As far as Yellow Tavern goes- Stuart was not expected to be victorious in that battle. He was outnumbered more then 4-1 and his opponents had repeaters as well as healthier horses. However as the monument to Stuart at Yellow Tavern says “HE WAS KILLED BUT HE SAVED RICHMOND.” He did save Richmond and in many ways it was JEB’s finest hour.

I may in fact blog on this later today because of some of the political parallels to today, but here I would offer briefly a couple of comments that I intended to make last year.

The story of “Curley” (Shuh-Shee-Ansh), the Crow scout who told people later that he “changed his hair” to appear to be a Lakota and wrapped himself in a blanket to escape from the final killing on Last Stand Hill was even before his death exposed as spurious. Having seen (with the other Crow and the Arikara or “Ree” scouts) the enormous size of the Shyela/Lakota/Arapaho pony herd from the Crow’s Nest (because as you note accurately they could not see the full dimensions of the village), Curley politely excused himself from the impending conflict with the permission and blessing of Custer and Reno, who understood (and in fact were counting on) the Indians’ dislike of open, pitched, frontal combat. The Crows and Rees had agreed to lead Custer to the Lakota; having done so, they were excused.

The Crow scouts by all accounts warned Custer against riding into the valley, telling him (as they adduced from the number of ponies visible to their naked eyes but not to Custer even with a spyglass)that there were more Sioux in the valley than there were stars in the skies. Curley was among these; he likely trailed along for a while and in all probability saw the last stand conflict but was more than two miles distant.

The Rees glumly painted themselves and sang death songs before riding into the valley and meeting their ends - motivated by their personal code of honor, which included loyalty to their chief, in this case Custer, with whom they had an intense and personal bond, especially Bloody Knife. [Funny how this point never gets mentioned any more in discussions about GAC, the battle, the politics involved, and so on.]

Often overlooked - except in modern times by Connell and Wert, as you mention - was the fact that Custer’s basic battle plan, though based on incomplete and flawed intelligence (this being the point where the charge of arrogance has the most traction) was good and had worked before at Washita and elsewhere because of the differing styles and manners of warfare practiced by the two groups. Custer had in excess of 700 fully armed and supplied troops. He believed he was facing an enemy of perhaps 1500 in strength. Now the actual number of warriors was at least twice that and more likely triple - but Indians fought as indivdiduals demonstrating bravery, not as disciplined combat units. Hence, there were REPEATED encounters in the old West in which small but disciplined groups of whites defeated or at least survivied encounters with overwhelmingly superior Indian forces. Beecher Island is the most notable example, where fewer than 50 cavalry troops and scouts held out for two days against over 2,000 Cheyenne warriors - or similar numbers in the Wagon Box Fight.

Custer was an intuitive cavalry officer - his “luck” was actually a seldom-erring judgment about when and how to engage. The “reckless” description that Chris alludes to above was actually what earned him and Wesley Merritt the promotion from captain to brigadier general in early 1863 - the fearless willingness to commit cavalry to a frontal charge which, by the way, the brigadier was expected to lead and which Custer - red-kerchiefed, white-hatted, and blond-curled - invariably did, having had eight horses shot from under him in the Civil War. Cavalry troopers lives were absolutely expendable - they were shock troops, after all - and Custer expended them to greater effect than any other Civil War cavalry leader, including Jeb Stuart (whom Custer defeated and killed at yellow Tavern in 1864). By contrast, Grant’s dogged, frontal infantry chrage, siege, trench, and attack strategy was much more controversial at the time, and Grant was liable to far more criticism for “wasting” troops than Custer ever was.

The fires of 1984 and 1989 that Joe Deaen refers to brought to light a number of fascinating artifacts. For me, the positve indentification of the skull and bone fragments of chief of scouts Mitch Bouyer and the remains of Lonesome Cherley Reynolds were the most interesting. The historical fact of most significance, though, was that the Indians were much, much better armed than previously supposed - modern ballistics enabling archeologists to trace the movement of dozens of indian weapons across the huge battlefied by following expended shell casings.

And as much of a student of the battle as I have been for forty-five years - as you again note, it wasn’t until I actually visited and walked the battlefield in 1985 that I fully comprehended what had happened and why the survivors of Reno’s battalion, most especially Lt. (later general) Edward Godfrey, never quite understood why Custer’s battalion was annihilated.

Now, I am not a fan of the PC and “history-lite” PBS series “History Detectives,” which relies again and again on conjecture and politically shaded judgments passed off as facts - and man, did they get this one wrong. There certainly WAS a last stand. Custer had dropped off the “Wild I” company under Keogh a mile and a half from Last Stand Hill - 30 or so troopers under his best battlefield commander. Calhoun’s C Company remained on Calhoun Hill about halfway between Keogh and Custer. The rout occurred when Custer apparently detatched E company and sent them into the Deep Ravine which even today is nearly impossible to be seen from Last Stand Hill.

The Cheyenne decimated E; I was killed to the man in disciplined ranks surrounded by volleyed shell casings; remnants of C and E made their way to Last Stand Hill, overwhelmed from the rear by at least 900 of Crazy Horses’s Oglalla warriors while engaged from the front by Gall’s Hunkpapa.

The interesting parallel I would draw today might be between Custer’s Rumsfeldian sense that a small but disciplned quick strike force could subdue an enemy in his own country as opposed to General Terry’s Colin-Powellian plan to mass “overwhelming force” to destroy an enemy force and forcibly occupy his land.

Their conclusion was that there was no “last stand” as such, that there were probably three running battles involving units of Custer’s command. Basically, the forensic evidence indicated that the Indians had a large number of rifles, including repeating rifles, and that the entire fight was basically a tactical slaughter, as the small groups were overwhelmed one by one. The main evidence against any last stand was a lack on concentrated cartridges from the American rifles in any spot.

Custer was known to be reckless even in the Civil War engagements in which he acquitted himself well. It’s not surprising that he fell victim to a well-planned and executed ambush.

Marvelous piece on Custer. I really enjoy these pieces on figures and history. Very well done. I received a book for a gift called, “Life on the Plains”. The semi/auto biography of Custer. My mother found the book on Ebay. First Edition with Custer’s signature in it!.