Little Bighorn: Winchester vs. Springfield
В stories each country has battles that, let's say, did not bring its glory arms, and even more than that - they showed the military art of its armed forces from the most unattractive side. So in the history of the United States there is also such a battle, albeit not a very large-scale one, but very significant. Moreover, for many years people wondered - how did this happen at all ?! But the secret always becomes clear sooner or later, so today everything fell into place. We are talking about the battle of the US Army with the Indians at the Little Bighorn River - or at the Little Big Sheep ...
In the middle of the XIX century, mastering the territory of the Wild West, there, white adventurers, settlers and gold diggers poured "to the West," and this stream, of course, was unstoppable. But there all these people met the Aboriginal Indians, the clash with which led to a series of “Indian Wars” - the number of exactly 13, from 1861 to 1891 a year. And this is not counting the innumerable small skirmishes of Indians with the army and the actual settlers. True, it is worth saying that the territory in which about 200 000 Indians lived lived under the control of all 18 000 soldiers. Both in the cinema and in the books we have a good idea of "how the Wild West was conquered", but even today there are plenty of lacunae in it. But perhaps the most impressive (and somewhat mysterious even now!) Remains the defeat of General Custer's detachment in the clash of Little Bighorn.
Surprisingly, the Indians owe it to the whites that they mastered the Great Plains. Before their arrival, they did not have horses, and they wandered only along their outskirts, and they transported goods on ... dogs! Having learned to ride and tamed wild mustangs, the Indians created an entire nomadic empire, and ... what civilized state in the middle of the 19th century would agree to partner with some dangerous savages? Bison hunting gave the Indians so much meat and skins for their tee-pees that their nomadic life became completely different from what it used to be, and the number of many tribes increased so much that they, of necessity, began to fight with other tribes for hunting grounds. And then, from the east, pale-faced people came. "White man, vodka, smallpox and bullets - that's death!" - said the Indians, who had tasted the fruits of civilization.
During the internecine war 1861-1865. North and South pressure on the West weakened. But in 1863, a law on homesteads was passed, after the victory of the northerners, the construction of railways began and new crowds of immigrants and workers flooded the prairies. The situation became especially catastrophic after finding gold deposits in the 1874 year in Montana, in the Black Hills region (Black Hills, in Indian - He Zap) ...
German writer Lizellotta Welskopf-Heinrich in her wonderful trilogy “Sons of the Big Bear”, after which the feature film was later shot, very clearly showed how the Indians deprived their own land for the love of the pale faces to the “yellow stones” - gold. The situation was complicated by the fact that whites killed bison, arguing as follows: “There are no buffaloes, and there are no Indians!”
Something had to be done with the Indians, and in February 1876, Major General George Crook, known for his experience in pacifying the Apache Indians, advanced with his troops into the territory of the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians in order to force them to move to reservations. The American army in the Wild West operated on the basis of a network of forts built there, which were small “strong points” (fortified points) surrounded by a palisade. There were barracks for the soldiers, shops for barter with the Indians, stables. Cannons were a rarity, after all, more than two dozen Indians rarely participated in attacks on forts?! Of course, in films about Winnet it looks a little different, but that's what the movie is for!
To force the Indians to go to the reservation, the government allocated dragoon and infantry regiments for the war with the "savages", although not at full strength. It was believed that this was enough, especially since the Indians themselves were at enmity with each other all the time. The Dakota Sioux hated the Crows (“ravens”) and Shoshone, and they willingly went to the whites and served as scouts for them, just to take revenge on their “red-skinned brothers”.
The “divide and rule” policy was also approved by the US Congress back in 1866, when the American army was reinforced by a thousand Indian soldiers, who were given the same salary as white cavalrymen, that is, 30 dollars a month! To the Indians, this amount seemed simply fantastic, and their admiration for their financial success did not diminish even when they were paid half as much. However, dollars at that time were not like the current ones. Think Tom Sawyer Mark Twain! For a dollar a week, a boy of his age could have a table and an apartment, and even wash and cut his hair for the same money! However, the scout detachments from the Indians of the Pawnee tribe were organized as early as 1861, and it was with their help that many other Indians, their enemies, fell into the traps of the pale-faced and were ruthlessly destroyed. Hoping to settle scores with other Indians, Comanche and Kiowa, Crow and Shoshone, Blackfoot (“Blackfoot”), Arikara and even the same Sioux went to scout scouts. For example, it was the Sioux, named Bloody Tomahawk, who subsequently killed Sitting Bull, the great leader of the Sioux Dakota. Moreover, the Indians did not understand that by acting in this way, they were playing into the hands of their enemies! And there were only a few who understood and no one listened to them.
The attack on the Indians was carried out in full accordance with the rules of the then military science: "und colonen marcher, zwei colonen marcher ..." The first column was commanded by General Crook himself, the commanders of the others were Colonel John Gibbon and Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, commander of the 7th Cavalry Regiment. Interestingly, being, as we said, a lieutenant colonel, George Custer was also a general at the same time and even had his own general's flag.
How could this be? And it's very simple. He received the rank of general during the years of the Civil War, moreover, when he was only 23 years old. Then he left the service in the army, and when he returned there again, he managed to get only the rank of lieutenant colonel, although no one deprived him of his general rank! They resisted the "long knives", i.e. cavalrymen, who had sabers on their side, Indians of different tribes, united due to circumstances. In the bend of the Rosebud River, the Indians first engaged in battle with the soldiers of General Crook. They started it separately, but this led them to unite into one common camp, where the Sioux Brule, the Blackfoot, the Suns Ark, the Minnekoji, the Assiniboins, and the Arapaho with the Cheyenne came together. The well-known Indian chiefs were also there: Tatanka-Yotanka - Sitting Bull ("Sitting Bull"), and Tachunko Vitko - Crazy Horse ("Mad Horse").
General Crook, in turn, was supported by the Crow and the Shoshons, who set out on the “warpath” with their fellow tribesmen - the entire 262 Indian warrior. There were Indian scouts in the unit of General Custer.
