Comanche was born on what was once called the Great Horse Desert of Texas around It was a vast region that was home to hundreds of thousands of mustangs and Comanche bore the tell-tale black dorsal stripe down his back as well as resembling early Spanish horses with the dun colouration. Comanche also had a small white star on his forehead and was known as an odd-looking horse, with a big head and thick neck that were out of proportion for his body, and he had legs that seemed slightly too short.
A week after his purchase, Comanche and an unknown number of horses were loaded onto railroad cars and shipped west to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where they were branded.
Custer sent his brother, First Lieutenant Tom W. Custer, to buy remounts. He purchased 41, including the horse that would soon be named Comanche and once again the horses were loaded onto a train and taken to the troops. The Captain Myles Keogh of the 7th Cavalry liked the look of Comanche and bought him for his own personal mount and was to be only ridden in battle. In , while fighting the Comanche in Kansas, the horse was wounded in the hindquarters by an arrow but continued to let Keogh fight from his back.
Comanche was wounded many more times and always exhibited the same toughness that he did that very first time. A representation of that scene in the background would add immensely to the effect from the realistic point of view, whatever it might be from an artistic point!
Troops F, I, and L had bay horses; Troop C had light sorrels, and Troop E had grays; the trumpeters rode grays; Cooke rode an almost white horse ; as a rule the officers rode horses the same color as the troops to which they belonged.
As to "accessories" on the battlefield, there were none. The marble white bodies, the somber brown of the dead horses and the dead ponies scattered all over the field, but thickest on and near Custer Hill, and the scattering tufts of reddish brown grass on the almost ashy white soil depicts a scene of loneliness and desolation that "bows down the heart in sorrow. Nervously I took the field glasses and glanced at the objects; then almost dropped them, and laconically said, " The Dead!
Weir who was near sitting on his horse, exclaimed, "Oh, how white they look! How white! Occasionally, there was a body with a bloody undershirt or trousers or socks, but the name was invariably cut out. The naked mutilated bodies, with their bloody fatal wounds, were nearly unrecognizable, and presented a scene of sickening, ghastly horror! There were perhaps, a half dozen spades and shovels, as many axes, a couple of picks, and a few hatchets in the whole command; with these and knives and tin cups we went over the field and gave the bodies, where they lay, a scant covering of mother earth and left them, in that vast wilderness, hundreds of miles from civilization, friends and homes, to the wolves!
Mulford 's account of the reburial detail 14 months after the battle. Graham, The Stackpole Co. The author of this piece, Lt. Godfrey , was with Benteen 's column and survived the Seige of the Greasy Grass.
The man's instructions to Crazy Horse was that he was not to wear a war bonnet or to tie up his horse's tail, tying up the tail was a common Lakota practice. Before going into battle Crazy Horse was to rub dust over his body. His death was not to come at the hands of an enemy or as the result of a bullet. He was never to take trophies. As the man in the vision was talking he was brushing off attacking enemies and riding through showers of arrows and bullets which never reached the floating man.
People were holding the man back but he was able to free himself and move away. The man in the vision was caught in a violent storm and lightening appeared on his cheek and hailstones on his body. The man's people gathered about him after the storm subsided. A Hawks voice could be heard above the man as his people held him back; then the dream.
Crazy Horse never wore elaborate clothing. Instead of wearing a headdress he attached a single Eagle feather to his hair. When going into battle he painted a lightning symbol on his face and also carried a small stone tied to his upper body. As Crazy Horse matured , his stature as a warrior grew. His reputation as a warrior was widely admired among the Lakota. Crazy Horse figured in many of the clashes resulting from the collision of the westward movement with American Indians as that movement advanced across the continent.
His name was connected to the major campaigns of the U. Following the Battle of The Little Bighorn, the bands of Lakota and the Cheyenne who were present at the battle began to scatter. The Cavalry and Infantry commands fielded by the U. Army continued to track the dispersed bands, attempting to drive them back to the Great Sioux Reservation.
Crazy Horse along with tribesmen eventually turned themselves over to the military authorities in May of Crazy Horse died in , but he still seen as a mythic figure to the modern Sioux.
Little is known of Crazy Horse's early years except that he was born near Rapid Creek on the eastern side of the Black Hills about There is no authenticated sketch or photograph of Crazy Horse, but he had been described as possessing fair skin with soft, light-colored hair.
This young Oglala, whose mother was Spotted Tail's sister, played a decisive role in many battles with the United States Army. In , along the Oregon Trail in Wyoming, a Brule' warrior had killed a cow belonging to a Mormon immigrant.
