| Author |
 Topic  |
|
Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
 Posted - September 14 2005 : 08:30:06 AM
|
You find solace in Godfrey's claim Gall "told" him stuff, SMCF. At the tenth anniversary, if I recall, Godfrey noted Gall was not pleased with their translator's efforts, and edged Godfrey away for a personal recap. Godfrey did not speak Sioux. Gall did not speak English, although he knew some words. What in the world sort of accuracy in unknown communication could have occured? Sign language? It's probably possible that Shakespeare can be performed in silence and semaphor but there is some stuff - time flensed into the past pluperfect among other things - that simply cannot. Yes, that is important.
We know that Cheyenne warriors dressed as soldiers on soldiers' horses with uniforms and guidon and rode into the village, scaring the hell out of everyone who saw them at first. If someone not present heard the initial reports of that before revelation, this could be the source of soldiers in the village, in aggregate with those few soldiers whose horses ran away with them. In any case, anyone claiming soldiers in the village needs to provide assurance that the references are not to those dressed up warriors. |
Dark Cloud
copyright RL MacLeod
darkcloud@darkendeavors.com
www.darkendeavors.com
www.boulderlout.com |
  |
|
|
joseph wiggs
Brigadier General
Status: offline |
Posted - September 19 2005 : 9:56:30 PM
|
quote:
Originally posted by Smcf
.
Again, seemingly at each point in the battlefield where the Indians got close to the troops, there is a body count. At MTC ford, there isn't. If the Indian were strong there, where are the bodies? If the Indians weren't, then why halt the "charge"?
I agree. Cheyenne testimony concurs that no more than ten warriors engaged the troopers at the ford. Understandably, when the troopers made an unanticipated right "oblique" the warriors naturally assumed that their efforts were responsible for this unforeseen turn of events. The warriors did not comprehend that they were witnessing a military tactic.
In addition, all witnesses(White and Red) proclaim a lack of dead bodies, horses, and equipment at the ford. The absence of physical evidence at this location corroborates the assumption that no action of significance occurred there. |
|
|
|
Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - September 20 2005 : 2:12:05 PM
|
There could have been a huge battle there, for all anyone knows. Bodies that fell in the river, washed downstream. They could have been dragged into the village and tortured and burned. MTC was the site where the trains stopped for tourist picnics soon after, and any items of interest would have vanished, and did. The bodies could still be there, since it wasn't so long ago a body was found in the river bank upriver. Or nothing happened. We don't know. We cannot.
Again, the year of this Cheyenne testimony, and did they speak English? (No....) So who did the translation? And we believe this is not subject to the same corrupting influences that affect other people, because.....? Nothing like testimony exists from the Indian side, and none of it is first hand. It's absurd to claim it as such. |
Dark Cloud
copyright RL MacLeod
darkcloud@darkendeavors.com
www.darkendeavors.com
www.boulderlout.com |
|
|
|
Smcf
Captain
Status: offline |
Posted - September 21 2005 : 06:45:11 AM
|
| Of course, you've got to form an opinion and assess what you regard as sufficient evidence to back it up. Quality of evidence will always be subjective here. Putative theories like significant numbers of bodies could have been washed downstream don't appear to me to be worthy of serious consideration. But then again, what's the harm of running it up the flagpole. |
|
|
|
Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
|
|
Smcf
Captain
Status: offline |
Posted - September 22 2005 : 08:04:39 AM
|
| A published A-Z roster for the 7th Cavalry: http://www.friendslittlebighorn.com/7th%20US%20Cavalry,%201876.pdf (you need adobe acrobat reader for it). A quick count of those Officers and men listed killed with Custer column yields 205 (I may have miscounted one or two) plus one missing/presumed dead. Reno stated in his report of 5th July that the body count of Custer's soldiers, plus a couple of civilians, buried on 28th at the Custer field was 204. A little empirical I know, but the figures tally roughly and serve further to distance me from thoughts of kidnapped soldiers, or men killed anywhere other than where they were found. |
Edited by - Smcf on September 22 2005 08:25:11 AM |
|
|
|
Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - September 22 2005 : 12:13:54 PM
|
I keep reading 210, but who knows? You have the heads/bodies found in the village with the pots, you have bodies that were not found at all till later like the one found by the Reno crossing, and the supposed guys found around the West who supposedly escaped. The actual rosters were lost on their sergeants, I'd thought. Are there mentions of bodies without applicable craniums found? Didn't read that, but could be true, I guess. Given the obvious lies and fabrications about the various burials, a too close concordance between field and book is suspicious at best.
I don't think there was a big fight at MTC, as I've said, but there's no real evidence - anymore - one way or the other. |
Dark Cloud
copyright RL MacLeod
darkcloud@darkendeavors.com
www.darkendeavors.com
www.boulderlout.com |
|
|
|
Billybob_tnt
Recruit
Status: offline |
Posted - September 22 2005 : 6:58:01 PM
|
In Nightengale's article for Wild West Magazine titled “Little Bighorn Cover-up?” he states that a "task force of experts” concluded that tests, conducted in 1994-95, indicated, “that it was unlikely the gunfire heard on Reno Hill originated from Custer Hill.” Many have stood on Reno hill and heard the volleys of shots fired at the National Cemetery during military burials, just a short hundred yard or so further North West. If heavy fighting, especially coordinated volley, was taking place on last stand hill it would not have been a problem for Reno to hear it.
