched.

Called the Battle Where the Sister Saved Her Brother, or the Battle Where the Girl Saved Her Brother, like Little Big Horn, it was a Sioux and Arapaho victory, although it did not turn into an outright disaster like Little Big Horn. Caught in a valley and attacked, rather than attacking into a valley like Custer, the Army took some ground and held its positions, and then withdrew.  Crook was effectively knocked out of action for the rest of the year and retreated into the Big Horn mountains in Wyoming.

 

Tuesday November 8, 1921. Dignatary.

Crow Chief Plenty Coups, (b circa 1908), a Crow leaders since 1876 when he was 28 years old, was back East in order to serve as the Native American representative at the upcoming dedication of the Tomb of the Unknowns.

The US Austrian peace treaty came into effect, officially ending the state of war between the US and Austria.  On the same day, Yugoslavian troops advanced into Albanian territory.

October 15, 1878. Edison Electric LIght flips on the switch.

 A long time ago I started a series of posts that riffed off a George F. Will column, in which he stated:

In many ways, the world of 1870 was more medieval than modern. Three necessities — food, clothing, shelter — absorbed almost all consumer spending. No household was wired for electricity. Flickering light came from candles and whale oil, manufacturing power from steam engines, water wheels and horses. Urban horses, alive and dead, complicated urban sanitation. Window screens were rare, so insects commuted to and fro between animal and human waste outdoors and the dinner table. A typical North Carolina housewife in the 1880s carried water into her home eight to 10 times daily, walking 148 miles a year to tote 36 tons of it. Few children were in school after age 12.

I can't recall if I ever expanded on the whale oil lighting specifically, but I did generally, in this post here:

I don't dispute the details that Will recites here, but I do doubt the "more medieval than modern assertion.  Indeed, some of these things argue, I think, the other way around.  Still, it taps into what we're discussing here.  This is just the sort of thing that this blog exists to explore, particularly given that the time frame that Will is discussing, 1870 to 1970, fits right in with the time frame, sort of, that this blog is looking at, as earlier noted. 

Whale oil chandelier, photo from the Library of Congress.  Up until the Will entry, I'd never even considered there being such a thing as a whale oil chandelier.

What Will noted was quite true, but was this Medieval in character?  I'd assert not.  I don't really know, however.  Whaling has taken place to some extent since ancient times, but the widespread use of whale oil, I suspect, didn't come about until well after the Medieval period.  Indeed, it doesn't seem to have been done in an appreciably large manner until maybe the 17th Century, although whaling itself does go back much further than that.  Whale oil, once it became a common commodity, did see use in lamps in candles in an appreciable manner.   Starting in the 19th Century, however, kerosene began to come in.  Whale oil reached its peak in 1845 and then began to fairly rapidly decline thereafter as kerosene became more common, although whale oil would continue to see some use up until electrical generation replaced it in the early 20th Century, a fairly remarkable fact.

That post was entitled:

They could get by without electricity

Well, today is the day that started changing, in 1878.  Today is the anniversary of the Edison Electric Light Company commencing business.

To put this slightly in context, George A. Custer and the men under his immediate command at Little Big Horn had only been in their graves in Montana for two years at this point.  Most of Central Wyoming completely remained Indian territory and the big Texas and Oregon cattle drives to that region of the state hadn't yet commenced.  Rail transportation hadn't penetrated into most of Montana and was only in Southern Wyoming.

Put a slightly different way, for context, when this anniversary reached its centennial, I was in high school.

October 14, 1919. Missing the Mark and Other Dangers

There was already a winner, but the 1919 Air Derby, which saw plans stationed in the east fly west, and planes stationed in the west, continued on and continued to make news inWyoming.

Two of those planes that arrived over Cheyenne in the dark had to come down, with one missing the field.

In other news, things in Gary Indiana were getting out of hand, in terms of labor strikes. And two members of the Arapaho Tribe were recounting their experiences at the Battle of the Little Big Horn to interviewers.

And an interesting observation was made about not owning a car.