"Why Does Little Big Horn Matter?" Topic

Why is the loss at Little Big Horn such a big deal? Two hundred or so men could die in a few seconds in an ACW battle.

Perspective. Not how many, but where how and why.

If you say so. I have read many times that Little Big Horn was a huge upset and disaster but never an explanation about why that was.

OK

The Politics of the Good Indian/Bad Indian factions in the US Government. Grant/Sherman didn't like Custer and thought he was setting himself for a Presidential run.

Also Abe Custer spent the rest of her life campaigning for her sainted Husband and Hounded any Distrackers. She Even felt the movie "They Die with their boots on" was anti Custer.

The news of LBH broke out right on top of the country's Centennial Birthday Party, sort of putting a damper on the whole mood.

Why? It's pretty simple, considering the period. A column of American Cavalry troopers marched across the plains, to spread order and secure the frontier for settlement, and were struck down by the "primitive and savage" foe.

Defeat of this type and magnitude, by a "lesser" opponent, had not really been contemplated by the population of the time.

Big Horn matters because Libby Custer was dead 8 years before the release of the film 'They Died with Their Boots On' but was a critical influence on its reception.

Agree – not the number of losses, but rather the fact that a regiment of US cavalry could be defeated by Native Americans

It is hard to see what you can't imagine, and the average US citizen could not imagine that happening

Same could be said for Isandlwana. Losses by the British were what, 800 and 400 African allies or so?

It was a big deal because it was a blow to our self image more than anything.

Because Custer was a famous general from the Civil War.

EC for the win.

I still offer to guide anyone that is visiting the battlefield

It also left fewer troops to patrol or stay on top of the Indian problem. The death of 263 troopers was a big deal and a serious gap in the US Army's Fort net work.

Strategically, it's a blip. But there's self-image. (EC is right.) There's the mystery. And, in a sense, it really shouldn't have happened. Reno Hill fits a familiar template along with Adobe Walls and the Wagon Box: Plains Indians appear in large numbers and the defenders hole up, conserving ammunition and taking desperate risks for water until help arrives or the Indians take off anyway. That was so-so normal. If Custer and 100 men of his battalion had been found desperately thirsty and low on ammo on Custer Hill, only specialists would know of the battle today. Who not on TMP remembers Fetterman?

But to lose the most famous (self-publicized) Indian fighter, a distinguished Civil War general and a force more than twice the size of Fetterman's--just gone, and no one to tell the story--moves the whole thing into legend.

And yes: Isandlwana, the Little Big Horn and Adowa are the last stands of the pre-colonial order. After them comes the World Wars and then the rise of anti-colonial guerilla warfare and the turning of the political tide within Western states.

Perhaps it meant something to the original Americans? Perhaps their most significant stop-checks to the rolling programme of land-loss and genocides? Then there was the aftermath – the intensified reaction of the defeated didn't improve their lot in life.

It was a loss of nearly 1% of the US Army at the time.

How about a loss of over 50% of the US Army at one time? Try the Battle of the Wabash. LBH is nothing compared to Wabash. :)

Wabash was a slaughter. The press just didn't exist as it did in 1876. Plus happening during the centennial was huge for the Lbh battle.

The defeat of a modern white-man's military force by aboriginal forces was unthinkable. It didn't fit the grand narrative regarding the differences of the races. Little Big Horn was scary enough, but coupled with the British defeat in 1879, a scant 3 years later, the white folk's world was upended. In the span of three years native forces defeated white armed forces. The shock was heard round the world. Less than 30 years later the Japanese would destroy two European fleets in the Russo-Japanese War. European dominance of the battlefield ended, but it started with the battle on the Little Horn River. Jus sayin.

While I live several hours away from the battlefield, I am about 5 minutes away from a museum where some arrows and a bow which were present at the battle are now preserved.

While EC has much of the non-native perspective right, LBH was the beginning of the end for the peoples of the Plains, especially the Sioux (the name the French gave to the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota tribes), believe there's much as yet to be discovered or at least explained as to the consequences of that battle, let alone the circumstances which led up to it in the preceding decades.

Even more, from my perspective as a (mostly) white man living on a reservation, the battle represents the a major event in the cultural war between the "Indians" of the American West and the Manifest Destiny culture of whites, as overseen from Washington D.C., the instrument of which was the U.S. Army (Cavalry).

The racism and discrimination towards the native peoples was, and in certain areas of the Dakotas (and perhaps other places too) still is palpable. I won't go into details, but I have seen enough to know it to be true. However, this is just one part of the culture war and thus was a part of the cultural shock which resulted from the loss of Custer and his men.

Ironically, it was the 7th Cavalry who was present and in action at the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, but I cannot say as to how much of the collective memory and anger of the unit was responsible for the slaughter of innocents in that instance.

DJColtrain got here with my reason first, that's the biggest reason I have always understood it's importance.

@Saber6, my family and I will be up there for the first time in July. Where can I contact you for pointers, etc?

The defeat of empires wasn't anything new. What made them empires was that they could keep coming back, often with massive force.

Every one knows that Custer had a slight English/Australian accent and looked a lot like Errol Flynn…and only sacrificed the 7th to save Gibbon or Terry's Infantry. Because as Custer said before the night of the Battle…"I can do more damage , the infantry won't stand a chance"!
Such self-sacrifice!
And…he was the last man to get shot by Crazy Horse (Anthony Quinn).
Incredible isn't it, that 'Warner Brothers' got every detail right on this one…. astounding!
Still one of my favorite movies.

Same reason as why Rorke's Drift is so memorable – heroic characters and an ‘out of the ordinary' outcome. Had RD fallen to the Zulus with no survivors, it would be no more than a brief footnote in accounts of the much greater disaster.

Elizabeth Custer stated on numerous occasions that her husband had no presidential ambitions. 1) He was not politically savvy-his near-run escape from Grant in April is proof of that, 2) he was a poor orator, his officers in the 7th and acting friend Lawrence Barrett stated that Custer stammered often when excitied, hardly a trait for a political figure, and 3) if running for president I think that he would've told his wife about it. This presidential nonsense has been bantered about since Mari Sandoz wrote her undocumented book on the battle and it came out in the movie Little Big Man. Complete garbage.

This is not like being wiped out by Jeb Stuart's cavalry. They were wiped out by savages. The U.S. Army isn't suppose to lose to them. Custer was a national hero from the ACW. It was a huge shock.

Do some research. Read a book or two. Search online for newspaper headlines from all over the country. It was a huge deal! Think the British public's reaction to Isandlwana. They are very similar.

It's because it was never supposed to happen. Shock factor. Your legendary ACW hero with his invincible cavalry command (the view the public held) was never supposed to be wiped out by uncivilized under armed savages. Pearl Harbor was never supposed to be attacked, it was invulnerable. Terrorists were never supposed to fly planes into buildings. The Space Shuttle was never supposed to blow up. And a president was never supposed to have his brains blown out on an American street. Doesnt matter whether it was 1 person, 10, hundreds or even thousands. It was the Shock Value …. this could "never" happen to us. Cheers!