A bronze marker at the site of last stand hill gives the number killed at 220 Soldiers, Scouts and civilians.
|
|
|
|
Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - September 22 2005 : 9:02:24 PM
|
In the event, would these hushed moments on Reno Hill in the present listening to volleys from the NC relate in any way to being surrounded by seven companies of annoyed soldiers, horses, screaming wounded, and those mules in the distance? This is the sort of the excessive and irrelevant precision substituting for point and probability with which Custerland is full. Reno said he heard firing. He said he didn't hear volleys. Those sitting further north with less ambient noise didn't agree whether there were volleys or not. In any case, how is a volley indicating distress to be distinguished from a volley indicating else, or just a cluster of firing?
Again, how many horses did Reno have left? What percent of his force was there on the hill, able to ride to the offensive, on horseback?
And, at what point would any supposed obligation to rescue Custer be curtailed by time and events? If Custer had gone on to Terry, as so many thought and as Custer had, by previous actions, indicated was a move well within his ethics, the people who complain about Reno would still be dumping on him for being so naive. |
Dark Cloud
copyright RL MacLeod
darkcloud@darkendeavors.com
www.darkendeavors.com
www.boulderlout.com |
|
|
|
Smcf
Captain
Status: offline |
Posted - September 23 2005 : 12:04:59 PM
|
| Bodies without craniums I'd imagine would count, I'm aware of one story mentioning a beheading on the Custer field. Its not even the count which particularly interests me, its the correlation of the Reno testimony, the roster details and the independent statements of the Indians whose stories match at MTC and which are at odds with the stories of White Cow Bull and Curley ... just to clarify where I'm coming from here. |
|
|
|
joseph wiggs
Brigadier General
Status: offline |
Posted - September 24 2005 : 2:44:05 PM
|
As mentioned, we may never know. However, the sources you commented upon agree, in general, that no major engagement occurred there. If one, for one reason or another, wishes to disregard Indian testimony that clearly states that no major battle occurred, then we must refer to "White" testimony. I can find no trooper who contends that they, shortly after the battle,observed significant signs of battle at the ford. No bodies, mounts, or equipment strewn about.
I also believe that archaeological digs, at the ford, discovered a dearth shell castings.
Curley's testimony was interesting in that he testified, "only the front part of the column fired."(Gray p.364). Taking this statement at face value, I believe he witnessed a "feint" by a small portion of the command. Curley was only seventeen years old. At such a tender age, any shooting would be deemed significant to him, don't you think? |
|
|
|
Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - September 26 2005 : 1:04:17 PM
|
SMCF,
See, I can't call the stories we have from the Indians "testimony", because it was translated and even then we're not sure how accurately. On another thread we talked about this testimony, where Indians chatting about the Reno field conflated time and had the train arriving as Reno got to the top and Custer charging and all sorts of things that could not remotely be. And there were all sorts of assumptions made about what units the Indians were actually talking about, and these stories were just assinged to convenient white theories.
And no, Wiggs, I don't really agree. What percentage of Sioux, Crow, and Cheyenne youth didn't fight younger even younger than 17? I'd think zero in a nomadic society of warrior machismo. Who knows how much shooting would seem significant to him, and why would that matter?
And what was the point of this supposed "feint?" To hit and run only annoys them to follow and attack. If so, mission accomplished. But to what end? If you could attack across the river, why not there? Originally, there was an assumption that Custer had fought at MTC, and some thought he made it into the village. Only later did that original thesis vanish.
Benteen said few of Company C's horses were found, so either they were shot off their mounts or they lost them to blanket waving while engaged in a line dance that broke and ran. In any case, they didn't shoot them for breastworks. Or being the 7th, they tried and missed. |
Dark Cloud
copyright RL MacLeod
darkcloud@darkendeavors.com
www.darkendeavors.com
www.boulderlout.com |
|
|
|
Smcf
Captain
Status: offline |
Posted - September 27 2005 : 06:59:51 AM
|
DC,
I take your general point. However, some of these accounts were repeated over time to different translators and researchers. In the case of references to pack trains, its just as likely that neither the Indian accounts nor the translations were at fault, rather the interpretation placed on the translation by the researcher. I can't really make a great case to argue here, though.
What's interesting to me is that the MTC accounts I referred to go against the accepted theory of events at the time, and from White interpretation of the scene. However, they are in concordance with the evidence as described at the scene, and with each other. |
|
|
|
Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - September 27 2005 : 2:52:35 PM
|
I've never said the Indians were at fault any more than a white man's honesty, but there is ample reason to distrust translators by intent as well as ability. I've read, it seems to me, a lot of first hand accounts of various battles and they are generally united by mutual exclusion, and sometimes it's hard to believe they're talking about the same thing although you know they're telling it as they remember it. This was brought home to me by the My Lai investigation of the Army, and they assigned their most decorated Viet Vet to oversee it, and he started out by saying that the first thing soldiers do after action is get the story straight about what happened. Excessive concordance isn't proof of truth but highly suspicious. After twenty or sixty years of two diverse stories being told in the same peer group about the same incident, they'd probably start to meld together into one coherent tale.
