01-10-2010, 12:03 AM
(This post was last modified: 01-10-2010, 12:05 AM by Charles Drago.)
Your questions are insightful and demonstrative of a keen grasp of deep politics. Abbreviated answers follow.
There is a suspicious disconnect between what the government knew and what Custer was told in terms of the cumulative size of hostile bands awaiting him. It should surprise no one who reads this forum that, by most accounts, Custer was led to believe that the number of warriors likely to fight was significantly smaller than the number he actually encountered.
The government forces in the Montana campaign were, in the agregate, large. They were divided in order to maximize the chances for picking up the hostile trails and effecting a pincer movement designed to corral hostiles and return them to reservations.
The speed of communications was what it was, and thus commanders were given what by today's standards would be considered extraordinary leeway once in the field. Custer's own final written orders from General Terry, issued on June 22, 1876, contain the following:
"It is, impossible to give you any definite instructions in regard to this movement, and were it not impossible to do so the Department Commander places too much confidence in your zeal, energy, and ability to wish to impose upon you precise orders which might hamper your action when nearly in contact with the enemy. He will, however, indicate to you his own views of what your action should be, and he desires that you should conform to them unless you shall see sufficient reason for departing from them."
So I'd take issue with your use of the word "restrained" in this context. Custer did what he was empowered to do (he said with a certainty otherwise lacking in informed discussions of the orders issue).
The tactics employed by Custer at Little Bighorn, while in part the product of literally centuries of evolving cavalry warfare, were most heavily influenced by decades of Great Plains warfare. They were appropriate for the engagement at hand.
For insight into cavalry tactics of the day, you might wish to study the events at Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift in the Zulu War of 1879 -- battles deliciously related, on multiple levels, to the Custer and Reno/Benteen engagements. I highly recommend The Dust Rose Like Smoke: The Subjugation of the Zulu and Sioux, by James O. Cump.
I'm afraid your question is a tad ethnocentric. For the most part, the Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribal peoples at Little Bighorn fought on foot -- the flanking charge of Crazy Horse (Teshunka Witko) duly noted and notwithstanding. And there is no reputable evidence to suggest that any "superiority in terms of battlefield intelligence" accrued to the Native Americans that day. Their victory was a jazz solo -- improvised brilliantly, at times over standard chord changes, at times atonaly, at times with total freedom.
One of the striking deep political aspects of the Little Bighorn is the cover-up that immediately followed. A central tenet of my hypothesis is that a dead Custer, like a dead Tillman, was used to rally the country to the imperialist agenda by demonizing the evil-doers who took these heroic lives. To accomplish this task, the historiography of the event had to be owned by those who needed to bury the truth. Just look at how original battlefield maps were altered to support the final official battle report.
Contemporary historians writing on Little Bighorn are coming to question the long-held conventional wisdom that Custer was a most foolish imperialist. But none have gone into the sort of deep political analysis I am attempting -- albeit in a fictional form. At some point soon I'll post a halfway-decent bibliography for you.
Not a bad analysis.
But again, absent application of deep political insight, the Battle of the Little Bighorn will remain significantly misunderstood on any number of crucially significant levels. And the post-modern "we can never know anything" mantra will continue to be chanted.
Ed Jewett Wrote:1) What, specifically, was the battlefield information or intelligence available to the US cavalry chain of command (and especially Custer) at the critical moments?
There is a suspicious disconnect between what the government knew and what Custer was told in terms of the cumulative size of hostile bands awaiting him. It should surprise no one who reads this forum that, by most accounts, Custer was led to believe that the number of warriors likely to fight was significantly smaller than the number he actually encountered.
Ed Jewett Wrote:2) What factors -- aside from or in addition to the deep politics of US governance and military affairs -- were present in terms of the nature of the encounter... small, highly-mobile forces in a vast wilderness restrained by extremely slow communications? In addition, how did US cavalry mindset and tactics as evolved from the Civil War function in this type of encounter?
The government forces in the Montana campaign were, in the agregate, large. They were divided in order to maximize the chances for picking up the hostile trails and effecting a pincer movement designed to corral hostiles and return them to reservations.
The speed of communications was what it was, and thus commanders were given what by today's standards would be considered extraordinary leeway once in the field. Custer's own final written orders from General Terry, issued on June 22, 1876, contain the following:
"It is, impossible to give you any definite instructions in regard to this movement, and were it not impossible to do so the Department Commander places too much confidence in your zeal, energy, and ability to wish to impose upon you precise orders which might hamper your action when nearly in contact with the enemy. He will, however, indicate to you his own views of what your action should be, and he desires that you should conform to them unless you shall see sufficient reason for departing from them."
So I'd take issue with your use of the word "restrained" in this context. Custer did what he was empowered to do (he said with a certainty otherwise lacking in informed discussions of the orders issue).
The tactics employed by Custer at Little Bighorn, while in part the product of literally centuries of evolving cavalry warfare, were most heavily influenced by decades of Great Plains warfare. They were appropriate for the engagement at hand.
For insight into cavalry tactics of the day, you might wish to study the events at Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift in the Zulu War of 1879 -- battles deliciously related, on multiple levels, to the Custer and Reno/Benteen engagements. I highly recommend The Dust Rose Like Smoke: The Subjugation of the Zulu and Sioux, by James O. Cump.
Ed Jewett Wrote:3) What factors play a role in terms of the Native-American deep familiarity with horseback warfare in the wilderness, their tactics and strategy, their own superiority in terms of battlefield intelligence, etc.?
I'm afraid your question is a tad ethnocentric. For the most part, the Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribal peoples at Little Bighorn fought on foot -- the flanking charge of Crazy Horse (Teshunka Witko) duly noted and notwithstanding. And there is no reputable evidence to suggest that any "superiority in terms of battlefield intelligence" accrued to the Native Americans that day. Their victory was a jazz solo -- improvised brilliantly, at times over standard chord changes, at times atonaly, at times with total freedom.
Ed Jewett Wrote:4) What elements emerge from the telling of the tale by Native Americans and how might that have been compromised by our own inability to speak their language, understand their culture and mindset, or even to the extent that that history was 'cooked' by white genocidal imperialists? Are there modern-day people who represent the American Indian perspective whose viewpoints might be useful?[
One of the striking deep political aspects of the Little Bighorn is the cover-up that immediately followed. A central tenet of my hypothesis is that a dead Custer, like a dead Tillman, was used to rally the country to the imperialist agenda by demonizing the evil-doers who took these heroic lives. To accomplish this task, the historiography of the event had to be owned by those who needed to bury the truth. Just look at how original battlefield maps were altered to support the final official battle report.
Contemporary historians writing on Little Bighorn are coming to question the long-held conventional wisdom that Custer was a most foolish imperialist. But none have gone into the sort of deep political analysis I am attempting -- albeit in a fictional form. At some point soon I'll post a halfway-decent bibliography for you.
Ed Jewett Wrote:"When writing about Custer, neutral ground is elusive. What should Custer have done at any of the critical junctures that rapidly presented themselves, each now the subject of endless speculation and rumination? There will always be a variety of opinions based upon what Custer knew, what he did not know, and what he could not have known..." —from Touched by Fire: The Life, Death, and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer by Louise Barnett.[
Not a bad analysis.
But again, absent application of deep political insight, the Battle of the Little Bighorn will remain significantly misunderstood on any number of crucially significant levels. And the post-modern "we can never know anything" mantra will continue to be chanted.