He weakened his forces by dividing them into three - although this was classic US Army tactics. He expected the Sioux warriors to scatter and run. Instead they outmanoeuvred and surrounded him. He was hugely outnumbered. The officers at Weir Point also saw a general movement of Indians—more Indians than any of them had ever encountered before—heading their way.
There was no other way to make a stand or maintain a stout defense. A brief period followed of deliberate fighting on foot. As Indians arrived they got off their horses, sought cover and began to converge on the soldiers.
From one moment to the next, the Indians popped up to shoot before dropping back down again. No man on either side could show himself without drawing fire. In battle the Indians often wore their feathers down flat to help in concealment.
The soldiers appear to have taken off their hats for the same reason; a number of Indians noted hatless soldiers, some dead and some still fighting. From their position on Calhoun Hill the soldiers were making an orderly, concerted defense. When some Indians approached, a detachment of soldiers rose up and charged downhill on foot, driving the Indians back to the lower end of Calhoun Ridge.
Some Indians noted a second skirmish line as well, stretching perhaps yards away along the backbone toward Custer Hill. It was in the fighting around Calhoun Hill, many Indians reported later, that the Indians suffered the most fatalities—11 in all.
But almost as soon as the skirmish line was thrown out from Calhoun Hill, some Indians pressed in again, snaking up to shooting distance of the men on Calhoun Ridge; others made their way around to the eastern slope of the hill, where they opened a heavy, deadly fire on soldiers holding the horses.
Loss of the horses also meant loss of the saddlebags with the reserve ammunition, about 50 rounds per man. When a horse holder was shot, the frightened horses would lunge about. Some of the Indians quit fighting to chase them. The fighting was intense, bloody, at times hand to hand. Men died by knife and club as well as by gunfire. The Cheyenne Brave Bear saw an officer riding a sorrel horse shoot two Indians with his revolver before he was killed himself.
Brave Bear managed to seize the horse. At almost the same moment, Yellow Nose wrenched a cavalry guidon from a soldier who had been using it as a weapon. Calhoun Hill was swarming with men, Indian and white. But the soldiers were completely exposed. Many of the men in the skirmish line died where they knelt; when their line collapsed back up the hill, the entire position was rapidly lost.
It was at this moment that the Indians won the battle. In the minutes before, the soldiers had held a single, roughly continuous line along the half-mile backbone from Calhoun Hill to Custer Hill. Men had been killed and wounded, but the force had remained largely intact. The Indians heavily outnumbered the whites, but nothing like a rout had begun.
What changed everything, according to the Indians, was a sudden and unexpected charge up over the backbone by a large force of Indians on horseback. The central and controlling part Crazy Horse played in this assault was witnessed and later reported by many of his friends and relatives, including He Dog, Red Feather and Flying Hawk.
He had time to reach the mouth of Muskrat Creek and Medicine Tail Coulee by , just as the small detachment of soldiers observed by Gall had turned back from the river toward higher ground. Flying Hawk said he had followed Crazy Horse down the river past the center of camp.
This was one style of Sioux fighting. Another was the brave run. Typically the change from one to the other was preceded by no long discussion; a warrior simply perceived that the moment was right. All the soldiers were shooting at him but he was never hit. After firing their rifles at Crazy Horse, the soldiers had to reload.
It was then that the Indians rose up and charged. Among the soldiers, panic ensued; those gathered around Calhoun Hill were suddenly cut off from those stretching along the backbone toward Custer Hill, leaving each bunch vulnerable to the Indians charging them on foot and horseback.
The instinct of Sioux fighters was the opposite—to charge in and engage the enemy with a quirt, bow or naked hand. There is no terror in battle to equal physical contact—shouting, hot breath, the grip of a hand from a man close enough to smell. The charge of Crazy Horse brought the Indians in among the soldiers, whom they clubbed and stabbed to death. The skirmish lines were gone.
Men crowded in on each other for safety. Iron Hawk said the Indians followed close behind the fleeing soldiers. The boom of the Springfield carbines was coming from Indian and white fighters alike. But the killing was mostly one-sided. In the rush of the Calhoun Hill survivors to rejoin the rest of the command, the soldiers fell in no more pattern than scattered corn. In the depression in which the body of Capt.
Myles Keogh was found lay the bodies of some 20 men crowded tight around him. But the Indians describe no real fight there, just a rush without letup along the backbone, killing all the way; the line of bodies continued along the backbone.
Another group of the dead, ten or more, was left on the slope rising up to Custer Hill. Between this group and the hill, a distance of about yards, no bodies were found. The mounted soldiers had dashed ahead, leaving the men on foot to fend for themselves.
Perhaps the ten who died on the slope were all that remained of the foot soldiers; perhaps no bodies were found on that stretch of ground because organized firing from Custer Hill held the Indians at bay while soldiers ran up the slope. About soldiers were killed immediately, stuck there, among others, in the quicksand of the Little Big Horn.
Custer is killed outright by White Bull, fatally shot under the heart. They no longer shot the Indians. Custer will receive a 2nd bullet to his left temple, which will not bleed, as he is already dead. The Indians do not know it is Custer.
They finish off the rest of the soldiers near the river and set off to besiege the other soldiers 3 km away. In all, soldiers will be kille.
