No Little Big Horn

DuQuense

As the Tittle says.
WI Custer Rides out, Tramples on several little Indian Camps, Then Rejoins General Cooke, and everyone returns to The Fort, With out any major Indian attacks.

No Headlines about the 7th Calvery being Massacared. No Headlines yelling for The Government to Avenge.
While there will be some Papers calling for the Government to do something about the Indians in relation to the Gold, There will be others pointing out this is Indian Treaty land.
So no great ground Swell, Clamoring for the removal of the Indians.
 

oudi14

But the attack would have happened anyway. If Custer hadn't jumped the gun on the 25th, and waited for Terry and Gibbon, as per his orders, Terry would have ordered the attack himself once all his troopers were in position. Only way to butterfly away the Little Big Horn would be to have the Sioux be camping somewhere else, and the army's Crow scouts would have found them wherever they were. So you are going to have a fight no matter what. And with all those forces gunning for the injuns, it could be something as bad as the raid on Black Kettle's village in '68.
 

mailinutile2

Lord Grattan said:
Wasn't Custer hoping to use a stunning victory over the Indians - at Little Big Horn or wherever - as a launchpad (forgive the anachronism) for his presidential bid?
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Who'd you prefer?
A battle-hardened, heroic general of the secession war like Custer or some half-dutch jonny-comes-lately rich-boy as Theodore Roosvelt?
:D
 

AmIndHistoryAuthor

Banned
oudi14 said:
But the attack would have happened anyway. If Custer hadn't jumped the gun on the 25th, and waited for Terry and Gibbon, as per his orders, Terry would have ordered the attack himself once all his troopers were in position. Only way to butterfly away the Little Big Horn would be to have the Sioux be camping somewhere else, and the army's Crow scouts would have found them wherever they were. So you are going to have a fight no matter what. And with all those forces gunning for the injuns, it could be something as bad as the raid on Black Kettle's village in '68.
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I'm hoping you used that racist epithet out of ignorance, not malice.

Incidentally, Sioux is the colonial name used by outsiders. They're Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota. If you get up to those parts and say "Sue" you'll get an argument, if not decked.

It wouldn't be like the massacre of Black Kettle's people. Those were unprepared villages of women, children, and elders, who were under a flag of truce. The most Terry's attack (on an encampment 4-6X the size of Black Kettle's, with warriors prepared to fight) could've done was disperse them.

But I expect Custer and supporters would trumpet this as a victory no matter what, just like was done with Tippecanoe and San Juan Hill.

A President Custer would be disastrous, as incompetent as Grant, as alienating a personality as Andrew Johnson's, and as much of a warmonger's as Teddy Roosevelt, with none of TR's prescient progressivism.

I shudder to think of the fate of Lakota, Cheyenne, Samoans and Nez Perce under a Custer administration.
 

oudi14

I used it out of neither ignorance or malice. I'm just old fashioned. I saw one hell of a lot of 'cavalry vs. indian' movies back in the 1960s, and 'injun' was a common term. No insult intended. I watched 'The Great Sioux Massacre' in 1966, about the Little Big Horn. I know the correct term is Dakota, but I don't think of them that way. The fact is, some of us out here in cyberspace are dinosaurs.
I agree about Custer being a lousy POTUS. Far too egotistical for one thing.
 

xchen08

oudi14 said:
I used it out of neither ignorance or malice. I'm just old fashioned. I saw one hell of a lot of 'cavalry vs. indian' movies back in the 1960s, and 'injun' was a common term. No insult intended. I watched 'The Great Sioux Massacre' in 1966, about the Little Big Horn. I know the correct term is Dakota, but I don't think of them that way. The fact is, some of us out here in cyberspace are dinosaurs.
I agree about Custer being a lousy POTUS. Far too egotistical for one thing.
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Don't worry. Nobody really thinks "injun" is racist or an epthet unless you specifically try to make it so. It's just archaic, like Negro. It's just AIHA, who has this thing about calling everyone and everything racist.
 

Workable Goblin

xchen08 said:
Don't worry. Nobody really thinks "injun" is racist or an epthet unless you specifically try to make it so. It's just archaic, like Negro. It's just AIHA, who has this thing about calling everyone and everything racist.
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Or it could be because he's Native American himself...you go up to an African American and call him a Negro and see what happens...I'll be over in this corner, thanks.
 

xchen08

truth is life said:
Or it could be because he's Native American himself...you go up to an African American and call him a Negro and see what happens...I'll be over in this corner, thanks.
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I've seen older people do it all the time. And since the black people I know are good educated people who aren't obsessed about race, they take it in the manner in which it was meant, and don't try to imply racism when it's obvious none is meant.

As a side note, by standards set down by AIHA himself, he is not a Native American. To wit, he is not of majority Native American descent, and does not reject all the rest of his heritage except for the Indian. Thus, he is not an Indian.
 

