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El Crab
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
 Posted - July 19 2005 : 4:40:50 PM
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I was thumbing through Custer's Luck by Edgar I. Stewart and I stumbled upon a few things. In this case, the identification of Custer's body is what I'm alluding to here. And since I'm not going to search for the threads we previously discussed this...
Pg. 466
"While the soldiers were still rummaging through the abandoned loot, Lieutenant Bradley, who, with his mounted infantry detachment, had been scouting along the range of hills to the left, rode up to Terry and Gibbon, and in a voice trembling with emotion said, 'I have a very sad report to make. I have counted 197 bodies lying in the hills.' In answer to the question, 'White men?' he replied in the affirmative, and added that while he had never met General Custer, from the pictures he had seen he believed one of the bodies to be that of the General."
Seems to me if Lt. Bradley, who had never met the man and had only seen pictures could identify Custer, chances are the condition of the bodies, provided the head was still somewhat intact, could be identified despite the exposure and decomposition.
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I came. I saw. I took 300 pictures. |
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Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - July 19 2005 : 5:29:18 PM
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What would be interesting is WHERE Bradley saw the body.
I would doubt the statement solely for the footnote you neglect to mention: there are several versions of this incident.
A few pages beyond that, 470, Godfrey is quoted as saying ALL the bodies except Custer were grossly mutilated. This is not what he said early on, and as Mrs. Custer was still living, it's a reasonable supposition to think he was protecting her feelings or, more to the point, allowing himself to be seen as protecting her feelings. I think that would be the mindset of Bradley and others who claimed hardly any mutilation, which utterly conflicts with Indian images after the battle and of many who were there as well. On 485, Custer is reported dead near Keogh by Indian tale.
It's possible that Bradley is telling the truth, but I suspect he isn't; not because he's a liar and trying to achieve an untoward end but because it was accepted that soldiers, especially officers, did not melodramatize their lives, but exhibited stoicism. That's still more common than not, and reflects poorly on those who did or didn't serve and who indeed try to dramatize themselves by association with actual warriors or public statements fawning over actual warriors.
Look at that officer shot under the eye, Guy Henry, at the Rosebud and how he handled it. Restrained description of personal horror. And I suspect that Benteen, writing to his invalid and worrisome wife, would downplay danger to himself and shy away from horrific descriptions. A letter to his wife or a diary entry are not windows to the soul, but to achieve very personal goals. Benteen had lost several kids, and he likely didn't want to upset his wife unnecessarily. I don't think many of those first interviewed would give accurate descriptions for several reasons: they don't want to talk about it, they don't want to alarm unnecessarily, they really cannot describe it anyway. |
Dark Cloud
copyright RL MacLeod
darkcloud@darkendeavors.com
www.darkendeavors.com
www.boulderlout.com |
Edited by - Dark Cloud on July 19 2005 5:36:01 PM |
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El Crab
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - July 19 2005 : 6:13:33 PM
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Well, there's a substantial amount of accounts saying Custer was found on Last Stand Hill. And I just don't see how Bradley lied. What part of his statement feigns "stoicism". He doesn't say where he found the person he believed to be Custer, just that he found 197 bodies, and one of them is probably Custer.
He may very well be lying, but the statement doesn't present anything that would lead me to believe he lied. And all of the accounts of Custer's body found where we believe it was found outweigh one Indian saying Custer was killed in the Keogh sector and one trooper who claimed to bury the dead.
Was Custer mutilated? Probably, but we'll never know. Was he identified on LSH? Most likely, unless Godfrey and Benteen and Weir and Ryan and Terry and Bradley and many others are all lying. Is any of him at West Point? Who knows.
As for overall mutilation, I think it has to do with perception. Some saw lots of mutilation, some saw most of the mutilation as the means for finishing off the dead. We don't know what soldiers saw which portion of the field. Tom Custer was identified by a tattoo, Calhoun by a gold filling. A bunkie of "Boss" Tweed of L found him on LSH with his crotch split, and the legs thrown over his shoulders. But apparently, despite such harsh treatment, he was identified. Not all of the soldiers were allowed to search the entire area. The ones who said mutilation wasn't prevalent might not have seen enough bodies to have that opinion, or they just didn't feel it was as bad as others.