On June 21, 1876, the soldiers of Gibbon and General Alfred X. Terry met in the Yellowstone River area for a joint performance. General Terry had no doubt that the Indians were somewhere near the Little Bighorn. He ordered Custer with his mounted regiment and scout scouts to go to the Rosebud River. Contemporaries of the events, and then American historians, noted that if the group of Colonel Gibbon, moving along the Yellowstone River, consisted of only 450 soldiers, then Custer had about 650 of them, and he also had reinforcements in the form of six companies of infantry. Thus, in total, 925 people were under his command - a very impressive force at that time!
Custer needed to bypass the Redskins, and drive them into the “pincers” between the troops of the other two commanders. For an experienced commander, and Caster was exactly that, an operation of such a level of particular complexity could not be. In fact, it was the ABC of the maneuver war on the Great Plains!
Yes, but who was General George Custer, who fought under the Little Bighorn as a lieutenant colonel and regimental commander? What was he like, both as a person and as a commander? It is known that, even in the army of the northerners, he flaunted in picturesque outfits, standing out among the officers of his equal rank. So his dragoon uniform was, contrary to the rules, not sewn from blue cloth, but from black velor trimmed with galloons “in the southern fashion,” with which he also wore a naval shirt. In the campaign against the Indians, he also did not wear the standard uniform, but put on a suede suit with fringe along the hem and sleeves. For his yellow, straw-colored hair, the Indians gave him the nickname "Yellow-Haired", and he grew it so long that he spread curls over his shoulders. However, on this expedition, he cut his hair quite short.
General Custer
Again, instead of a weapon, which is supposed to have according to the charter, D. Custer took two relatively small, but large-caliber Webley-Bulldog revolvers, which were produced in the USA under an English license (caliber 11,4 mm), a Remington-sporting carbine, and a hunting knife in an embroidered Indian sheath. He wrote about his attitude to the “Indian question” in the book “My Life on the Great Plains” (that is, he was also a writer!), where he wrote that, yes, civilization is Moloch, that the Indians are “children of the earth”, but that they need to submit, otherwise they will simply be crushed. After all, now we have tolerance and the desire to understand everyone. And then everything was very simple: you don’t smoke cigars, you don’t play poker, you don’t drink whiskey, and even your hair is long, your nose is wrong and your skin is dark - it means you are a “savage”, and the conversation was short with a savage. Either you are a servant and accept me, white, as I am, or ... I shoot you!
Approximately 80 kilometers from the Battle of Rosebud, Custer sent out on patrol reconnaissance from his Indian scouts. His infantry at that time was far behind, and he himself was rapidly moving forward with his 7 th cavalry regiment of the United States Army.
Custer's scouts climbed Mount Wolf, dominating the area, from where, in the early morning of June 25, 1876, they noticed an Indian village. His scouts were also noticed, they retreated and reported to Custer about what they saw. Custer immediately divided the regiment: he took five companies for himself: "C", "E", "F", "I", and "L", and gave Major Marcus Renault and Captain Frederick Bentin three companies each. As a result, Renault received 140 people, Benteen - 125, and Custer - 125 (companies were of different sizes), and Renault also had a Crow scout troop of 35 people.
The Indians in the camp did not expect that their pale-faced enemies would attack them so soon, and Custer, in turn, did not expect their camp to accumulate so much. Only warriors there were about four thousand ...
Meanwhile, Reno's party attacked the Indians along the course of the Little Bighorn River with some initial success. The Indians did not expect such a swift attack! But very soon they came to their senses, and he had to deal with a large number of warriors, at the head of which, on horseback, Sitting Bull himself, the high priest of all the Dakotas, rushed to the battlefield. Renault was forced to retreat to the river, tried to take up defensive positions in the thickets on its banks, but was knocked out from there. Renault lost more than 40 soldiers, but managed to get across the river, where there was a small hill, and where his soldiers laid down their horses and hastily dug in.
Then Captain Benteen and his men arrived in time, and like this, together they defended this hill until the next day, suffering from thirst and shooting back from the Indians, until they were led out of the encirclement by General Terry's reinforcements. However, the enemy on the top of the hill did not greatly interest the Indians. They believed that only cowards fight like that, and victory over them is inexpensive. That is why only a small group of Indians remained around this hill, and their main body returned back and moved from the camp to where just at that time George Custer's soldiers appeared at the ford across the river.
There is a point of view that if he did not hesitate, but acted simultaneously with the Renault detachment, he would have every chance to break into the Indian camp and cause a panic in it. According to others, he nevertheless reached the camp, but he was driven out of there by the Cheyenne and Sioux, whose number reached two thousand people. Now it is not really possible to establish what happened there. The last member of Custer's party seen alive was Giovanni Martini, an Italian trumpeter who spoke little English. He delivered a note from Lieutenant William W. Cook that said, “Bentyn, over here. Big camp. Hurry up. Bring the ammo. W.U. Cook."
Apparently, Custer wanted to build on the emerging success, for which he needed ammunition. However, he still would not have succeeded in taking the Indians in pincers. Then there was no mobile communication, and he did not know, and could not know that Renault's detachment had already been thrown back by this time and thus allowed the Indians to concentrate all their forces against him, Custer. Well, Bentin, to whom Lieutenant Cook sent a messenger, was deep in the rear, and was in no hurry to the place of the fight.
That's how Caster was all alone, but he still didn't know it. Meanwhile, the Indians had joined forces: the Oglala Sioux led by Crazy Horse and the Cheyenne, then the Hunkpapa Sioux with Gall ("Bile"), and with him other Sioux. Therefore, many historians believe that "stopping and accepting the battle in the open, Custer signed a death sentence for himself and his detachment."
In fact, he signed it earlier when he ordered his detachment for some reason to split into two parts: three companies, which he entrusted to Captain McKeough - "C", "I" and "L", he sent against the Indians advancing from the north , and himself with the remaining two, "E" and "F", together with Captain George White, decided to keep the crossing across the river. Meanwhile, the Indians, despite the open fire on them, were all arriving, and Custer hastened to give a new order - both detachments again connect and concentrate on the top of the nearest hill. The soldiers put their horses on the ground, dug up firing cells, and began to shoot back. The hill was named "Calhoun Hill" after George Custer's half-brother James Calhoun, commander of L Company. Heavy fire from Springfield and Sharps carbines fell upon the Indians.
And now, let's do some archeology and delve into American soil, both at the top of this hill and at its foot. For a long time, none of the Americans somehow could have thought of this before, but then they did the excavations and they gave surprising results.
