And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Battlefield tells story of Custer's fatal errors BY PETER MASLOWSKI For the Lincoln Journal Star http://www.journalstar.com/stories/top/stox On a hot afternoon 123 years ago today, George Armstrong Custer led his 7th Cavalry into the hardscrabble folds and creases of the Little Bighorn River Valley. And into immortality. Outmaneuvered by Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Gall -- and simply outnumbered by the massive gathering of Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapahoe gathered in this far corner of the Northern Plains -- Custer's quick defeat remains one of the U.S. military's most dis puted disasters and shocking losses. In late May University of Nebraska-Lincoln history professor Peter Maslowski accompanied an Army college course to the battlefield to study -- to try to understand -- the major events in the 1876 military campaign against the Sioux. "As much of the route as possible should be traversed on foot." - U.S. Army's official "Staff Ride" pamphlet. BIG HORN COUNTY, Mont. -- We were obeying the Army's advice, and we were paying for it. With an unforgiving sun beating down, we drained our small water bottles long before we finished our seven-mile trek. Who were we? Two dozen officers from the Army Command and General Staff College's Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.; two instructors; and several invited guests -- including me. And now we were at the site of the June 17, 1876, Battle of the Rosebud, where about 1,000 Sioux and Cheyenne defeated Brig. Gen. George Crook's 1,300-man command, a defeat that would have a profound impact on the Battle of the Little Bighorn eight days later. The undeveloped Rosebud battlefield looks much like it did 123 years ago. It encompasses about 5,000 acres -- all of it seemingly uphill. This didn't faze the primary instructor, Dr. Jerold E. Brown, who led the group up steep slopes at a brisk pace, pau sing only at key locations to provoke comments about how the battle played out. Although Brown has conducted dozens of staff rides, his enthusiasm appears freshly minted, excitement quavering in his voice as he emphasized crucial points, asked probing questions or shared vignettes that jolted history to life. Staff rides are neither guided battlefield tours nor simple history lessons. Instead they involve an intense, three-phase training exercise to help student-officers understand their profession. Students subject a single campaign to a thorough, critical a nalysis, probing not only its unique features but also warfare's universal human characteristics and operational principles. During the preparation stage at Fort Leavenworth, the students studied the battlefield through lectures, discussions, maps and artifacts. Also, each student researched a character involved in the campaign and briefed the class on his education, personali ty, military experience and, especially, his role in the campaign. But this was phase two, a field study in which students walk the battlefield, testing classroom perception against reality. Few perceptions remained unchallenged and unchanged, if only because three-dimensional terrain is much different from a flat map. Distances are ruggedly vast -- walking a mile in southern Montana seems longer than a mile should be. Streams meander more t han the straight blue lines on a map indicate. And even where terrain maps show flat land, ample hiding places -- small gullies and snatches of "dead" ground -- abound. Here on the battlefield, each student does some role-playing, explaining the thoughts and actions of historical characters. "General Crook!" barks Brown as the group stands at the exact spot where Crook established headquarters an hour after the Indians launched their surprise attack. "What are you thinking now? Have you gained the initiative?" The general -- in this case a woman -- responds that he weathered the Indians' initial assault quite well and, yes, his forces now have the initiative. Others aren't so sure as they survey the situation, visualizing both Crook's and the Indians' deployments, and mating those moves to the terrain. A vigorous debate ensues. These exchanges occur at almost every stopping point. The integration phase occurs when students return to the classroom. They will develop a collective view of the campaign and ponder its lessons of leadership, tactics and human beings under profound stress. But before the class could move to that final phase, we had more field work: following George A. Custer's route to fame, infamy and immortality. The morning began at Busby, Mont., where Custer's 7th Cavalry arrived at 7:45 p.m. June 24. From there we ascend Rosebud Creek to Davis Creek, follow it upstream, cross the Rosebud-Little Bighorn divide and follow Reno Creek to the Little Bighorn. Since walking would take too long, we do this in four-wheel-drive vehicles, "dismounting" where historians know Custer's troops paused. One of the dismounts was at the base of the Crow's Nest, a steep, peaked ridge that long served as an Indian observation post. Custer climbed it on the morning of the 25th. And so do we, though probably not as fast. The breathtaking panorama was well worth the breath-sapping trudge. The view filled me with admiration of the eyesight of Custer's Crow scouts, who discerned smoke from Indian campfires in the Little Bighorn Valley 15 miles to the west. Even with powerfu l binoculars I could barely see the valley. Considering the Army's basic operating assumptions in the summer of 1876, none of the student-officers criticized Custer's officership on the approach march -- or the way he divided his regiment into four battalions as he neared the Indian village. But the assumptions were wrong. The Army believed any Indian village would flee rather than fight. Military commanders also assumed they would never encounter a village of more than 100 to 150 lodges, which meant never fighting more than a few hundred wa rriors. Thus, although Custer had not seen the village, he launched an immediate attack. None of his officers, then or later, thought this was unwise. Against Indians, Army officers arrogantly assumed, sound military intelligence was unnecessary. Crook was the only commander who knew these assumptions were wrong. The Battle of the Rosebud demonstrated the Indians were concentrated in unprecedented numbers and were fighting, not fleeing. Instead of alerting Army leaders that a new paradigm prevailed, Crook simply retreated to his base camp on Goose Creek