Staff Ride On The Little Bighorn
There is no more storied and studied battle in Frontier Partisan history than the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Contrary to casual perception, the 1876 destruction of Lt. Co. George Armstrong Custer’s command at the hands of Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors was not the worst disaster to befall the American military at the hands of the Native American resistance. Not by a long shot. That distinction goes to the Battle of A Thousand Slain, way back in 1791.
But the Battle of the Little Bighorn occurred in an era of mass media, at a time when the U.S. was celebrating its centennial with displays of its mighty industrial progress — which made the military disaster all the more shiocking — and it involved a high-profile celebrity soldier in Custer. The fight itself is intriguing, because just what happened and why is mysterious. Custer couldn’t explain his command decisions, and survivors from other elements of his command had agendas in their depiction of events. Decisions and sequences of events have had to be teased out over a century-and-a-half of study, which has fed many an obsession among historians, archaeologists — and mythmakers.
Over the past couple of evenings, post firearms training, I have enjoyed a four-part History Traveler staff ride through the Little Bighorn Battlefield with Leif Babin and Jocko Willink. Babin and Willink are former Navy SEALs engaged in leadership training, and they have worthwhile perspectives on the reasons the fight unfolded the way it did — and the fatal perceptions that led Custer to disaster.
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Jocko has a strong interest in Custer and the Little Bighorn. These will be my Tuesday night Storytime over the next couple of weeks….
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Coicidentally, this popped up from our friends at Rock Island Auction Co.