In 300 feet from the top of the said hill, archaeologists found a lot of rifle shells from Henry and Winchester rifles, which ... Caster did not have! Consequently, the Indians in this battle widely used firearms, and not some, but the most modern, not even the US Army.
Now it is impossible to say for what reason Custer left this hill and took up defenses to the north. Maybe the attack of the Indians divided his forces into two parts, and he just wanted to save the soldiers who remained combat-ready? Who knows?! In any case, the location of the Winchester cartridges and the testimony of Indian witnesses suggest that he did not stop on the northern slope of Battle Ridge, where a monument to him now stands, but moved to the hill of the Last Station, and there his people again came under heavy fire. Of those who did not leave with Custer, 28 somehow managed to get down the hill and found their last refuge in a deep ravine, but then they still surrendered and were killed by the Indians.
As a result, Custer's detachment, including himself, was completely destroyed by the Indians, who had decided in advance not to take prisoners. All Custer's relatives, whom he took with him, were also killed in the battle: the brothers Thomas and Boston Custer and his nephew Otier Reed. The corpses of white soldiers were stripped, scalped and mutilated by the Indians so that some of the soldiers were impossible to identify. Moreover, this was evidenced not only by their bodies at the battlefield, but also by the drawings made by a Sioux Indian named Red Horse. It should be noted that they clearly show the bullet wounds received by Custer's soldiers. That is, they were killed with guns, and not at all with arrows, as some researchers still claim.
Drawing of a red horse.
Total killed 13 officers, 3 Indian reconnaissance - just 252 people. This was a huge number for Indian wars. Losses among the Indians looked much more modest - about 50 killed and 160 injured. The Indian scout, named Blood Knife, was the best scout of Custer, half Sioux, half Arikar, Dakota beheaded, and his head was planted on a pole.
Map of the Battle of Little Bighorn
Somehow, in this slaughter, Comanche's horse, Captain Mac-Keoff, escaped: the Indians could not catch him, and he returned to his white masters. Later, with a saddle on his back, he took part in all the parades of the 7 Cavalry Regiment, and after his death at the age of 28 years, his effigy was filled with straw and exhibited at the Museum of Natural History in Kansas.
Can it be said that Caster was abandoned by everyone, and no one even tried to find out what happened to him? That in his detachment all the other officers were cowards, and there was no mutual assistance? No you can not. When a message came from Lieutenant Cook, Captain Thomas Ware, without waiting for orders, moved in search of a detachment in distress. With his men, he walked a mile towards the mountains, but he never met Custer, although, as Lieutenant Winfield Edgerley later reported, "they saw a lot of Indians driving back and forth along the river valley and shooting at objects on the ground" . Then Captain Benteen and the three companies at his disposal joined Weir's detachment, but it was decided not to search further, in view of the presence of clearly superior enemy forces.
Well, now it makes sense to go back to 1860, when the American Christopher Spencer, who was just 20 years old, created the first ever carbine with a magazine in the butt. US President Abraham Lincoln ordered to buy them for the army, but after the Civil War, the number of orders declined, and Spencer bought the company Oliver Winchester, who at once got rid of the only dangerous competitor.
Tyler Henry rifle
Winchester at this time was developing his rapid-fire weapon system - the Tyler Henry carbine. His store was located under a long barrel. To load the weapon, it was necessary to rest the butt on the ground, pull the cartridge pusher with the spring to the very top of the tube (for this it had a special ledge) and take the magazine tube to the side. Then cartridges were inserted into it one by one, the tube was placed under the feeder, which was released along with the spring. With 15 rounds in the magazine and 16 rounds in the barrel, this weapon developed an amazing rate of fire - 30 rounds per minute! Plus, it was very easy to deal with. Under the neck of the butt, he had a lever, which was a continuation of the trigger guard. When the lever was lowered down, the bolt went back and automatically cocked the hammer, while the cartridge was fed from the magazine under the barrel to the feeder. The lever rose up, and the feeder raised the cartridge to the level of the barrel, and the bolt sent the cartridge into the breech of the barrel, and ensured its locking.
But it took a long time to load it, so a window from the magazine with a spring-loaded cover appeared on the side of the new carbine, through which the cartridges were loaded into it, and not as it was before. The model was called the Winchester Model 1866, and the 1873 model soon followed. Although Winchesters were not designed as military weapons, they gained immense popularity on the battlefield. So, Türkiye successfully used them against Russian troops in the war of 1877-1878. In the battle on June 30, 1877 near Plevna, the Turkish cavalrymen gave their hard drives to the infantrymen, and each shooter had 600 rounds of ammunition. As a result, the Russian infantry, despite all its heroism, failed to reach the Turkish trenches. A solid curtain of fire and lead stood in front of her, and her total losses from two assaults exceeded 30 thousand people.
Winchester 1873
And it should be noted that something similar happened during the Battle of the Little Bighorn. To fire a Springfield carbine with a hinged bolt, you had to cock the trigger with your finger, then flip the bolt forward, insert the cartridge into the chamber, and remove the cartridge from the bandolier. After the shutter was closed, and it was necessary to put the carbine to the shoulder again, aim and only then shoot. When firing from a hard drive, the butt from the shoulder could not be torn off, and the target was not released from the field of view - accordingly, the speed and efficiency of shooting increased significantly.
A third of American riders had Sharps carbines. Their shutter also had a barrel brace, like a Winchester, but it did not have a magazine. Before firing, it was necessary to cock the trigger, lower the bracket down, from which the bolt went down, and the empty cartridge case was pushed out of the chamber. It had to be removed by hand or shaken out, put the cartridge into the chamber, and raise the bracket to its previous position in order to lock the barrel. All this took as much time as loading a Springfield carbine. True, the Sharps had a larger caliber: 13,2 mm, which increased its striking qualities, but at the same time it had stronger recoil. In addition, you still need to hit the target, which is much more difficult to do every time taking the butt off the shoulder, even for an experienced shooter than for those who use a hard drive.