Thanks for your comment, Pierre. I have some doubt that Custer was wearing his buckskin jacket when he was killed. You may be right. In history. This is only a supposition, impossible to doublecheck, because, according to the army, the indians stripped everybody. Apparently credible reports say Custer had cut his hair before the campaign.
There are no known pictures so who really knows. Temporarily uniting the Lakota Sioux and the Northern Cheyenne was too little, too late—the time to defeat the European invasion was about years past. Even the Iroquois Confederacy was too late and spent its dying numbers on wiping out other indigenous tribes instead of Quebec and Fort Orange.
This is not a topic I thought I would ever find interesting, but, as I have decided to read every topic on your blog, I read this and found it quite interesting, indeed, in fact, I re-read it, aloud, to my 91 year old mom, who is very interested in Native American culture in general. She finds it difficult to read without use of her magnifying glass, so I read it to her and it sparked quite a discussion between us! Truly well done, sir, and I am enjoying the variety of topics you cover.
EPub or PDF. Absolute , I would be very interested! Thank you a PDF would be terrific. Thank you, Garry,and I apologize for the lac of proofreading which resulted in my grammatical and spellng errors!
No worries, Lynn. I have a lot of writer friends — some are pretty big sellers with a lot of books behind them — and not one can properly proof their own work. I love how the author wrote this book as a story, rather than a history lesson.
The vast number of Native American warriors helped but by no means won the battle. Tight writing, gripping storyline, and true. What more could we want? Highly recommend! And thank you so, so much for the supportive review, Sue. I hope to see it attached when Sun Dance gets published. This work took a lot of research and took me off the crime writing path but I feel it was worthwhile and had to be done.
Sun Dance takes a detailed and truthful look at not just factors surrounding the Battle of the Little Bighorn but at the overall conditions — past and present — of Native American values and culture, including their spiritual influence. Again, thank you for reviewing Sun Dance and being my true friend! Fascinating post. Looking forward to reading the book! The Sun Dance was the nucleus for bringing so many people together for a common defense cause and it was the reason they were mentally prepared for battle.
It turned their defense into an offense — a rather effective offense at that. Thanks for reading and commenting, Sue. Garry, I applaud you for tackling such a highly debated subject. If I request an ARC, do you have a turnaround date for a review? I think the subject deserves a wide audience including getting it in libraries as a resource piece. Garry, thanks so much for sending me the ARC.
I enjoyed the book and wanted to share my thoughts with your readers. Moving Robe was digging wild turnips with other women several miles from camp when she saw a cloud of dust rise beyond the bluffs in the east. She saw a warrior riding by, shouting that soldiers were only a few miles away, and that the women, children and old men should run for the hills in the other direction. Antelope Woman Kate Bighead was bathing in the river with many others. Scores of naked men, women and children were in the river and not expecting a battle.
Neither were many others playing or fishing along the stream. Everyone was having a good time, said Antelope, and no one was thinking about any battle. Low Dog said the sun was about at noon, and he was still asleep in his lodge. He awoke to the shouts of soldiers, but thought it was a false alarm. When he heard a man yelling an alarm, he climbed a hill and could see the soldiers approaching. He jumped on his best horse and drove the ponies back to camp.
Standing Bear awoke late that morning. The soldiers were coming. They had been surprised. Wooden Leg had been to a dance the night before, and slept late that morning. He and his brother Yellow Hair went to the river and found many Indians splashing in the water. The brothers found a shade tree and dozed off.
Young men, go out and fight them. Some Hunkpapas and Oglalas, caught up in the early panic, ran away. Runs the Enemy heard that soldiers were coming, but did not believe it. He sat back down with the men and continued smoking. Rain in the Face admitted the soldiers came to the valley without warning. Sitting Bull, the chief who was said to have masterminded the ambush by the Indians, was caught up in the confusion.
When the soldiers attacked, his young wife, Four Robes, was so frightened that she grabbed only one of her infant twins and ran to the hills. When asked where the second child was, she realized she had left it behind, and raced back to the lodge to retrieve it. Later, the one left behind received the name Abandoned One. This was not the household of a man who supposedly knew soldiers were coming and set a trap for them.
It is apparent from the Indian reactions that Custer had surprised the camp. There was no ambush. In spite of attacking in broad daylight, he did surprise the village. It is said that Custer foolishly divided his force and allowed the regiment to be defeated in detail. Yet, using part of a force to fix the enemy in front, and sending another portion to envelop the flank is a standard tactic of professional armies. While Major Marcus Reno attacked the southern end of the village, Custer made a flank march to the north along the river bluffs.
The Indians, snapping out of their initial surprise, counterattacked Reno and chased him across the river to the east bank. White Bull went up the bluffs where he saw something of great importance. One Bull found a vantage point on the hill and saw more troops coming from the south, leading what appeared to be pack mules. But a bigger problem was the troop force to the north.
Soldiers were already beyond the Indians and were heading toward the other end of the camp. He spun his horse around and quickly headed north.
Fears Nothing reached the river and heard an Indian on the east bank calling that more soldiers were coming down from behind the ridge. He rode up the bluffs to see for himself and clambered back down. Once in the valley, he galloped north toward the mouth of Medicine Tail Creek. Runs the Enemy noticed two Indians waving blankets on the eastern bluffs.
Yonder are other soldiers!
0コメント