As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
While it would not do any good in changing outcome, I have revisited the Battle of the Little Big Horn to rectify the outcome, that if the Custer command, even being betrayed by the Reno and Benteen commands and left to be assassinated, that they could not have only survived but won.
In the study of this, General Custer twice that day saved the rest of his command who betrayed him. He attempted several crossings of the river which was too deep to attempt a diversion from the attack upon Reno, and his taking position on the Last Stand with expectation to be reinforced, was an act to draw the attack to him.
I have published three things which the Custer command could have accomplished, even with broken down mules, as that is why he did not take along the heavy cannon or gattling guns.
The command if they could have acquired them, might have brought light mountain howitzers which could have been transported on mules as they were designed as such.
The command could have taken along cross stake pickets with hobbles to keep the horses from being stampeded, and to release the 'fourth man' who was always there to hold the horses during a Cavalry engagement. Doing so would have upped the numbers of the firepower by one hundred rifles at least.
The command could have brought a sort of trowel to throw up rifle pits to fire from.
These implements and actions would have given the Custer command resources not available to press the attack.
Most do not know that the battle was not some few moments affair. It lasted three hours. The Troopers at the Reno Benteen site, heard the mass volleys of the Custer command, which was a fire all knew was meant as a distress signal or a location signal.
The Troopers response was, "Reno better get up to Custer or he is going to be after Reno with a pointed stick."
In short, Reno got drunk and Benteen disobeyed direct orders from General Custer to "bring up packs".
I have addressed all of this in Reno was an absolute coward. He failed to press an earlier attack in following up the Indians and was reprimanded for it, and on the day of the battle, he was supposed to attack, but instead of pressing on to the village, he dismounted, gave counter orders and counter ordered them and then fled the battlefield.
Reno being a coward, lays open the reality that he was never punished for his crimes by the old gaurd. That points to he was protected and being rewarded for his actions. So Reno may not have been a coward, but botched the attack on purpose, fled in fear, and then got drunk as he absolutely knew he had just betrayed hundreds of men to be assassinated, in retaliation for George Custer testifying against the Grant regime for corruption in the Indian Ring.
Officers gained command from the court martial or death of their superiors. Reno was awarded by Custer's murder with the command of the 7th.
Benteen on the day of battle was sent to check for Indians escaping, and when ordered to return, he dallied, to the point that other officers simply left to join Custer in following orders, at which point Benteen had to follow, where he stopped at the point Reno had retreated to.
Benteen was a strange sociopath, in his letters to his wife focused on who would advance in Custer's murder and for her to keep the "bring up packs" notice. There was not one word of sympathy for the widows nor for men he had served with for almost a decade.
Benteen smeared General Custer over the Elliot matter at the Washita battle in the press. Benteen had a definite problem with those in authority over him. It is logical to deduce that Benteen who seems to have a long history of "being overlooked" in jealousies which relate back to the Civil War where his division under Wilson got no credit in their march through the South while Sheridan's with Custer's division gained the notice in taking the surrender of Lee.
If one adds that General Crook was ordered to assist the 7th, and after a battle retreated, and he then went hunting, and after the battle, Custer's commander, Alfred Terry, sent out runners who knew exactly where Crook was hunting in the Big Horn Mountains, then it begins to point to a reality that Crook never faced court martial for leaving battle.
Crook was a darling of General Grant's during the war. He as incompetent more often than not in Confederate or Indian warfare. Yet he was retained. It progresses in this, that Crook was to abandon the field as they knew where he was.
It progresses in this that Grant had relieved Custer from command earlier for Custer's testimony to Congress about the regime's corruption, and that General Sherman and Sheridan of the old guard, were not at all pleased about this either. All three were deadly silent after the mass assassination, and there were lies released as "telegrams took 2 weeks to reply from Chicago where Sheridan was".
If that was the case, then how did everyone know of Crook's retreat and where to find him while he was out hunting?
What appears in this is George Custer was set up. It is logical to conclude the Indians were warned of the 7th Cavalry coming. Reno by his drunken actions points to a guilt he knew he had abandoned Custer to the slaughter. Benteen in his statements was a sociopath and for his own reasons in Elliot and advancement, points to disobeying orders, so that the conspiracy was to mass assassinate the Custer group to silence them.
I have in study of the munitions have added a fourth commodity in this battle, which would have definitely made a difference and that would be rockets. I am not speaking of missiles of huge size, but those of a 4th of July grand size, which could be made of a thin bronze casing for shrapnel, filled with powder as cannister, and then with their tail stuck in the ground, lit and lobbed into the Indian camp or behind hills where they were attacking from.
Even a few broken down mules could have hauled several hundred of these rockets which the 7th could have utilized. Firing them into camp would have raised all sorts of hell, as the squaws would have fled in terror, and this would have diverted the bucks to try and cover them. This then would have drawn firepower away from the Custer command.
On the Last Stand site, the rockets could have been fired directly or lobbed into the gulleys where the Indians were hidden, and flushed them out.