That is why, although not very powerful revolver cartridges of 11,18 or 11,43 mm caliber were used in hard drives, they were often used precisely as military weapons, especially when a high density of fire and rate of fire were needed. Note that, in addition to the carbine, American soldiers also had Colt Peacemaker (Peacemaker) revolvers, model 1873, a worthy weapon, but not self-cocking, and requiring cocking after each shot. All six of his chambers were reloaded sequentially, like that of the Nagant, and in this situation this turned him into almost a disposable weapon!
However, there is still no answer to the most important question: how did the Dakota Indians get the Winchester and Henry carbines, and even in such quantity, although they were not in service with the American army and could not be captured as trophies? It turns out that a large batch of this was sold to the Indians in violation of all the rules forbidding the sale of modern weapons to the "savages". That is, the situation with the sale of weapons to the Indians, which was described in the novel by Lisellota Welskopf-Heinrich, could well have taken place in reality. Naturally, this, also very important, question arises: how did the Indians pay the white merchants for it? After all, hard drives were very expensive! Prairie Indians did not have valuable furs, and hardly anyone needed bison skins at that time, since their herds had not yet undergone mass extermination. Yes, and selling a large batch of weapons was very dangerous: you could go to jail.
However, one does not need to have deductive abilities to reconstruct the whole chain of those dramatic events: the Indians, preparing for the battle of "long knives", bought quick-firing rifles for gold from the Black Hills. How much they paid is known only to those who delivered and sold these weapons to them, but, apparently, the amount of profit was sufficient for greed to overcome any fear. But these merchants failed to regularly supply the Indians with ammunition. Or the Indians ran out of gold. And when the supply of cartridges for the hard drives ran out, the Indians had to capitulate.
This is how the Indians destroyed Custer's detachment. What's next? And then they collected the weapons abandoned by the soldiers and, before nightfall, turned them against the soldiers of Renault and Benteen. But their enthusiasm gradually dried up, and they preferred to break camp, and in order to hide their departure from the enemy, they set fire to the grass. The soldiers looked at the smoke and rejoiced. They considered this a victory, which they reported to General Terry, who approached them with his troops the next day.
Well, the Indians moved to the Powder River area. There, on August 15, they separated, and the "big camp" ceased to exist. This immediately brought great relief to the whites, allowing them to beat the Indians one by one. Some tribes managed to be driven into reservations, others were simply scattered. Part of the Indians went to Canada under the protection of the "Great Mother" - the British Queen Victoria. So the Indians won one battle, but in the end they lost the war.
Immediately after the burial of Custer's soldiers, an investigation into the tragic circumstances of their death was carried out. Decided who is to blame and who to punish? Caster himself, attacking the superior forces of the enemy? Or Reno and Benteen, who seemed to be holed up on a hill in relative safety? Knowing the nature of the lieutenant-colonel-general, many blamed only himself. It was said that he was distinguished by excessive arrogance, and he took his relatives on a campaign, as he hoped for an easy victory and for their quick promotion. That he was flippant in believing his scouts. With regard to Renault and Bentin, it was recognized that they acted too cautiously, which also could not but affect the sad outcome of the battle. On the other hand, everyone understood that Custer had extensive experience in waging war with the Indians and knew well that in the event of a collision with the "savages" on the plain, a dozen disciplined soldiers stood hundreds of their warriors.
It should be noted here that, contrary to popular belief that the Indians were excellent warriors, in reality this was not entirely true. They lived in war, their girls danced the “scalp dance”, but they did not know how to really fight. A young man who wanted to win the sympathy of a girl could go on a military campaign. A girl who wanted to get married could call young men on a campaign, and in a red dress, with a “feathered spear” in her hands, jump in front of them shouting: “The bravest will take me as his wife!”, And the soldiers who followed her tried not so much to kill their own opponents, how much to do "ku" - touch them with a special stick or hand. They boasted about the dead, they boasted about scalps, but wounds and ku were most valued. Yes, among the Indians there were unions of warriors “never running”, who, before the battle, contacted each other for ... penises, and nailed the end of the rope to the ground! And they really did not run, but any leader could release them from this vow by pulling him out of the ground. Well, and so on. There were no better scouts, but there were no worse soldiers either. But it just so happened that in this case the quantity turned into quality, and his experience did not help Custer. There were too many of them and many had hard drives. By the way, his own armament - the Remington carbine - was also single-shot.
The soldiers of Custer were helpless under the heavy fire of prairie warriors. So the major victory for Little Bighorn was won not by anyone, but by Mr. Oliver Winchester, whose rifles, through the efforts of obscure arms dealers, fell into the hands of the Indians.
Today, the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn is regularly visited by numerous tourists. A memorial monument was erected there in 1881, and in 1890, marble tombstones were placed over each soldier's grave. The Indians were also honored: in memory of the fallen soldiers of the Union of the Five Tribes, 100 yards from the monument to the 7th US Cavalry Regiment, there is a monument in their honor.
There is a 5,3 mile long footpath at the battle site that runs from "Custer's Hill" and the Reno and Benteen Monument, past "Ware's Hill", "Calhoun's Hill" to the ford of the Little Bighorn River, and other memorial sites. . 60 color installations that stand along the path allow you to visualize the events of this battle. In 1999, the memorial composition was supplemented with three Native American red granite markers. The land plots around the trail are privately owned, so it is better not to neglect the prohibition signs that stand here and there. It is best to visit there in spring or autumn, when it is especially beautiful there. And yet, when you look at these hills and try to hear the murmur of the Little Big Sheep, you think first of all not about the beauties of the local nature, but about the tragedy that has played out here, and what lesson this story has taught the “pale faces”.
Well, now a little about the lessons ... Two weeks later, one of the American newspapers published an article that if the American soldiers were armed with the Russian-style Smith and Wesson revolvers with automatic drum discharge, this defeat probably would not have happened. And this is right, because then the soldiers of Custer had at least some chance of a breakthrough and could have been saved, though not all. Another conclusion is more general and applies today. You have to be very cautious selling weapons, no, not “savages”, now you can’t say that, but countries at a relatively low level of economic and social development. Because today they are “for you”, and tomorrow they are against. And your weapon will be turned against you, and in terms of quality it will be very good, but there will be a lot of people with it - after all, they give birth there much more than in “developed countries”. Well, and the last ... if someone supplies a weapon somewhere, but we don’t want it, it makes sense (especially for economically unstable countries with poor people) to offer money for it through intermediaries. Big money to overcome greed. And then use it by local resistance forces against the suppliers themselves or their instructors. And then they will take up their heads: “To whom do we deliver?” - and also - “The second Little Bighorn shines for us!”
