"Only 25 rounds per man were fired!" Topic

Hello everyone,

Author David Cornut in his book "Little Big Horn" wrote on page 127 "The Battle of Rosebud was not very violent (an average of only 25 rounds per man were fired!)".

Also the losses of the injuns were "light"…

Why is this not the case at the "Little Big Horn"?

There the redskins had much more numerous losses for a number of cartridges fired by their opponents certainly much less imposing.

Yours aye

Paskal

Totally different fights. Multiple cavalry charges the Lakota retreated from at Rosebud. Lakota generally avoided close combat during the battle. Lots of room to maneuver and no village under immediate threat.

At the Little Big Horn they were protecting their families while Custer tried riding into the encampment. Feel the need to close with and kill the enemy so more Lakota are killed and wounded as a result.

How many rounds did the 7th Cavalry fire at the Little Big Horn?

I've never seen that info. I'd imagine it would be high for some of the detachment that got wiped out with Custer because they fought to the last man and were desperate. No time to conserve ammo.

"How many rounds did the 7th Cavalry fire at the Little Big Horn?"

There was a lot of unfired ammo from the Custer detachment, as many Indians said they'd visited the site years afterwards and collected a lot of unfired rounds. Also, souvenir collectors have picked up a lot, too.
And, there has been a battlefield archeaology study that tracked individual firearms from the used cartridges.

At the Rosebud, both sides tried to lure the other into traps where detachments could be destroyed. Sometimes the other side would come close to falling into the trap, but it never quite worked for either side.

For what it's worth, the Rosebud winds east through a valley before turning north. I think there were fairly high hills or even small mountains to the south, while to the north the ground rose sharply four or five meters. The rise to the north was broken by tributaries or gullies cutting through the slope. These provided the Indians with covered routes of approach.

Grelber

At a quick check, cavalry enlisted were carrying 24 rounds of revolver ammunition and 50 rounds for the Springfields. (The pack train with another 50 rounds each didn't make it up until after most of the fighting.) Given the 5% jam rate on the Springfields, the loose formations and the fluid movements, which would have made it hard to retrieve weapons or ammunition from the dead or wounded, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Custer's five companies fired less than 25 rounds per man on average--possibly a lot less.

[N.B. 5% is my guess. The archeologists said 3.4% of recovered cartridges showed signs of having been pried out of the barrel with a knife, which would be bad enough. But they never seem to reflect that jammed cartridges NOT successfully extracted were excluded from the sample. Query: how far away should the Sioux be for you to perform maintenance on your longarm, as opposed to switch to a pistol, or looking for a carbine no one else is using? But figure if four men dismounted while a fifth held the horses, and they each fired five rounds, odds are good someone had a jammed carbine.]

Oh. And I have read at least one Sioux account of picking up a cavalry carbine from the Custer detachment, being unable to clear the jam and throwing the carbine in the Bighorn in frustration. Just imagine how frustrated the previous owner had been.

Paskal,
one of the things to keep in mind with the American Indian Wars was the generally low level of training and overall competence of the US Army when fighting the native tribes. Whether in Florida fighting the Seminoles, the plains against the Sioux, or in the California lava beds, the Army was, in general, ill equipped for the type of irregular warfare needed to defeat said tribes. Training, what little there was, was learned on the job and rarely departed from European style linear tactics. Desertion rates were high, pay low (damning the Army to high turnover and loss of experienced soldiers, NCOs and officers) and marksmanship training almost non existent for most of the period. That the Army did what it did was a testament to the toughness and grit of those that did make the Army a career or profession while campaigning against one of the toughest foes in Army history.

As a side note, and assuming you seem to be from a different part of the world than I, the terms "injun" and "redskin," which you've used multiple times in the last few posts, are generally considered racist and demeaning in the United States. In my near 50 years on the planet, I've never heard anyone state those terms outside of use as a pejorative in bad Hollywood films from the 50's and 60's, or to name a very poor American football team (who no longer use the name!)

Common historical practice in the West is to name the individual tribe in question using common historical names (such as Sioux, Pawnee or Apache) or the less accurate "Indian," although that is not preferred and automatically assumes the speaker if fully ignorant of the subject at hand. Remember there are literally dozens of separate tribes still in existence in the United States with their own cultural heritage, law, languages and land holdings.

Having just attended a celebration of one of the local tribes in my area, use of said terms would have likely resulted in less than ideal outcomes for the speaker.

Yes I'm going to be careful because I don't want to be scalped and worse, but be careful the terms Native Americans, American Indians and Indians are still used to designate them, but are controversial in Canada.

The word Sioux is also an insult, they were named thus by reduction by the French of the translation of the expression in Chippewas, "nadowe-is-iw-ug" (Nadouessioux) which meant "enemies (nadowe) small (is ) they are (iw ug)" (paltry enemy), because for the Chippewas, the Iroquois seemed much more dangerous enemies.

Yes, Pascal, but if I call them the Lakota, mostly people don't know who I'm talking about. "Sioux" whatever its origins, is the common English word, just as my old country cousins are "Germans" and not "Deutsch" when I discuss them in English.

In Canada we pretty much never use the word Indian except when referring to people from India – my wife (whose family are a mixture of Cree and French Canadian) prefers First Nations – interestingly, Canada has pretty much completely abandoned the word Eskimo, but if you step over the border into Alaska it is apparently still commonly used

As to the original topic, Maggot has it right in terms of the US Army – under-funded, over-stretched, held in low regard and heavily dependent on foreign born recruits – in some years prior to the Civil War 2/3 of all new recruits were "fresh off the boat", a pattern which persisted for much of the 19th century; in fact, in WWI 18% of all US army recruits were foreign-born. It does say a lot for the US Army was to what they were able to do given what they had and what they were asked to do

The Buffalo soldiers would be an exception to the above.

Thanks

John

"what they had"?

US army recruits foreign-born were not valid unlike other recruits?

Lieutenant Maguire will see on June 27 "the bodies of the men forming a semi-circle with their shell casings around them". Captain Moylan will see "forty shell casings around a few men". "Forty shell casings around a few men"? Only ? I thought they had 100 Springfield cartridges and 24 revolvers per man? Do you know of any other testimonies of this kind?

Not sure what's meant by "valid" Paskal. Personally, I regard a tendency to revert to a foreign language when stressed as a handicap--not to mention desertion once command of English improved, and a lack of command of idiom. (Consider Trumpeter Giovani Martini, who thought the Indians were asleep because Custer said they'd been "caught napping.")

Yes, the French Foreign Legion makes it work. But I don't think it's what the US Army would have preferred.

"what did they have"?

For me it's pejorative, the non-English speaking Europeans in the U.S. army were at least as good as fighters as their comrades born in the U.S.A. and all other types of English speakers.

Besides, if the U.S. Army had such a bad reputation among men born in the U.S.A. who preferred volunteer regiments, it may be because life was too hard in the federal troops.

Robert piepenbink, actually each trooper was issued 100 carbine rounds plus the 24 revolver rounds. They carried the 24 revolver rounds and (about) 50 carbine rounds on their persons and the other 50 carbine rounds were placed in their saddlebags. Many of those 50 rounds were lost when the Sioux drove off their horses. Perhaps up to 100 of the 210 horses were run off taking those rounds with them. In addition to these rounds the mules in the pack train under Lt. Mathey carried 2000 rounds per troop, plus another 2000 rounds for the HQ contingent, for a total of 26,000 rounds in the reserve ammunition.