Now for something completely different......I have been on a forensics quest for some time in trying to track the artifacts of the 7th Cavalry of Custer's Command at the Little Big Horn.
The standard book account is the Indians buried the things they took off the dead as they ventured to Canada under Sitting Bull, but that is about as ludicrous as it could come as the Cavalry Soldier was no carrying around bags of gold or cast iron pans.
Indians did not bury their loot, but showed it off and used it as firearms and various goods like boots were quite valuable and necessary to life.
In completing years of research, there just is no anecdotally or literal evidence to what happened to hundreds of firearms to personal effects like knives which all Soldiers would carry.
My main focus and concern would be Vic, General Custer's battle horse which was last seen running across the plains with Indians in pursuit of this thoroughbred and General Custer's Remington Rolling Block rifle in 50 caliber.
The only real information I came across as factual was the later battle of Slim Buttes in what is now South Dakota did indeed have 7th Cavalry relics in regiment flags etc...
No real weaponry was located nor personal effects.
In that, I have had an interest in Canada as Sitting Bulls band did live there in Saskatchewan for some time, and would have perhaps traded their goods for food, but in that only one reference was noted in Sitting Bull traded a Navajo cover to Father Hugonard who for flour would provide in exchange for "tools" food for the band.
None of this seems to point to anything which the Indians would be giving up weapons or things of value to the Canadian traders as they lived on Wood Mountain.
No records reveal the Canadians accumulated what the Sioux had, and no records reveal on Sitting Bulls return to what is now South Dakota show any 7th Cavalry relics appeared, so this points to the fact that Sitting Bull was said to have been with the women in camp at the battle, and perhaps his entire band was not looting the dead either.
As stated, Crazy Horse's band, along with the Cheyenne at Powder River when attacked, did not have numbers of 7th Cavalry artifacts.
So in the process of elimination it appears that some relics of fabric ended up at Sully Buttes, but the main battle Indians and their squaws did not seem to have any of the looted items.
Pictured above is Rain in the Face. The reason he is important is that he is the one who was stated to have murdered and butchered Tom Custer, General Custer's brother, due to Tom had arrested this murderer of two Americans as he was bragging about it and showing off the items which was said to have included a watch owned by a Veterinary.
Rain in the Face cut out Tom Custer's heart and ate it. He would later recount the tales as they did not happen, but in reality, Indians were not Hollywood like John Wayne said in Hondo in never lying, because they all lied as deception was of great value to them.
Even this noted terrorist in his grand days did not have any Custer loot, or it would be logical he would have bragged about it.
As by that sorry Pinto or American Mustang he is mounted on, one can see that history in the Mustangs show what poor animals they are.
Certainly they could run fast over long distances, but they were not things of size or beauty. I own a Paint, which is a Pinto American Horse cross, and her build is rounded in the hips while my Quarterhorse Thoroughbred I have is much more muscular in the hindquarters.
The Paint in fact tonight while I was feeding her decided to play and kick at me, which is not acceptable and she was told so, but it just is the point that these Indian horses are not Trigger and never will be.
The hint of what I am looking for though is in the historical records of something mentioned, but not mentioned.
The 7th Cavalry on scout before the battle came across a number of wikiups. A wikiup is a willow frame poked into the ground in which a blanket is overlapped to produce a shelter.
The Custer group found hundreds of these and thought they were dog houses. They were not dog houses, but were Indian shelters.
What history shows is numerous Indians were streaming into the western Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne tribes. These Indians were coming from what is now eastern South Dakota and Minnesota, sight of the 1864 Massacre by those Dakota Sioux in Minnesota by the Minnesota River.
Perhaps in this, this is why Sitting Bull, Rain in the Face and Crazy Horse did not have any appreciable 7th Cavalry artifacts, because Gaul's bands who were doing the fighting were doing the fighting and it was groups of cowardly Indians from the east who were busy after the fight stripping the dead, as the fighting Indians streamed over to the Reno position to engage in battle.
This honestly would explain why nothing was turning up in the Lakota and Cheyenne ranks in numbers of the 7th Cavalry loot. The Minnesota Sioux during the summer of 1876 scurried back to Minnesota sanctuary as "good" Indians.
They wouldn't go to Canada to freeze with Sitting Bull as they were not Lakota. They wouldn't join Crazy Horse as they were not of his tribe and it was dangerous. The logical place for them was back in Minnesota where they were brooding since the 1864 terrorism.
There is a profoundly good ratio of odds that a number of the 7th Cavalry artifacts are still in Minnesota and that Gen. Custer's personal property in the famed Remington Rolling Block is there or was picked up by a sutler.
This is the logical situation based upon the evidence as the fighters were off fighting so the pillagers were left looting the dead and chasing horses.
No one would have looked in Minnesota as the state did not want trouble and the Indians there would have kept their mouths shut as they would have been hung like the Indians in 1864's terrorism
It is honestly hoped that the Sioux, Canadians and Minnesotans who do have these historical relics come forward and turn them over to the current 7th Cavalry families and if not that for a proper museum as these artifacts are as historically sacred as any Indian burial sites which are protected.
I doubt if anyone will act responsibly as none have, but I hope that one day the property of the 7th Cavalry returns which has been hidden away.
agtG