In the middle of the XIX century, mastering the territory of the Wild West, there, white adventurers, settlers and gold diggers poured "to the West," and this stream, of course, was unstoppable. But there all these people met the Aboriginal Indians, the clash with which led to a series of “Indian Wars” - the number of exactly 13, from 1861 to 1891 a year. And this is not counting the innumerable small skirmishes of Indians with the army and the actual settlers. True, it is worth saying that the territory in which about 200 000 Indians lived lived under the control of all 18 000 soldiers. Both in the cinema and in the books we have a good idea of "how the Wild West was conquered", but even today there are plenty of lacunae in it. But perhaps the most impressive (and somewhat mysterious even now!) Remains the defeat of General Custer's detachment in the clash of Little Bighorn.
Surprisingly, the Indians owe it to the whites that they mastered the Great Plains. Before their arrival, they did not have horses, and they wandered only along their outskirts, and they transported goods on ... dogs! Having learned to ride and tamed wild mustangs, the Indians created an entire nomadic empire, and ... what civilized state in the middle of the 19th century would agree to partner with some dangerous savages? Bison hunting gave the Indians so much meat and skins for their tee-pees that their nomadic life became completely different from what it used to be, and the number of many tribes increased so much that they, of necessity, began to fight with other tribes for hunting grounds. And then, from the east, pale-faced people came. "White man, vodka, smallpox and bullets - that's death!" - said the Indians, who had tasted the fruits of civilization.
During the internecine war 1861-1865. North and South pressure on the West weakened. But in 1863, a law on homesteads was passed, after the victory of the northerners, the construction of railways began and new crowds of immigrants and workers flooded the prairies. The situation became especially catastrophic after finding gold deposits in the 1874 year in Montana, in the Black Hills region (Black Hills, in Indian - He Zap) ...
German writer Lizellotta Welskopf-Heinrich in her wonderful trilogy “Sons of the Big Bear”, after which the feature film was later shot, very clearly showed how the Indians deprived their own land for the love of the pale faces to the “yellow stones” - gold. The situation was complicated by the fact that whites killed bison, arguing as follows: “There are no buffaloes, and there are no Indians!”
Something had to be done with the Indians, and in February 1876, Major General George Crook, known for his experience in pacifying the Apache Indians, advanced with his troops into the territory of the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians in order to force them to move to reservations. The American army in the Wild West operated on the basis of a network of forts built there, which were small “strong points” (fortified points) surrounded by a palisade. There were barracks for the soldiers, shops for barter with the Indians, stables. Cannons were a rarity, after all, more than two dozen Indians rarely participated in attacks on forts?! Of course, in films about Winnet it looks a little different, but that's what the movie is for!
To force the Indians to go to the reservation, the government allocated dragoon and infantry regiments for the war with the "savages", although not at full strength. It was believed that this was enough, especially since the Indians themselves were at enmity with each other all the time. The Dakota Sioux hated the Crows (“ravens”) and Shoshone, and they willingly went to the whites and served as scouts for them, just to take revenge on their “red-skinned brothers”.
The “divide and rule” policy was also approved by the US Congress back in 1866, when the American army was reinforced by a thousand Indian soldiers, who were given the same salary as white cavalrymen, that is, 30 dollars a month! To the Indians, this amount seemed simply fantastic, and their admiration for their financial success did not diminish even when they were paid half as much. However, dollars at that time were not like the current ones. Think Tom Sawyer Mark Twain! For a dollar a week, a boy of his age could have a table and an apartment, and even wash and cut his hair for the same money! However, the scout detachments from the Indians of the Pawnee tribe were organized as early as 1861, and it was with their help that many other Indians, their enemies, fell into the traps of the pale-faced and were ruthlessly destroyed. Hoping to settle scores with other Indians, Comanche and Kiowa, Crow and Shoshone, Blackfoot (“Blackfoot”), Arikara and even the same Sioux went to scout scouts. For example, it was the Sioux, named Bloody Tomahawk, who subsequently killed Sitting Bull, the great leader of the Sioux Dakota. Moreover, the Indians did not understand that by acting in this way, they were playing into the hands of their enemies! And there were only a few who understood and no one listened to them.
The attack on the Indians was carried out in full accordance with the rules of the then military science: "und colonen marcher, zwei colonen marcher ..." The first column was commanded by General Crook himself, the commanders of the others were Colonel John Gibbon and Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, commander of the 7th Cavalry Regiment. Interestingly, being, as we said, a lieutenant colonel, George Custer was also a general at the same time and even had his own general's flag.
How could this be? And it's very simple. He received the rank of general during the years of the Civil War, moreover, when he was only 23 years old. Then he left the service in the army, and when he returned there again, he managed to get only the rank of lieutenant colonel, although no one deprived him of his general rank! They resisted the "long knives", i.e. cavalrymen, who had sabers on their side, Indians of different tribes, united due to circumstances. In the bend of the Rosebud River, the Indians first engaged in battle with the soldiers of General Crook. They started it separately, but this led them to unite into one common camp, where the Sioux Brule, the Blackfoot, the Suns Ark, the Minnekoji, the Assiniboins, and the Arapaho with the Cheyenne came together. The well-known Indian chiefs were also there: Tatanka-Yotanka - Sitting Bull ("Sitting Bull"), and Tachunko Vitko - Crazy Horse ("Mad Horse").
General Crook, in turn, was supported by the Crow and the Shoshons, who set out on the “warpath” with their fellow tribesmen - the entire 262 Indian warrior. There were Indian scouts in the unit of General Custer.
On June 21, 1876, the soldiers of Gibbon and General Alfred X. Terry met in the Yellowstone River area for a joint performance. General Terry had no doubt that the Indians were somewhere near the Little Bighorn. He ordered Custer with his mounted regiment and scout scouts to go to the Rosebud River. Contemporaries of the events, and then American historians, noted that if the group of Colonel Gibbon, moving along the Yellowstone River, consisted of only 450 soldiers, then Custer had about 650 of them, and he also had reinforcements in the form of six companies of infantry. Thus, in total, 925 people were under his command - a very impressive force at that time!