I think the warriors who dressed as soldiers have appeared in some stories as actual soldiers, and I think people without the verbal grammar to flense time as precisely as we do in English are at risk for having their stories amended by error and intent without actually mistranslation. |
Dark Cloud
copyright RL MacLeod
darkcloud@darkendeavors.com
www.darkendeavors.com
www.boulderlout.com |
|
|
|
joseph wiggs
Brigadier General
Status: offline |
Posted - October 07 2005 : 10:17:23 PM
|
quote:
Originally posted by Dark Cloud
quote:
And no, Wiggs, I don't really agree. What percentage of Sioux, Crow, and Cheyenne youth didn't fight younger even younger than 17? I'd think zero in a nomadic society of warrior machismo. Who knows how much shooting would seem significant to him, and why would that matter?
In any society that consists of human beings, (and they all consist of human beings) warfare thrust upon the "youth" of a society must have been a horrible experience. To face possible death, under any circumstances, must be the ultimate motivation for abject fear, let alone the inexperienced youth who has yet to understand the cruelty of war. Whether a society is nomadic or stationary, to suggest that an entire race of people were a, "society of warrior machismo" is incredulous. Did you interview every Native American for the last two hundred years to substantiate this statement? Is it possible that your theory includes the false assumption that all "Indians" were born with a lust to be machismo and kill the "white" man as quickly as possible. One can visualize the frontier "wanted posters", Little Chief, 8 years old, 3 ft. tall and weighing 56 lbs. Wanted for felonious assault by usage of a baby rattle.
quote:
And what was the point of this supposed "feint?" To hit and run only annoys them to follow and attack. If so, mission accomplished. But to what end? If you could attack across the river, why not there? Originally, there was an assumption that Custer had fought at MTC, and some thought he made it into the village. Only later did that original thesis vanish.
quote:
This "feint" has been discussed so many times by so many persons on this forum that I am stunned that you found it necessary to ask this question again.
Benteen said few of Company C's horses were found, so either they were shot off their mounts or they lost them to blanket waving while engaged in a line dance that broke and ran. In any case, they didn't shoot them for breastworks. Or being the 7th, they tried and missed.
quote:
Huh???
|
|
|
|
Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - October 08 2005 : 3:03:29 PM
|
Learn to use the forum code, Wiggs, if you're going to use it at all. Where does the quote "Huh???" arrive from, and who said it in relation to what? And what's your point? And where does the quote staring "This feint...." come from, and what's the point of that? I didn't post it.
There is much unproven idiocy discussed on this board as if fact, though, that volume of postings doesn't increase or decrease a topic's relevance. I've never bought the feint theory, which I doubt originated with Gray but to which he gave much support.
But before that, learn the difference between incredulous and incredible. Yet another case of you having problems with words that sound alike. And yes, like the original Vikings, Huns, Celts and other nomadic family groups of hunters everywhere (its not a race issue, it goes with being nomadic hunters), the tribes of the northern plains were societies of patriarchal warrior machismo, which worked then but looks so ridiculous today within the AIM crowd, who still don't understand that mindset doomed them and its return via their contemporary struttings is not constructive. |
Dark Cloud
copyright RL MacLeod
darkcloud@darkendeavors.com
www.darkendeavors.com
www.boulderlout.com |
|
|
|
joseph wiggs
Brigadier General
Status: offline |
Posted - October 08 2005 : 10:03:18 PM
|
Unfortunately, your insistence that "Nomadic" people are somehow inferior to other groups is inherently racist and, untrue. People hunt because they must do so to survive. You may remember that this great Country was founded by "people" who hunted to survive. They were called Pilgrims and Puritans. In fact, you and I, are descendants of those very same "machismo" hunters. The only difference being they lived in towns rather than roam the Plains.
Also, the Indian society was very much matriarchal as women of the tribe had rights then that "white" women did not achieve until the twentieth century. I realize that you were not aware of this. There are many things you are not aware of but, it never seems to stop you from inserting your foot into your cavernous mouth. Your reduction of a people's desire to resist unwarranted and unjustified encroachment on their very lives to a "mindset" is interesting. However, it does not warrant further comment.
Finally your erroneous assumption that there is much "unproven Idiocy" discussed on this board exemplifies the essence of you. I assume you are referring to the board's honest attempts to exchange ideas in an open and honest fashion. Only you, my delusional friend, possess the audacity to make such an egocentric statement. What an incredulous/incredible remark! A man of your intellect should not be hampered by folk like us, should you? Perhaps you would feel less stressed if you spent more time on that board of yours that you continuously and assiduously "hawk" with every one of your posts. |
Edited by - joseph wiggs on October 08 2005 10:20:23 PM |
|
|
|
Topic |
|
|
|
Referencing Stewart's Custer Luck