The entire screaming rockets and dynamite stick explosion with shrapnel would have stampeded the Indians. If their herds of ponies could have been fired into, that would have given the Indians something they really were concerned about in their horses were more important than anything.
Rockets were known from the Civil War era as were fireworks. A light bronze casing would have been exactly what the Cavalry needed, and would have been an edge.
Reno was given the honor of first attack for reporting first. Benteen was a senior officer, so he was in charge of the Scout. If Custer would have known their betrayal, he could have placed others in charge as in Weir who tried several times to go to his commander.
The rockets would have changed the dynamics of this absolutely. Consider if Moylan had crossed the Little Big Horn in command, and in attacking the camp, set up a rocket line to surprise the Indians.
Consider if Weir was in charge of the scout, and brought up the packs to General Custer's position.
Already the dynamics are as General Custer laid out, whereby he would then assist in a flank attack upon the Indians. Reno would not have had opportunity to sabotage the plan and Benteen would have been under direct command to not be able to betray the Custer command.
What would have taken place, was what was planned to take place. The Indians would have been routed in the first half hour. The bucks would have set up lines to cover the horses and squaws retreat.
The entire camp would have been in the 7th's possession, depriving the Indians of shelter, food, utensils and their ability to make war during the summer, as their time would have been engaged in reacquiring supplies for winter, which was no small task considering the buffalo were depleted.
I have made mention that the Indians in Montana, were infused with a huge number of "peaceful" Minnesota Indian terrorists, who were in the battle and then fled back to Minnesota.
All of this was covered up, and it points back to, who in Minnesota with full government instigation allowed this influx to take place unimpeded? This was a conspiracy.
It is possible on a follow up that the 7th would have secured a number of straggler Indians in flight, as the primary objective of the Indians of Crazy Horse was flight and possession of horses. An Indian rear guard could have delayed this pursuit, but the main objective would have been absolute success with the destruction of Indian stores and the preservation of the 7th Cavalry.
Sitting Bull, in the coward he was, fled to Canada with his group, and Crazy Horse went deeper into the Montana Wyoming wilderness. The 7th in winter campaign would have engaged the Cheyenne at Powder River and defeated them and in all probabilty caught Crazy Horse and defeated him.
I have never found one reference where George Custer desired to be President. He had offers to go on stage to earn a fortune, but declined as he loved the military and was not a public speaker in the least.
There was a great deal of Cover Their Arse after this in Sheridan and Sherman, and Grant was unkind in what he said in trying to shift the blame to Custer. I did find in Libby Custer's personal letters, one in which Father Custer, pointedly blamed President Grant for what took place. That is as close to anything of an affirmation of what the evidence points to in General Custer and his command were given into the hands of Indian terrorists to mass murder them.
I do believe though that the rockets red glare, cross picket pins that could not be pulled out, and a light trenching trowel would have saved the Custer command, and the Little Big Horn would be barely remembered as the Washita or Yellowstone battles.
General Custer would probably not be any more remembered than General Nelson Miles who captured Geronimo and did the final mop up operations at Wolf Mountain and Wounded Knee to teach the Indians to stop making war and to stay on the reservations.
Those operations might have fallen to Custer, and as the situation progressed General Custer in the Spanish American War, might have been in Cuba or the Philippines as General Miles was in Puerto Rico.
As stated, there is absolutely no purpose in this in trying to win battles which were meant as mass assassination events as one can not turn back history. General Custer was set up for slaughter, and if he had been reinforced as his orders were given, he would have won the day without need for my "fixes", which if he had them, would have routed the Indian terrorists.
Rockets were probably not available to General Custer. The cross stake picket was not really known and the trenching bayonet was not available until President Theodore Roosevelt was implementing it. They would though have made the difference though and been a pointy stick after the Indians they never would have stopped running from.
The ignorance that the Indian brags over the slaughter is ridiculous. The Indian had a 10 to 1 odds favor in bucks. If one includes the squaws who were always as much as the children hacking and firing at people, then the odds were 30 to 1 in favor of the Indians, who were armed equal to superior to the 7th.
Factor in the Grant regime assisted the Indians in arming them, moving them out of Minnesota as terrorist reinforcements, along with having Crook, Reno and Benteen retreat like Joab did Uriah, the real question is, why did it take 3 hours for 3000 Indians to murder 300 Troopers?
The Indian terrorists had the battle handed to them, and they still almost botched it.
That is nothing to brag about, especially with Sitting Bull cowardly fleeing to Canada, and Crazy Horse making his people suffer and not gaining the one thing he demanded in the Big Horn Mountains as his reservation.
Both would be shot down for the currs they were, but Sitting Bull would instigate one more slaughter for his people at Wounded Knee in coming up with the Ghost Dance fiction in telling the Indians that the buffalo would all return from some underground cave and that there would be a genocide of all the white people.
For the good of the Indians, the bucks should have shot their own leadership at the Little Big Horn and made Custer their chief, as they would have obtained the better deal for Indians as Custer proved on the Southern Plains.
nuff said
agtG