Custer needed to bypass the Redskins, and drive them into the “pincers” between the troops of the other two commanders. For an experienced commander, and Caster was exactly that, an operation of such a level of particular complexity could not be. In fact, it was the ABC of the maneuver war on the Great Plains!
Yes, but who was General George Custer, who fought under the Little Bighorn as a lieutenant colonel and regimental commander? What was he like, both as a person and as a commander? It is known that, even in the army of the northerners, he flaunted in picturesque outfits, standing out among the officers of his equal rank. So his dragoon uniform was, contrary to the rules, not sewn from blue cloth, but from black velor trimmed with galloons “in the southern fashion,” with which he also wore a naval shirt. In the campaign against the Indians, he also did not wear the standard uniform, but put on a suede suit with fringe along the hem and sleeves. For his yellow, straw-colored hair, the Indians gave him the nickname "Yellow-Haired", and he grew it so long that he spread curls over his shoulders. However, on this expedition, he cut his hair quite short.
General Custer
Again, instead of a weapon, which is supposed to have according to the charter, D. Custer took two relatively small, but large-caliber Webley-Bulldog revolvers, which were produced in the USA under an English license (caliber 11,4 mm), a Remington-sporting carbine, and a hunting knife in an embroidered Indian sheath. He wrote about his attitude to the “Indian question” in the book “My Life on the Great Plains” (that is, he was also a writer!), where he wrote that, yes, civilization is Moloch, that the Indians are “children of the earth”, but that they need to submit, otherwise they will simply be crushed. After all, now we have tolerance and the desire to understand everyone. And then everything was very simple: you don’t smoke cigars, you don’t play poker, you don’t drink whiskey, and even your hair is long, your nose is wrong and your skin is dark - it means you are a “savage”, and the conversation was short with a savage. Either you are a servant and accept me, white, as I am, or ... I shoot you!
Approximately 80 kilometers from the Battle of Rosebud, Custer sent out on patrol reconnaissance from his Indian scouts. His infantry at that time was far behind, and he himself was rapidly moving forward with his 7 th cavalry regiment of the United States Army.
Custer's scouts climbed Mount Wolf, dominating the area, from where, in the early morning of June 25, 1876, they noticed an Indian village. His scouts were also noticed, they retreated and reported to Custer about what they saw. Custer immediately divided the regiment: he took five companies for himself: "C", "E", "F", "I", and "L", and gave Major Marcus Renault and Captain Frederick Bentin three companies each. As a result, Renault received 140 people, Benteen - 125, and Custer - 125 (companies were of different sizes), and Renault also had a Crow scout troop of 35 people.
The Indians in the camp did not expect that their pale-faced enemies would attack them so soon, and Custer, in turn, did not expect their camp to accumulate so much. Only warriors there were about four thousand ...
Meanwhile, Reno's party attacked the Indians along the course of the Little Bighorn River with some initial success. The Indians did not expect such a swift attack! But very soon they came to their senses, and he had to deal with a large number of warriors, at the head of which, on horseback, Sitting Bull himself, the high priest of all the Dakotas, rushed to the battlefield. Renault was forced to retreat to the river, tried to take up defensive positions in the thickets on its banks, but was knocked out from there. Renault lost more than 40 soldiers, but managed to get across the river, where there was a small hill, and where his soldiers laid down their horses and hastily dug in.
Then Captain Benteen and his men arrived in time, and like this, together they defended this hill until the next day, suffering from thirst and shooting back from the Indians, until they were led out of the encirclement by General Terry's reinforcements. However, the enemy on the top of the hill did not greatly interest the Indians. They believed that only cowards fight like that, and victory over them is inexpensive. That is why only a small group of Indians remained around this hill, and their main body returned back and moved from the camp to where just at that time George Custer's soldiers appeared at the ford across the river.
There is a point of view that if he did not hesitate, but acted simultaneously with the Renault detachment, he would have every chance to break into the Indian camp and cause a panic in it. According to others, he nevertheless reached the camp, but he was driven out of there by the Cheyenne and Sioux, whose number reached two thousand people. Now it is not really possible to establish what happened there. The last member of Custer's party seen alive was Giovanni Martini, an Italian trumpeter who spoke little English. He delivered a note from Lieutenant William W. Cook that said, “Bentyn, over here. Big camp. Hurry up. Bring the ammo. W.U. Cook."
Apparently, Custer wanted to build on the emerging success, for which he needed ammunition. However, he still would not have succeeded in taking the Indians in pincers. Then there was no mobile communication, and he did not know, and could not know that Renault's detachment had already been thrown back by this time and thus allowed the Indians to concentrate all their forces against him, Custer. Well, Bentin, to whom Lieutenant Cook sent a messenger, was deep in the rear, and was in no hurry to the place of the fight.
That's how Caster was all alone, but he still didn't know it. Meanwhile, the Indians had joined forces: the Oglala Sioux led by Crazy Horse and the Cheyenne, then the Hunkpapa Sioux with Gall ("Bile"), and with him other Sioux. Therefore, many historians believe that "stopping and accepting the battle in the open, Custer signed a death sentence for himself and his detachment."
In fact, he signed it earlier when he ordered his detachment for some reason to split into two parts: three companies, which he entrusted to Captain McKeough - "C", "I" and "L", he sent against the Indians advancing from the north , and himself with the remaining two, "E" and "F", together with Captain George White, decided to keep the crossing across the river. Meanwhile, the Indians, despite the open fire on them, were all arriving, and Custer hastened to give a new order - both detachments again connect and concentrate on the top of the nearest hill. The soldiers put their horses on the ground, dug up firing cells, and began to shoot back. The hill was named "Calhoun Hill" after George Custer's half-brother James Calhoun, commander of L Company. Heavy fire from Springfield and Sharps carbines fell upon the Indians.
And now, let's do some archeology and delve into American soil, both at the top of this hill and at its foot. For a long time, none of the Americans somehow could have thought of this before, but then they did the excavations and they gave surprising results.
In 300 feet from the top of the said hill, archaeologists found a lot of rifle shells from Henry and Winchester rifles, which ... Caster did not have! Consequently, the Indians in this battle widely used firearms, and not some, but the most modern, not even the US Army.
