"Why Custer Was Never Warned ..." Topic

…The Forgotten Story of the True Genesis of America's Most Iconic Military Disaster, Custer's Last Stand

"For the first time, this ground-breaking book tells the forgotten story of the true genesis of the June 25, 1876 disaster along the Little Bighorn, "Custer's Last Stand." The failure of the southern column to continue to advance north after the battle of the Rosebud set the stage for the annihilation of George Armstrong Custer and his five companies of the 7th Cavalry at the Little Bighorn…"
Main page
link

Anyone have read this book?
If the answer is yes… comments please?

thanks in advance.

Armand

Oh boy, ANOTHER attempt to whitewash Custer. He was warned. By both his White and hos Indian scouts. But he refused to believe them.

Anyth8ng that prompts discussion on the OW board has to be a good thing , thanks for the link.

Haven't read this book, but did read the free 25-page intro on the website. It was enough to know this is the source of comments that appeared on a couple of the LBH Facebook sites a few months ago. All of a sudden several people started claiming Crook was at fault because he didn't send a messenger or a company or a battalion north to let Custer know there were thousands of Sioux warriors on the Rosebud waiting to ambush Custer.First ,thousands hadn't fought Crook-probably 750-900 had ridden out to attack Crook on the Rosebud on June 17th. (Between then and June 24th, several hundred more Summer Roamers would arrive from the agencies, doubling the size of the hostiles.
Second, there was no expectation that the 3 army forces would catch the Sioux in some giant pincher action on some ageed on date at some agreed on site. All that was know is the hostiles were somewhere within and area 300 miles wide and 200 north to south, most of which was unmapped and uncharted by whites.
Third, even if Crook had wanted to send a message to Terry/Custer/Gibbon, he had no way of knowing where they where, nothing beyond knowing Terry had started up the Yellowstone a month before and could be anywhere along a 300 mile stretch of that river (or anywhere south of that stretch of river.)
And lastly, to get a messenger thru, what direction would you give him? "Just ride due north 200 miles till you come to the Yellowstone River, then flip a coin to determine whether to ride east or west from that point. Oh, and by the way, you'll be riding right thru the heart of the Sioux nation so you better only travel by night which this time of year is only 6 hours long. Oh, and you probably only have 4 or five days to find Terry/ Custer.
Telegraph him you say. Ok, all you need do is send a messenger riding 150miles south to Ft. Fetterman. From there they send a telegram to Omaha, where it gets read, and resent to Sheridan's hQ in Chicago. From there Sheridan wires Terry's HQ (he not there, of course because he's 600 miles or so west of there) where someone hopefully send the warning on to Bismark, just across the Missouri from Ft.A Lincoln where someone writes a message to be sent by river steamer (if one can be found,) up the Missouri, then up the Yellowstone River looking for Terry/ Custer to warn them. The river leg (remember, you are traveling up stream, against the current) will take 4 days. And between the Battle of the Rosebud and when Custer leaves the Yellowstone to proceed up the Rosebud is just 4 days. Got that?

People write books to sell them and make money.
If the title of his book had been :
"Nothing new about the Little Big Horn and just a rehash of everything we already know."
Now come on -- who would buy that book?

Russ Dunaway

What Crook should have done, in my opinion, was to start back south on the 18th to his base camp on Goose Creek which he reached on the evening of June 19th. On the 20th he could have resupplied his force with more ammunition and food, some of which would now be carried by the mules that had been used to transport his infantry to the Rosebud, thereby sacrificing some mobility for endurance, as well as starting the 20+ wounded south on the wagons under escort. Then on the morning of June 21st, Crook could have started back north with a force of about 1100 men (but either few or no Indian Allies) and just a few White civilian scouts to the site of the June 17th fight on the Rosebud where he would have camped on the
22 or 23rd. From there they would start north following the hostiles' trail. It is virtually impossible to see how Crooks and Custer's forces could not have meet at some point along Rosebud Creek sometime in the morning of June 24th. From there a combined force of over 1700 men would then have crossed over into the valley of the Little Big Horn on the morning of June 25th. Now that would have made for a really interesting battle!

I stay away from any book, or magazine article, or blog that starts out "The Forgotten Story…"
That's as bad as "10 things you didn't know about…." most of those are the names of the mules. Vital information.

John, Research is research. Someone made a good middle income life researching those Mules Names.

Custer came, saw, and lost his scalp!

Thanks!.

Armand

If only Custer had his radio functional…

If only his air cover had been available that day…

I've seen the first mentioned at least twice in the past year, because everyone had radio in 1876…

Having been through that several times, it's obvious just how much trouble communication was within Custer's command, let alone the distances involved between all the forces involved

"Now Custer don't be greedy…" "Big village" "Heap of warriors…"

"Son of the Morning Star" was the best book I remember reading about LBH.
The timeline analysis of the fight was the first time I'd ever seen such a thing used in such detail.

Just ordered the book. I always like to read a book before discussing its merits. A very good read is "The Mystery of E Troop." Author is Gregory Michno. TD, this book has a lot of detail and the time line analysis is logically presented and easy to follow. Shame this analysis can't be one with other troops – but, a brown horse looks like any other brown horse in a cloud of dust and gun smoke. :)

I have a copy of Custer's, My life on the plains. From what I've read there, I don't think if Custer was warned or not would have made a difference to what he wanted to do. I doubt that it even crossed his mind that it all could go wrong.

Is there any need for any popular reference other than "Flashman and the Redskins"? GMF sums up GAC pretty well, I've always thought.