Workable Goblin

xchen08 said:
I've seen older people do it all the time. And since the black people I know are good educated people who aren't obsessed about race, they take it in the manner in which it was meant, and don't try to imply racism when it's obvious none is meant.
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Well, I've never heard or seen "Negro" used in a non-racist fashion since, oh, around 1970 maybe. Pushing it. I would personally be quite shocked if anyone used it around me, just as if they used "nigger" (And, BTW, I am whiter than a very white thing indeed).
 

dalamplighter

Is this thread really about the difference between 'injun' and 'indian'? Technically, they are both wrong, as Native American is the P-C term these days.

But I think that even without Little Bighorn, the long-term effects would be negligible. As the areas where natives lived would become settled by more Americans, the US would feel a need to push the natives off of their land to make room for settlers. Thus, the Indian Wars would need to happen at some point, eventually.
 

PrairieVoice

Banned
What Little Big Horn did was give the indians one final chance to get a shot in at the whites.

Thing is a better trained, better equipped 7th cavalry might have won that fight or at least managed to escape.
 

usertron2020

Donor
PrairieVoice said:
What Little Big Horn did was give the indians one final chance to get a shot in at the whites.

Thing is a better trained, better equipped 7th cavalry might have won that fight or at least managed to escape.
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The idea that the 7th Cavalry could win that fight? Well, if they had 500 M-16s, and about 500,000 rounds of ammunition... :D
 

usertron2020

Donor
PrairieVoice said:
What Little Big Horn did was give the indians one final chance to get a shot in at the whites.

Thing is a better trained, better equipped 7th cavalry might have won that fight or at least managed to escape.
Click to expand...
2/3rds of his force DID escape. Major Reno and Captain Benteen's columns survived by holding a knoll south of the S**** encampment. Custer's attack, especially regarding Benteen's column, made no sense at all. All Custer would tell him was to "Sweep the area to the Southwest" (All the way to California?).

Oddly enough, in what will probably be the last Custer worshipping film ever made, "Son of the Morning Star", there may be a good answer for Custer's planning. He had told Reno to launch a frontal assault on the southern flank of the S****, while he would attack "elsewhere". In this film, Custer is seen rising up over the ridge where his own column is just starting the attack. Sheer horror is on Custer's face, as he looks upon the S**** encampment. It goes on and on and on, almost as far as the eye can see. "My God, this isn't the end of the village...IT'S THE MIDDLE!!":eek::eek::eek: In short, Custer's plan makes perfect sense, if the S**** did not include the Arapaho AND the Cheyenne as well.:eek:

One last point. In I***** Warfare, you NEVER attacked an encampment with the warriors present unless you had overwhelming numbers on your side. The warriors would NOT have dispersed because they were neither a raiding nor hunting party/encampment. They were with their wives, children, and old people. They would have fought to the very last. Even if the encampment were as small as Custer may have thought, it would have been an absolute bloodbath for both sides, and Custer would have ridden the Little Big Horn to a court-martial, NOT the White House.
 

othyrsyde

I've been hesitant to comment, but the "political correctness" remark has just irked me to respond. Not using racial slurs isn't PC, its not being an a-hole. Now using Injun in a historical context is one thing, but causally using to describe Indians/Natives is another.

Its also not PC, to use the preferred term a people use for themselves; that is also just not being an a-hole. So the whole editing out Sioux and Indian is just a dickish move, so please grow up.

Now that this thread has been derailed further, I'll add my two cents to the topic, for compensation. Well I think a confrontation of some sort was to occur at Big Horn/Greasy Grass; maybe if Custer hadn't a blundered in, he could have escaped, where reinforcements would be gathered to continue the war. Some results, is the US public wouldn't have been outraged, and the government not so pressed to avenge the defeat. So possibly the war would have lasted longer, but ended with similar results.
 

Dave Howery

strangely enough, the battle turned out to be a negative for the natives, in the long run. Before the battle, the US public was getting annoyed at the army for the various massacres they'd committed. But the Bighorn battle turned public opinion around completely. If the battle had never happened, or if Custer had won (and likely committed yet another massacre), then public opinion might have led to a better deal for the tribes involved. As it was, the US public opinion for a long time was along the lines of "native warriors massacring the woefully outnumbered American soldiers"... as you can see on this older (and very un-PC) marker at the Bighorn battlefield site:

bighorn.jpg
 

oudi14

It occurs to me that if you can turn the defeat of Custer into a victory by Terry/Custer, et al, never mind how much a victory, you may even be able to butterfly away Wounded Knee. The ghost dancing will still happen, but the cavalry won't have such a hard-on for Sitting Bull and his people; they were still pissed about the LBH 14 years later, maybe they don't open fire with so little provocation in this TL. Or is that hoping for too much, given the average American mind-set in 1890?
 
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