Now it is impossible to say for what reason Custer left this hill and took up defenses to the north. Maybe the attack of the Indians divided his forces into two parts, and he just wanted to save the soldiers who remained combat-ready? Who knows?! In any case, the location of the Winchester cartridges and the testimony of Indian witnesses suggest that he did not stop on the northern slope of Battle Ridge, where a monument to him now stands, but moved to the hill of the Last Station, and there his people again came under heavy fire. Of those who did not leave with Custer, 28 somehow managed to get down the hill and found their last refuge in a deep ravine, but then they still surrendered and were killed by the Indians.
As a result, Custer's detachment, including himself, was completely destroyed by the Indians, who had decided in advance not to take prisoners. All Custer's relatives, whom he took with him, were also killed in the battle: the brothers Thomas and Boston Custer and his nephew Otier Reed. The corpses of white soldiers were stripped, scalped and mutilated by the Indians so that some of the soldiers were impossible to identify. Moreover, this was evidenced not only by their bodies at the battlefield, but also by the drawings made by a Sioux Indian named Red Horse. It should be noted that they clearly show the bullet wounds received by Custer's soldiers. That is, they were killed with guns, and not at all with arrows, as some researchers still claim.
Drawing of a red horse.
Total killed 13 officers, 3 Indian reconnaissance - just 252 people. This was a huge number for Indian wars. Losses among the Indians looked much more modest - about 50 killed and 160 injured. The Indian scout, named Blood Knife, was the best scout of Custer, half Sioux, half Arikar, Dakota beheaded, and his head was planted on a pole.
Map of the Battle of Little Bighorn
Somehow, in this slaughter, Comanche's horse, Captain Mac-Keoff, escaped: the Indians could not catch him, and he returned to his white masters. Later, with a saddle on his back, he took part in all the parades of the 7 Cavalry Regiment, and after his death at the age of 28 years, his effigy was filled with straw and exhibited at the Museum of Natural History in Kansas.
Can it be said that Caster was abandoned by everyone, and no one even tried to find out what happened to him? That in his detachment all the other officers were cowards, and there was no mutual assistance? No you can not. When a message came from Lieutenant Cook, Captain Thomas Ware, without waiting for orders, moved in search of a detachment in distress. With his men, he walked a mile towards the mountains, but he never met Custer, although, as Lieutenant Winfield Edgerley later reported, "they saw a lot of Indians driving back and forth along the river valley and shooting at objects on the ground" . Then Captain Benteen and the three companies at his disposal joined Weir's detachment, but it was decided not to search further, in view of the presence of clearly superior enemy forces.
Well, now it makes sense to go back to 1860, when the American Christopher Spencer, who was just 20 years old, created the first ever carbine with a magazine in the butt. US President Abraham Lincoln ordered to buy them for the army, but after the Civil War, the number of orders declined, and Spencer bought the company Oliver Winchester, who at once got rid of the only dangerous competitor.
Tyler Henry rifle
Winchester at this time was developing his rapid-fire weapon system - the Tyler Henry carbine. His store was located under a long barrel. To load the weapon, it was necessary to rest the butt on the ground, pull the cartridge pusher with the spring to the very top of the tube (for this it had a special ledge) and take the magazine tube to the side. Then cartridges were inserted into it one by one, the tube was placed under the feeder, which was released along with the spring. With 15 rounds in the magazine and 16 rounds in the barrel, this weapon developed an amazing rate of fire - 30 rounds per minute! Plus, it was very easy to deal with. Under the neck of the butt, he had a lever, which was a continuation of the trigger guard. When the lever was lowered down, the bolt went back and automatically cocked the hammer, while the cartridge was fed from the magazine under the barrel to the feeder. The lever rose up, and the feeder raised the cartridge to the level of the barrel, and the bolt sent the cartridge into the breech of the barrel, and ensured its locking.
But it took a long time to load it, so a window from the magazine with a spring-loaded cover appeared on the side of the new carbine, through which the cartridges were loaded into it, and not as it was before. The model was called the Winchester Model 1866, and the 1873 model soon followed. Although Winchesters were not designed as military weapons, they gained immense popularity on the battlefield. So, Türkiye successfully used them against Russian troops in the war of 1877-1878. In the battle on June 30, 1877 near Plevna, the Turkish cavalrymen gave their hard drives to the infantrymen, and each shooter had 600 rounds of ammunition. As a result, the Russian infantry, despite all its heroism, failed to reach the Turkish trenches. A solid curtain of fire and lead stood in front of her, and her total losses from two assaults exceeded 30 thousand people.
Winchester 1873
And it should be noted that something similar happened during the Battle of the Little Bighorn. To fire a Springfield carbine with a hinged bolt, you had to cock the trigger with your finger, then flip the bolt forward, insert the cartridge into the chamber, and remove the cartridge from the bandolier. After the shutter was closed, and it was necessary to put the carbine to the shoulder again, aim and only then shoot. When firing from a hard drive, the butt from the shoulder could not be torn off, and the target was not released from the field of view - accordingly, the speed and efficiency of shooting increased significantly.
A third of American riders had Sharps carbines. Their shutter also had a barrel brace, like a Winchester, but it did not have a magazine. Before firing, it was necessary to cock the trigger, lower the bracket down, from which the bolt went down, and the empty cartridge case was pushed out of the chamber. It had to be removed by hand or shaken out, put the cartridge into the chamber, and raise the bracket to its previous position in order to lock the barrel. All this took as much time as loading a Springfield carbine. True, the Sharps had a larger caliber: 13,2 mm, which increased its striking qualities, but at the same time it had stronger recoil. In addition, you still need to hit the target, which is much more difficult to do every time taking the butt off the shoulder, even for an experienced shooter than for those who use a hard drive.
That is why, although not very powerful revolver cartridges of 11,18 or 11,43 mm caliber were used in hard drives, they were often used precisely as military weapons, especially when a high density of fire and rate of fire were needed. Note that, in addition to the carbine, American soldiers also had Colt Peacemaker (Peacemaker) revolvers, model 1873, a worthy weapon, but not self-cocking, and requiring cocking after each shot. All six of his chambers were reloaded sequentially, like that of the Nagant, and in this situation this turned him into almost a disposable weapon!
