Redbone

No comments

June 25, 1876 — Custer is defeated and killed at Little Big Horn

  By , , ,

General George Armstrong Custer went into battle at Little Big Horn under a number of false impressions.

He was under the impression that he would be facing no more than 800 Native Americans, rather than more than twice that number – Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse had recruited assiduously, knowing that a battle was coming. He was under the impression that his major challenge would be preventing the escape of the enemy forces, rather than defeating them. And finally, he was under the impression, based on these assumptions, that the force under the command of his subordinate Major Reno would be far more effective in battle than it proved.

But with Reno’s forces isolated and routed, Custer’s forces were outnumbered and surrendered. More than 200 men in Custer’s army, including Custer himself, were killed.

Charles Marion Russell - The Custer Fight (1903).jpg
By Charles Marion Russell – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress‘s Prints and Photographs division
under the digital ID cph.3g07160.
This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., Public Domain, Link

As mentioned in:

Custer — Johnny Cash
General Custer — Swan
Jim Bridger — Johnny Horton
Little Big Horn — Running Wild
I Love America — Alice Cooper
Custer Had It Coming — Redbone
The Punch Line — The Minutemen
Custer Song — Buffy Sainte-Marie
Custer Died A-Runnin’ — David Wilkie
I Ain’t Marching Anymore — Phil Ochs
Some Fool Made A Soldier Of Me — The Kingston Trio
Please Mister Custer, I Don’t Wanna Go — Larry Verne
History is Made By Stupid People — The Arrogant Worms

No comments

December 29, 1890 – The Lakota are massacred at Wounded Knee

  By , , ,

Colonel James Forsyth of the US Cavalry led a force of approximately 500 soldiers into the Lakota camp at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation on the morning of December 29, 1890. Their intent was to disarm the Lakota tribespeople there, as there was great concern among the European-descended American population that the Native American ‘Ghost Dance’ portended a revolutionary uprising.

Nothing could have been further from the truth, but after literally centuries of slaughtering, deceiving and cheating the native tribes, the American people and their government found it hard to believe that the Indian’s response could be anything other than violence. Tragically, due to the intransigence and fearfulness of Forsyth’s troop, as soon as a single shot was fired (apparently by accident), it became the signal to open fire without restraint or mercy.

Ninety men of the Lakota, and two hundred of their women and children were slaughtered in the ensuing violence, more than half the residents of the camp. Despite claims that the killings happened due to the chaos of battle (which does no doubt account for a good number of them), the fact that some women and children were pursued as far as two miles to be murdered by cavalrymen undermines the idea that this was just a misunderstanding. Twenty of the 500 cavalrymen were awarded the Medal of Honor for their deeds at Wounded Knee (compare this to a total of three Medals of Honor awarded among 64,000 South Dakotans who fought in World War Two).

The massacre is generally seen to mark the end of the American Indian Wars (although there were a few smaller incidents in the following weeks). Henceforth, the genocide of the Native Americans would be pursued by slower and subtler means.