Gun owner poll

[Bengalzona]

(10-04-2019, 12:33 AM)Dill Wrote: I used to live there, at the Crow Agency.  Went back for my HS reunion last month.

When I was in HS kids used to drive up there and park.

Now you have to pay to get onto the battlefield and it's closed at night.

We, today, don't really have a concept of what the West was like back then.

People in government were pretty frugal. After the Civil War, they had a massive draw down of the military. Particularly the Army. The size of the Army went from just over one million in 1865 to 58,000 in 1866. During most of the 1870's and 1880's, it was half that size (@28,000). We didn't see any real land-borne threats. The Indian "Wars" were actually viewed more as police actions rather than actual wars.

So, you had a small force (maybe one third of the total force of 28,000, or 10,000... about the size of a single small infantry division) charged with covering a massive frontier (probably in excess of two million square miles of more). And in that frontier, you probably had several million native Americans. Additionally, you had tens of thousands of white settlers moving West.

Considering the disparity of numbers, you might get a sense that this was a hopeless job. But our soldiers had a few things going for them: good leadership, planning, logistics, experience, discipline and the horse. The soldiers that came out West after the war were mostly veterans of the war. Hardened veterans. Most had been in the cavalry during the war they knew how to ride and shoot and how to operate under fire. The veterans would have been in their 30's in the 1870's and their 40's in the 1880's. Their leaders (Sherman, Crook, etc.) were also experienced. And they, Custer included, understood the importance of logistics. Hence one of the first items was constructing forts to operate out of and to protect supply lines settler trails. This was the same basic plan which the crusaders had used to set up their kingdoms in the Levant seven hundreds years earlier. And they, in turn had learned it from the Romans.

The plan to deal with the Native tribes was pretty simple: negotiate with them so that they would stay in their areas and leave the other areas alone (namely, the other areas were the settlers wanted to settle). At the time, no one knew exactly how many people in the East would eventually move West. It was a thing that was happening before their eyes. Therefore, it was initially felt that the number of settlers would eventually slow down. Hence the "you stay in your yard and we'll stay in ours" ideology sort of made sense. But as more folks moved West, encroachments started happening and lawmakers, under political pressure, began breaking deals. And, as we know, some of the natives didn't take this too well.

As I noted before, our military force was pretty darn small. In most major engagements, they were far outnumbered. But they usually won. This was primarily due to their experience, discipline and tactics more than anything else. They were a professional force.

(BTW- cavalry soldiers in the West almost always dismounted to engage an enemy. Accuracy and disciplined fire and cover and concealment where available were considered crucial to to winning a fight. Plus, horses make big targets and you risked injury and death from getting thrown if your horse was shot. The horse was merely a conveyance or vehicle to get them to the potential battlefield quickly.) 

With some of the tribes getting angry, a new strategy was needed. The new plan was somewhat simple: keep the natives from assembling in large groups (i.e. disperse). The strategy latter would be to keep natives on negotiated reservations (i.e. containment). But during Custer's time, the mission was very much to disperse. Dispersal is an offensive action. In order to do this when you were outnumbered, you needed some solid tactics.

One of the more popular tactics at the time (particularly championed by Custer) was to feint an attack in one direction and have another group swiftly ride into the Native encampment, seize the women and children (large native assemblies almost always brought their women and children with them), and hold them hostage until the Native leaders negotiated and dispersed. And this tactic was popular because it almost always worked. One of the reasons it worked was because it was used against different tribes at different times scattered across the West.

The Battle of Little Bighorn was different, however. The size of the Native assembly was far, far larger than anything they had ever seen. Custer knew it was large. Archeologists and historians now believe that he not only planned for the initial feint, but also included two other feint attacks by the troops with him as he rode the ridge. But it is doubtful that he realized exactly how large the assembly was. It is pretty clear from the battlefield remains that he felt he could find some place to turn left, cross the river and move into the camp. There was no place. I suspect the Natives got wind of the cavalry tactics and did something they normally didn't do, divided their forces. In any event, as Custer and his troops rode the ridge line north looking for a place to cross, Native warriors followed and were able to assemble in force each time to cavalry tried to feint or cross.