An Indian tale. Not first hand, now is it? I'd believe the soldiers who ID'd Custer on LSH over one Indian who said otherwise, 51 years later and then reiterated to Stewart a full 22 years after that. |
I came. I saw. I took 300 pictures. |
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El Crab
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - July 19 2005 : 6:22:54 PM
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That reminds me, the account in Stewart's book seems to be reiterated in this article I read just today.
http://www.helenair.com/articles/2005/06/28/montana_top/a01062805_02.txt
Basically, it seems they took the Medicine Bear claim and added a few things. I just don't buy it, because it appears to be a way to make Custer look bad. Like someone got a group of people together with anti-Custer agendas, and said "how can we make Custer look bad, even in death?" And they came up with removing him from his hill, having him killed by women and explaining away his supposed lack of mutilations due to being "unclean". Almost as bad as Russell Means' claim that Custer was driven back and routed by women and children who barely outnumbered his battalion. |
I came. I saw. I took 300 pictures. |
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RonH
Private
Status: offline |
Posted - July 19 2005 : 7:03:18 PM
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| It really is ridiculous for them to say GAC was knocked from his horse and killed by a squaw. The indians didn't even know they were fighting Custer that day. If Custer was anything, he was a warrior at least on the level of Gall or Crazy Horse and to try to denigrate him 130 years later by saying he was killed by women doesn't even merit a response. It kind of makes me mad. And no, I don't necessarily like what I know of his character. |
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Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - July 19 2005 : 7:04:19 PM
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I don't attribute much weight or interest to these accounts, as you know.
I don't find it important except that there's a motivation to find a certainty we cannot have that's most puzzling. You recall in SOTMS how Custer, to avoid the legal definition of pilfering a dead man's pockets, sliced open the pocket to retrieve papers. That 'delicacy' as Connell puts it, didn't exist alone. THere were all sorts of similar delicacies in that era which we don't recognize today. They appear in the popular literature of the time and obviously were expected to be understood by the public then as a wink-wink, nudge-nudge, but they aren't recognized now. I suspect - I can do no more - that how descriptions of mutilations and stuff were handled was often under the same socially accepted methods. When we read in the newspaper today that diplomats had a "frank and honest" exchange of views, we know it means it was unpleasant and included threats. "Hardly any mutilations" is likely shorthand for "ghastly and I don't want to go there, thanks."
All I'm saying is that IF Custer had been killed - pick a place, but say way over with Calhoun - it would be understood that he needed to be perceived to have died with his brothers on LSH in a Last Stand, and that it would be so arranged, and nobody involved would think that wrong, but spiritually true to his memory if not actual fact which, all things considered, was trivia compared to the "myth" that Mrs. Custer sought to confuse with the facts for decades after. That wasn't unusual. We still accord decency to the dead we don't know. "..held in high regard by his peers", "beloved by his family" even if he was an incompetent drunk and slapped his kids around rather than saying nothing. This tendency was more pronounced in years past.
It would be the responsibility of his regiment to make it so, and it definitely was the wish of the public that it be so.
And.....it could be so. |
Dark Cloud
copyright RL MacLeod
darkcloud@darkendeavors.com
www.darkendeavors.com
www.boulderlout.com |
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joseph wiggs
Brigadier General
Status: offline |
Posted - July 19 2005 : 9:42:19 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Dark Cloud
What would be interesting is WHERE Bradley saw the body.
It's possible that Bradley is telling the truth, but I suspect he isn't; not because he's a liar and trying to achieve an untoward end but because it was accepted that soldiers, especially officers, did not melodramatize their lives, but exhibited stoicism. That's still more common than not, and reflects poorly on those who did or didn't serve and who indeed try to dramatize themselves by association with actual warriors or public statements fawning over actual warriors.
"The moral tone of the Indian Wars Army, not the highest that our military records can boast, was strongly influenced by the conduct of the officers. At a time when the army was officially concerned about alcoholism among the rank and file, the sight of their officers reeling and staggering under a load of liquor did not encourage temperance. Nor were attempts to keep prostitutes away from the soldiers and to raise the standards of sexual morality facilitated when a married officer was known and observed to be having an affair with another's wife. Enlisted men were likely to try to emulate their superiors."
"It is not surprising, in the light of such conduct by an officer, that the morality of the enlisted men was not exemplary. There were, of course, company officers whose instructions and personal examples were positive. Only through a clear understanding of the widely varying characters of the men who made up the Indian Wars Regular Army can one interpret its history and strip off the romantic illusions that have usually obscured the subject."
Forty Miles A Day On Beans and Hay - Pages 73-74.