and went trout fishing. Unwarned, Custer attacked a village of 1,000 lodges, not 100, and confronted almost 2,000 warriors, not 200. Only after the battle started, when Custer briefly stood atop Weir Point and saw the village unfolding for miles, did he realize how badly the Army had erred in its assumptions. Although his revelation came late, it seemed to me as I stood atop Weir Point that Custer still could have saved himself -- and much of his command. Put yourself in Custer's boots at that moment: To his front left, Maj. Marcus Reno's command, deployed in a skirmish line, was advancing toward the village's extreme southern end. Custer could also see Indians preparing to counterattack. And now he knew what Reno did not: The village was immense; the counterattack would come in overwhelming force. It should have been obvious that ultimately Reno would have to retreat southward (as quickly happened). Moreover, somewhere to the south were the pack train and Capt. Frederick Benteen's battalion. A clear-thinking commander would have descended Weir Point and retraced his route southward to concentrate his regiment by providing a rallying point for Reno and linking up as quickly as possible with the pack train and Benteen. Had the entire command then hunkered down on good defensive terrain, the odds against Custer would have been only 3-to-1. But Custer hurried northward. With the regiment dispersed, the Indians concentrated odds of approximately 7- or 8-to-1 against Custer's isolated battalion (five of the 7th Cavalry's 12 companies). And they annihilated it. The key to Custer's flawed tactical decision may have been in the phrase "clear-thinking commander." Custer had been on the move, without sleep for more than 30 hours, and had little food or water for about half that time. Exhaustion and privat ion undoubtedly clouded his thinking. That, and a tactically adept enemy, led to Custer Hill on the battlefield's northern tip. This is where Custer's body was found, where he made his Last Stand, and where we made our last dismount. I had never been to the battlefield before. But I have heard it described as spooky or haunting. When we arrive at Custer Hill, I have no special sense the place is eerie. I am, first of all, aggravated that when the National Park Service built the road through the battlefield, it lopped off about eight feet from the hill, so it doesn't look like it did in 1876. Moreover, the sun is shining, tourists are traipsing around and the staff ride has focused my attention on Custer's Last Stand Suddenly, dense clouds race in out of nowhere. A wind roars -- yes, you can hear it roaring --from the north. The temperature plummets. Most of the visitors, including many of the staff ride members, make a "retrograde movement" (a military eup hemism for a retreat) to their cars or the nearby visitor center. Standing virtually alone, on a dark and cold and moody late afternoon, a vision flirts before my eyes, off in the distance, down there in the valley, of an immense Indian village filled with exultant warriors celebrating a great victory. A haunting place. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ WHO: The largest concentration of militant Indians in North American history vs. 12 companies of the U.S. Army's 7th Cavalry. WHAT: Monumental clash of two cultures fighting for control of a key region of the American West. WHEN: The hot, early-summer afternoon of June 25, 1876. WHERE: The Little Bighorn River Valley, a river the Indians called "Greasy Grass," in southeast Montana. WHY: Army orders were to subdue all hostile Indians, primary the Lakota Sioux bands of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, and force them onto reservations. On June 21, Kellogg sent the following telegraph message to the Tribune: . . . tomorrow, June 22, General Custer with twelve Calvary companies will scout from its mouth up the valley of the Rosebud until he reaches the fresh trail discovered by Major Reno, and move on that trail with all the rapidity possible in order to overhaul the Indians whom it has been ascertained are hunting buffalo and making daily leisurely short marches. Gibbon's part of the command will march up the Big Horn Valley in order to intercept the Indians if they should attempt to escape from General Custer down that avenue. It was the last telegraph that Kellogg sent. ===>> General Custer attacked the Indians June 25, and he, with every officer and man in five companies were killed. ===============================>>>> <> <<<<============================== Greetings, I am in receipt of your post concerning General George Armstrong Custer. The man does not deserve to be honored, but instead recognized as an instrument of the US genocidal policy against the First Nations's People. Genocide is defined as: Under Lemkin's definition, genocide was the coordinated and planned annihilation of a national, religious, or racial group by a variety of actions aimed at undermining the foundations essential to the survival of the group as a group. Lemkin conceived ogenocide as 'a composite of different acts of persecution or destruction.' His definition included attack on political and social institutions, culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of the group. Even nonlethal acts that undermined the liberty, dignity, and personal security of members of a group constituted genocide if they contributed to weakening the vitality of the group. Under Lemkin's definition, acts of ethnocide- a term coined by the French after the war to cover the destruction of a culture without the killing of its bearers-also qualified as genocide. Lemkin stated that "Genocide has two phases: one, destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group: the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor." UN Convention on Genocide: pp. 280 - Genocide Convention of the United Nations (1948): ...Article II- In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group, (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. The United States failed to sign on to the Genocide Convention for forty years. =========>>>>end quote I would suggest you get beyond the individual historical events and instead look at the pattern of relations between the US and the First Nation's people. Are you aware of the problems the People have had with alcohol? The practice of supplying the people with alcohol in trade? The Custer beer company three blocks from my house here in Monroe, Mi? Nothing has changed. Ishgooda (http://www.pobox.com/~jsd/Monument.html)
