Going to take some time for me to go through all this but I am going to. I started with the photographs but will go back to the top and go through. Thanks for doing.
Custer's family was killed at the Little Big Horn. His brother-in-law and brothers Thomas and Boston were killed. Thomas was the most decorated soldier in American history up to that time, having won TWO Congressional Medals of Honor in the Civil War. The Indians warned him that if they ever encountered him on a battlefield, they would cut out his heart and eat it. They found Tom Custer's body with his heart cut out...
My American grandmother was named Polly Portis. She lived to be 103 after being born in Wyoming Territory. She actually saw Sitting Bull when her father took her and her sister to see Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in Denver. Here is a British explanation of Custer's Last Stand.
I'm about halfway through the Philbrick book and really enjoying it. I am not a voracious recreational reader because I have to read so much in my business but I love history, especially the American west.
The Sioux were led by Chief Gall. Discovering that his wife and children had all been killed by Reno's men in the initial attack, he discarded his gun and picked up his stone hatchet, then raced on his pony to the other end of the village. Witnesses observed him wading into the soldiers crushing their heads with a fury; even pounding heads flat long after the soldier was dead in his grief. Sitting Bull was not a chief or a warrior at all. He was a medicine man and spiritual guide who was known for his cowardice. He spent the battle with the women in a teepee for women. Crazy Horse was not a chief either. He was a superstar warrior whom all the young men admired. They would follow him and obey his orders, because they believed in him. There are NO confirmed photos of Crazy Horse. He was VERY white skinned. So white that settlers moving on the Oregon Trail who saw him when he was a boy wrote about him in their diaries. They thought he was a white boy who had been abducted by the Indians. He always rode naked into battle on a painted horse, riding between his men and the soldiers, daring them to shoot him... Two Moon was the leader of the Cheyenne. Like Gall, he fought at both ends of the three mile long village and was always in front of his warriors. This is an interview of Two Moon that was done many years after the battle...
Took our grandsons to DC last year. Did Fords Theater which was fascinating. Even more so was the boarding house across the street where Lincoln was taken after he was shot. I could have spent hours in there studying the memorabilia.
I hear visiting Trump historical memorabilia in the future may be just as fascinating since he has done more for black people than even Lincoln.... lol. You will find it in the one and done hall of fame.
George, I have been there as well...then took the John Wilkes Booth tour that followed the route he took including the Surratt Tavern and Dr. Mud's house.
One year later, Crazy Horse gave an interview to a newspaper. His estimate of the size of the Indian forces sounds about right: 7,000 warriors. This was based on 1800 lodges and teepees with an additional 400-500 wickiups. Across the Plains that year, thousands of young Indian men snuck off their reservations to join Sitting Bull and the others who had refused to report to their reservations. Being without their mothers and wives who made the teepees, they lived in wickiups, small shelters that held four warriors and their weapons. This swelled the numbers of actual fighters by thousands on the Indian side.
Crazy Horse was murdered by Indian soldiers in September, 1877, one year after the battle. A lot of people wanted to kill him; not just the whites. He was a notorious womanizer who had a long scar on his nose where another Indian had shot him for sleeping with his wife. This was the real reason that he wouldn't allow his picture to be taken: he didn't want all of his enemies to know what he really looked like.