Such information impedes an image of the surviving 7th. Calvary officers gathered upon Last Stand Hill while dressed in Greek togas and solemnly gazing upon the tortured remains of their fallen comrades. They show an uncommon indifference to joy, grief, pleasure, or pain as they view the awful carnage that lies before them. Later, upon relaying their narratives to those who wish to hear, they remain stoic and unaffected.
Who knows why these men reported the condition of the bodies as they did. I think Crab came as close as we will ever know. The one thing I am certain about is that regardless of the reason(s), being "stoic" did not make the top ten. Could you quote your reference? |
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wILD I
Brigadier General
Ireland
Status: offline |
Posted - July 20 2005 : 04:40:39 AM
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try to denigrate him 130 years later by saying he was killed by women doesn't even merit a response.
Whatcha think MRW? |
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Dark Cloud
Brigadier General
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - July 20 2005 : 08:04:22 AM
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Again, Wiggs, you're painful when trying to be either witty or educated. Togas, for example, aren't Greek. That's a shock to those who get their history from Animal House and other movies, along with bodice ripping novels.
Traditionally, my reference for my opinion is myself.
Soldiers of duration tend to be, and need to be, stoic. (2 : one apparently or professedly indifferent to pleasure or pain)
If you could read, which you apparently can't since you use words that sound alike to mean the same thing, you'd observe my reference to stoicism is about soldiers not melodramatizing their lives, which would dampen description of carnage and horror. Obviously, not always, but it is a tendency not to upset friends and family. Read Siegfried Sassoon, for example, or Robert Graves or any number of compiled soldiers' letters home. There are exceptions, but mostly - even before censorship - they are, well, stoic in tone. I used the example of Guy Henry at the Rosebud. It was a prevalent attitude and expected to a degree and it's difficult to think it made no inroads in the 7th. |
Dark Cloud
copyright RL MacLeod
darkcloud@darkendeavors.com
www.darkendeavors.com
www.boulderlout.com |
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joseph wiggs
Brigadier General
Status: offline |
Posted - July 22 2005 : 10:51:29 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Dark Cloud
Again, Wiggs, you're painful when trying to be either witty or educated. Togas, for example, aren't Greek. That's a shock to those who get their history from Animal House and other movies, along with bodice ripping novels.
D.c., I was being very serious in my post. The fact that you thought I was being witty or educated is shockingly complementary, regardless of how painful it is for you. You may ask, how so? According to you, oh infinitely wise one, I am illiterate. Therefore, oh compassionate being, how could I try to be "witty" or "educated" if I am, as you have so benignly discovered, completely stupid? Finally, you failed, as you have so often done in the past, to quote your source for your "stoic" remarks. Somethings never change.
P.S. I thought the scene I described was funny, I swear I did. |
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movingrobewoman
Lt. Colonel
USA
Status: offline |
Posted - July 22 2005 : 11:23:11 PM
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wILD--
I think Ron should contact Dorman in the otherworld to ask him how denigrating it was when I killed and mutilated his butt ... traitor!
Hoka hey! |
movingrobe |
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joseph wiggs
Brigadier General
Status: offline |
Posted - July 23 2005 : 11:31:15 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by RonH
It really is ridiculous for them to say GAC was knocked from his horse and killed by a squaw. The Indians didn't even know they were fighting Custer that day. If Custer was anything, he was a warrior at least on the level of Gall or Crazy Horse and to try to denigrate him 130 years later by saying he was killed by women doesn't even merit a response. It kind of makes me mad. And no, I don't necessarily like what I know of his character.
Isaiah Dorman was a strapping, frontier man who would have commanded your respect and, mine as well. At the end of his sojourn upon this planet, he gaged upon the furious eyes of a "squaw" who pointed a revolver at his head. Moments later, Dorman departed this plane of existence. Does it not behoove us men not to confuse physical prowess with the mental strength of a woman. Of all the warriors who engaged each other on that faithful day, no warrior exceeded the martial exploits of MovingRobeWoman; an Indian squaw!Hoka hey! |
Edited by - joseph wiggs on July 23 2005 11:33:55 PM |
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joseph wiggs
Brigadier General
Status: offline |
Posted - August 02 2005 : 9:07:36 PM
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| Paul, trust me. Movingrobewoman was bad to the bone. Rain-in-the Face referred to her when he exhorted other warriors to not be undone by her exploits. Apparently she was, at one point, mounted and participating in one of the Indian charges. Last, but certainly not least, being married I know the wisdom in according all that is possible towards the positive status of womanhood. |
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The ID of Custer
