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Found it. Fox page 242 of A,H,and CLB

"Of 1,625 .45/55-caliber cases that he examined, only six bore evidence of pry marks or gouged casing heads. DC here is your word being used in Fox and it does not refer to sausage Vern]This represents slightly over a third of 1 percent of the total number of cases examined."

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Malfunctions are always a concern. Even today with are modern police handguns we train on how to clear them. Failure to feed, double feeds, stovepipes can be cleared without a major take done. Last week we had the extractor tear the edge of a .40 S&W training cartridge case. I had to take it from the officer and pull the barrel and run the plastic end of a ball point pen through it to clear it.

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Since we are back to the Springfield rifle, I read recently that Indians stated the found Springfields with the case stuck in it. I wonder if this was a misinterpretation by the translator and what they found was a rifle with a expended cartridge in the chamber and the trooper just hadn't reloaded for whatever reason.

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This is one of Fox's most amusing errors -- he takes this ratio (6 cases out of 1,625) and the number of separate carbines which were identified, and extrapolates it to the total number in the five companies (he says 210) and concludes that about nine carbines jammed.

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I suppose everyone here can see the error. The six cases do not represent carbines that jammed. They represent carbines that jammed and were successfully cleared. We have no idea how many carbines jammed and were not successfully cleared -- the trooper dying as he attempted to pry the case out, or abandoning the carbine and relying on his revolver.

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This tells us that many of the revolvers captured had fired cases in the chambers -- but the Indians never mention that. So why do they mention carbines with fired cases in the chamber? Because they were stuck -- that's what makes it significant enough to mention.

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"The reason for finding so few .45 Colt cases is obvious -- to reload a Colt .45, you first have to punch out the empty cases, chamber by chamber, then reload chamber by chamber. Most man who were fighting with the revolver wouldn't survive to complete reloading." Indians collected cartridges they could reuse is as likely a reason as not.

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And which and how many Indians mention these carbines with stuck cartridges? When did they give such testimony, and to who?

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Vern Fox's data is from two locations and the second being Reno-Benteen where 7 cases out of 257 or a lower percentage than the Custer field were found with extraction problems. In this case we do have the carbines because they were not overrun. Fox has data on 60 individual carbine identified and found 4 of those had pry marks or torn cartridge case head. This gave him 6.7 percent. Of the the 380 carbines at Reno-Benteen this would represent 25 of the total had extraction problems. 60 of 380 is a significant sample size.

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AZ Ranger, My apologies, I knew from your posts that you are well informed,but I underestimated the time that you have been part of the forum. Still, I believe the average warrior could distinguish between a carbine with a stuck case and one that needed reloading.

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My theory, can't prove it, the Indians realized after the battle the whites needed an excuse for losing and the Indians heard it from the whites and then retold it. Did they say anything about observing Crook's troopers having the same degree of problems.

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This tells us that many of the revolvers captured had fired cases in the chambers -- but the indians never mention that. So why do they mention carbines with fired cases in the chamber? Because they were stuck -- that's what makes it significant enough to mention.

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I not as well read as most here but i haven't come across the data of Indians stating how many revolvers they picked. I sure they picked them up.

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Now, does this mean the carbines jammed so often the battle was decided by weapons malfunctions? No. But it happened often enough to be noticed by both indians and whites.

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Vern isn't that just part of every weapon system. The M-16 has had its problems and modifications also.

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I also believe at that time it was the thing to say, bad ammunition and jammed carbine, increasing the true impact the weapon had on the battle. The important thing to me was to what degree it impacted the outcome. I believe very little.

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First, how do you explain the testimony of officers and soldiers days after the battle saying there were so few cases of any sort on LSH, and then explain the numbers later found? What does that suggest to the logical mind?

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Are you referencing Mari Sandoz for Crazy Horse? Was this part of Crazy Horses's supposed rants at the post officered by the coldly objective source, Calhoun's brother Fred, who'd of course make sure CH was treated fairly and that his utterances - if any - were written accurately? Translated by who? In any case, where did the Indians acquire a lot of guns of any sort at the Rosebud? Even in the unlikely event they got the weapon of the few soldier and Shoshone dead, which we know they did not, there weren't a lot to get.

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"Indian testimony is not noted for giving precise numbers and times" because, of course, Indian testimony regarding the LBH does not exist at all. We have, at best, second-hand stories told to translators of unknown skill or agenda, sometimes by sign (always a preferred vehicle for, say, the past pluperfect or any time-flensed account.....) stories told after the official stories and wished-for stories were known, stories in old age. Black Elk, for example, from whom much of what we think we know about Crazy Horse comes (next to zero, it turns out....), is about four or five removes from anything approaching first hand info.

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I don't miss the point, nor say the Indians carried them off. Just an alternative explanation. There are other explanations, like they were never fired at all. The actual testimony is there were't any thousands of cartridges at all of any sort on the LSH field. The disparity, so called, is only apparent in the later found cases, the later appearence of which logically would be suspicous. Some Indians are said to have said some soldiers fired with the pistol, is all.

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There's no ad hominum attack, come on. That a man would have official access to someone accused of killing his brother, or could remain objective (and -after all- there's the fact CH was killed while in his unit's care) are valid issues that should damn it all, much as the 7th's presence at Wounded Knee damns that. Sandoz is highly suspect regarding the LBH.

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How does one handle quintissential balderdash carefully? And why would randomly believing those alleged portions that favor a viewpoint be construed as careful and not just convenient?

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Indians haven't told us squat. Others - often unknown others - tell us that Indians tell us, and at various points to various degrees the Sioux had their digits damp to the thermals and told the whites what the Sioux thought the whites wanted to hear. Or family 'translators' took it upon themselves to augment or protect.

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What percentage of the weapons the Sioux supposedly took from the Rosebud were jammed? How many, in total, did they get at all? Few, if any.

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If a military unit, after two years with its primary weapon, discovers problems with it (or their use of it)in battle, the weapon ain't the problem, just the symptom of an institutional incompetence. And while improvements are always made on weapons, there's no reason to think the Springfield, properly maintained and used in experienced hands, was an issue at all in 1876.

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"Clearly, there were more lying around on July 25th, 1876. Hence, "Thousands" is correct." Clearly not. Clearly there is a discrepancy between what was seen by trained officers and observers who looked for those signs and what is claimed today.

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The issue is the person and his prejudicial presence there with known motive for ill, which coincidently happened.

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It isn't testimony, again, and Gray was able to find some that didn't conflict with it, if they said what we're told they did.

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Almost all regarding Curley alone. He found all sorts of things with the Indian scouts and with Curley that required assumption and inversion to correct what he thought were previous errors.

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You imply Sandoz said Crazy Horse claimed a lot of guns from the Rosebud the Sioux took were jammed. I ask for this reference and how that could possibly be true since few weapons were lost anyway?

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The point is, if there were an issue the 7th did NOT discover it till the LBH.

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That's a failure of training and lack of firearm drill if you discover after about five rapid shots, some few guns jammed and the shell had to be extracted by other means in a weapon you've trained with for two years. Whether by verdigris and improper care or design flaw, unknown. There's a percentage of human failure in any endeavor under stress, there is a reasonble failure rate for anything built in the 19th century, there are stats to show that Remingtons failed more often than the Springfields, being more complicated. Unless it can be shown the Springfield's failures were well beyond the norm for all of this, and this despite appropriate level of training, it's a straw dog.

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