However, there is still no answer to the most important question: how did the Dakota Indians get the Winchester and Henry carbines, and even in such quantity, although they were not in service with the American army and could not be captured as trophies? It turns out that a large batch of this was sold to the Indians in violation of all the rules forbidding the sale of modern weapons to the "savages". That is, the situation with the sale of weapons to the Indians, which was described in the novel by Lisellota Welskopf-Heinrich, could well have taken place in reality. Naturally, this, also very important, question arises: how did the Indians pay the white merchants for it? After all, hard drives were very expensive! Prairie Indians did not have valuable furs, and hardly anyone needed bison skins at that time, since their herds had not yet undergone mass extermination. Yes, and selling a large batch of weapons was very dangerous: you could go to jail.
However, one does not need to have deductive abilities to reconstruct the whole chain of those dramatic events: the Indians, preparing for the battle of "long knives", bought quick-firing rifles for gold from the Black Hills. How much they paid is known only to those who delivered and sold these weapons to them, but, apparently, the amount of profit was sufficient for greed to overcome any fear. But these merchants failed to regularly supply the Indians with ammunition. Or the Indians ran out of gold. And when the supply of cartridges for the hard drives ran out, the Indians had to capitulate.
This is how the Indians destroyed Custer's detachment. What's next? And then they collected the weapons abandoned by the soldiers and, before nightfall, turned them against the soldiers of Renault and Benteen. But their enthusiasm gradually dried up, and they preferred to break camp, and in order to hide their departure from the enemy, they set fire to the grass. The soldiers looked at the smoke and rejoiced. They considered this a victory, which they reported to General Terry, who approached them with his troops the next day.
Well, the Indians moved to the Powder River area. There, on August 15, they separated, and the "big camp" ceased to exist. This immediately brought great relief to the whites, allowing them to beat the Indians one by one. Some tribes managed to be driven into reservations, others were simply scattered. Part of the Indians went to Canada under the protection of the "Great Mother" - the British Queen Victoria. So the Indians won one battle, but in the end they lost the war.
Immediately after the burial of Custer's soldiers, an investigation into the tragic circumstances of their death was carried out. Decided who is to blame and who to punish? Caster himself, attacking the superior forces of the enemy? Or Reno and Benteen, who seemed to be holed up on a hill in relative safety? Knowing the nature of the lieutenant-colonel-general, many blamed only himself. It was said that he was distinguished by excessive arrogance, and he took his relatives on a campaign, as he hoped for an easy victory and for their quick promotion. That he was flippant in believing his scouts. With regard to Renault and Bentin, it was recognized that they acted too cautiously, which also could not but affect the sad outcome of the battle. On the other hand, everyone understood that Custer had extensive experience in waging war with the Indians and knew well that in the event of a collision with the "savages" on the plain, a dozen disciplined soldiers stood hundreds of their warriors.
It should be noted here that, contrary to popular belief that the Indians were excellent warriors, in reality this was not entirely true. They lived in war, their girls danced the “scalp dance”, but they did not know how to really fight. A young man who wanted to win the sympathy of a girl could go on a military campaign. A girl who wanted to get married could call young men on a campaign, and in a red dress, with a “feathered spear” in her hands, jump in front of them shouting: “The bravest will take me as his wife!”, And the soldiers who followed her tried not so much to kill their own opponents, how much to do "ku" - touch them with a special stick or hand. They boasted about the dead, they boasted about scalps, but wounds and ku were most valued. Yes, among the Indians there were unions of warriors “never running”, who, before the battle, contacted each other for ... penises, and nailed the end of the rope to the ground! And they really did not run, but any leader could release them from this vow by pulling him out of the ground. Well, and so on. There were no better scouts, but there were no worse soldiers either. But it just so happened that in this case the quantity turned into quality, and his experience did not help Custer. There were too many of them and many had hard drives. By the way, his own armament - the Remington carbine - was also single-shot.
The soldiers of Custer were helpless under the heavy fire of prairie warriors. So the major victory for Little Bighorn was won not by anyone, but by Mr. Oliver Winchester, whose rifles, through the efforts of obscure arms dealers, fell into the hands of the Indians.
Today, the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn is regularly visited by numerous tourists. A memorial monument was erected there in 1881, and in 1890, marble tombstones were placed over each soldier's grave. The Indians were also honored: in memory of the fallen soldiers of the Union of the Five Tribes, 100 yards from the monument to the 7th US Cavalry Regiment, there is a monument in their honor.
There is a 5,3 mile long footpath at the battle site that runs from "Custer's Hill" and the Reno and Benteen Monument, past "Ware's Hill", "Calhoun's Hill" to the ford of the Little Bighorn River, and other memorial sites. . 60 color installations that stand along the path allow you to visualize the events of this battle. In 1999, the memorial composition was supplemented with three Native American red granite markers. The land plots around the trail are privately owned, so it is better not to neglect the prohibition signs that stand here and there. It is best to visit there in spring or autumn, when it is especially beautiful there. And yet, when you look at these hills and try to hear the murmur of the Little Big Sheep, you think first of all not about the beauties of the local nature, but about the tragedy that has played out here, and what lesson this story has taught the “pale faces”.
Well, now a little about the lessons ... Two weeks later, one of the American newspapers published an article that if the American soldiers were armed with the Russian-style Smith and Wesson revolvers with automatic drum discharge, this defeat probably would not have happened. And this is right, because then the soldiers of Custer had at least some chance of a breakthrough and could have been saved, though not all. Another conclusion is more general and applies today. You have to be very cautious selling weapons, no, not “savages”, now you can’t say that, but countries at a relatively low level of economic and social development. Because today they are “for you”, and tomorrow they are against. And your weapon will be turned against you, and in terms of quality it will be very good, but there will be a lot of people with it - after all, they give birth there much more than in “developed countries”. Well, and the last ... if someone supplies a weapon somewhere, but we don’t want it, it makes sense (especially for economically unstable countries with poor people) to offer money for it through intermediaries. Big money to overcome greed. And then use it by local resistance forces against the suppliers themselves or their instructors. And then they will take up their heads: “To whom do we deliver?” - and also - “The second Little Bighorn shines for us!”
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