There was no other way to make a stand or maintain a stout defense. A brief period followed of deliberate fighting on foot. As Indians arrived they got off their horses, sought cover and began to converge on the soldiers. From one moment to the next, the Indians popped up to shoot before dropping back down again. No man on either side could show himself without drawing fire. In battle the Indians often wore their feathers down flat to help in concealment.
The soldiers appear to have taken off their hats for the same reason; a number of Indians noted hatless soldiers, some dead and some still fighting. From their position on Calhoun Hill the soldiers were making an orderly, concerted defense. When some Indians approached, a detachment of soldiers rose up and charged downhill on foot, driving the Indians back to the lower end of Calhoun Ridge.
Some Indians noted a second skirmish line as well, stretching perhaps yards away along the backbone toward Custer Hill. It was in the fighting around Calhoun Hill, many Indians reported later, that the Indians suffered the most fatalities—11 in all. But almost as soon as the skirmish line was thrown out from Calhoun Hill, some Indians pressed in again, snaking up to shooting distance of the men on Calhoun Ridge; others made their way around to the eastern slope of the hill, where they opened a heavy, deadly fire on soldiers holding the horses.
Loss of the horses also meant loss of the saddlebags with the reserve ammunition, about 50 rounds per man. When a horse holder was shot, the frightened horses would lunge about. Some of the Indians quit fighting to chase them. The fighting was intense, bloody, at times hand to hand. Men died by knife and club as well as by gunfire. The Cheyenne Brave Bear saw an officer riding a sorrel horse shoot two Indians with his revolver before he was killed himself.
Brave Bear managed to seize the horse. At almost the same moment, Yellow Nose wrenched a cavalry guidon from a soldier who had been using it as a weapon. Calhoun Hill was swarming with men, Indian and white. But the soldiers were completely exposed.
Many of the men in the skirmish line died where they knelt; when their line collapsed back up the hill, the entire position was rapidly lost.
It was at this moment that the Indians won the battle. In the minutes before, the soldiers had held a single, roughly continuous line along the half-mile backbone from Calhoun Hill to Custer Hill. Men had been killed and wounded, but the force had remained largely intact. The Indians heavily outnumbered the whites, but nothing like a rout had begun. What changed everything, according to the Indians, was a sudden and unexpected charge up over the backbone by a large force of Indians on horseback.
The central and controlling part Crazy Horse played in this assault was witnessed and later reported by many of his friends and relatives, including He Dog, Red Feather and Flying Hawk. He had time to reach the mouth of Muskrat Creek and Medicine Tail Coulee by , just as the small detachment of soldiers observed by Gall had turned back from the river toward higher ground. Flying Hawk said he had followed Crazy Horse down the river past the center of camp. This was one style of Sioux fighting.
Another was the brave run. Typically the change from one to the other was preceded by no long discussion; a warrior simply perceived that the moment was right.
All the soldiers were shooting at him but he was never hit. After firing their rifles at Crazy Horse, the soldiers had to reload. It was then that the Indians rose up and charged. Among the soldiers, panic ensued; those gathered around Calhoun Hill were suddenly cut off from those stretching along the backbone toward Custer Hill, leaving each bunch vulnerable to the Indians charging them on foot and horseback.
The instinct of Sioux fighters was the opposite—to charge in and engage the enemy with a quirt, bow or naked hand. There is no terror in battle to equal physical contact—shouting, hot breath, the grip of a hand from a man close enough to smell. The charge of Crazy Horse brought the Indians in among the soldiers, whom they clubbed and stabbed to death.
The skirmish lines were gone. Men crowded in on each other for safety. Iron Hawk said the Indians followed close behind the fleeing soldiers. The boom of the Springfield carbines was coming from Indian and white fighters alike. But the killing was mostly one-sided. In the rush of the Calhoun Hill survivors to rejoin the rest of the command, the soldiers fell in no more pattern than scattered corn.
In the depression in which the body of Capt. Myles Keogh was found lay the bodies of some 20 men crowded tight around him.
But the Indians describe no real fight there, just a rush without letup along the backbone, killing all the way; the line of bodies continued along the backbone. Another group of the dead, ten or more, was left on the slope rising up to Custer Hill.
Between this group and the hill, a distance of about yards, no bodies were found. The mounted soldiers had dashed ahead, leaving the men on foot to fend for themselves. Perhaps the ten who died on the slope were all that remained of the foot soldiers; perhaps no bodies were found on that stretch of ground because organized firing from Custer Hill held the Indians at bay while soldiers ran up the slope.
Whatever the cause, Indian accounts mostly agree that there was a pause in the fighting—a moment of positioning, closing in, creeping up.
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