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 Guided Tours: Crazy Horse at the Little Bighorn * Crazy Horse at the Rosebud Features: Who Killed Custer? * Bogus Crazy Horse Photos * Unsung Scouts Saga Features: Crazy Horse Surrender Ledger * Winter Count of Crazy Horse's Life Features: Indian Battlefield Tactics * Woman Warriors * Virtual Museum Features: American Atrocities * Indian Atrocities * Little Bighorn Mysteries |
WELCOME to Conversations With Crazy Horse Source Materials. This free American history study resource features 100 Voices, the largest and most complete collection of Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Arikara and American eye-witness accounts of the Battle of the Little Bighorn available anywhere, in any form, plus a raft of other related eye-witness documents such as The Complete Crazy Horse Surrender Ledger and The Wintercount of Crazy Horse's Life, all globally searchable for the first time ever, right here. Enjoy! -- B.B. |
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| American soldiers whose bodies were never found... Eyewitness accounts of the Battle of the Little Bighorn |
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 J.E. Porter Killed at the Little Bighorn. His body was never found. |
 James Sturgis Killed at the Little Bighorn. His body was never found. |
 Henry Harrington Killed at the Little Bighorn. His body was never found. |
 Mitch Bouyer Killed at the Little Bighorn. His body was never found. |
SEVENTH CAVALRY survivor Daniel Kanipe said, "There were 14 men and two officers, Lieutenant Harrington and Lieutenant Sturgis, that never were found." Actually, the missing also included one more officer, Lt. J.E. Porter, and one of the Seventh Cavalry's surgeons, Dr. G. E. Lord. Including Mitch Bouyer, the half-breed interpreter for the Crow scouts, this makes a total of 19 Americans whose bodies were either missing or unidentiable after the battle.
Seventh Cavalry scout George Herendeen added, "The heads of four white soldiers were found in the Sioux camp that had been severed from their trunks, but the bodies could not be found on the battlefield or in the village."
Lieutenant Charles Roe of the Second Cavalry, who was an eye-witness to the condition of the battlefield immediately afterwards, said, "we found in the Indian village a white man's head with a lariat tied to it, which had been dragged around the village until the head was pulled off the body."
According to George Glenn, who was on the Little Bighorn burial detail, one of the heads belonged to Pvt. John E. Armstrong. The head of Custer's favorite scout, Bloody Knife, was similarly severed and paraded through the village on a pole. Bloody Knife was also scalped.
Many of the American dead that could be identified were also hideously mutilated. Tom (Boss) Tweed's "crotch had been split up with an ax and one of his legs thrown up over his shoulder. He was shot with arrows in both eyes." Jim Turley was found with his own knife plunged to the hilt in one eye. An unknown Arikara scout had "his head pounded to pieces."
The corpse of Isaiah Dorman, the black scout, was "very much mutilated," with strong indication that he was tortured. In the end, "the Dakotas had left a kettle full of his own blood close by his head" for his refreshement, should he become thirsty while he died in agony in the hot summer sun.
Lieutenant Donald McIntosh's head was "pounded to jelly," according to Charles Roe, but McIntosh's corpse was identified by the "gutta-percha" sleeve button found nearby. McIntosh's wife had given him the button when the Seventh Cavalry left Fort Lincoln. James Sturgis was not so fortunate. George Glenn said Sturgis's trousers were found, but that was all that could be identified of him.
After the battle, John Ryan said, "we found what appeared to be human bones, and parts of blue uniforms, where the men had been tied to stakes and trees." However, most Sioux and Cheyenne denied that any Americans were held alive after the battle or tortured, but Little Knife said, "One prisoner was taken. He was captured by Rain In The Face, who said he had stripes on his arm." Little Knife said the American prisoner was bound "shag-a-nappe" and killed in the village during the night of June 25.
And there may have been more. Barely three months after the battle when Blackfeet Sioux war chief Kill Eagle was asked about torture, the following rather oblique exchange took place:
- Q. Did they burn or torture any of them after the battle was over?
- A. There was one became separated from Reno's command and two Cheyennes gave him chase and overtook him and killed him.
-- Bruce Brown
July 4, 2009
Updated August 25, 2009
Guided Tours: Crazy Horse at the Little Bighorn * Crazy Horse at the Rosebud Features: Who Killed Custer? * Bogus Crazy Horse Photos * Unsung Scouts Saga Features: Crazy Horse Surrender Ledger * Winter Count of Crazy Horse's Life Features: Indian Battlefield Tactics * Woman Warriors * Virtual Museum Features: American Atrocities * Indian Atrocities * Little Bighorn Mysteries |
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© Copyright 1973 - 2010 by Bruce Brown and BF Communications Inc.
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| An Important Note...
The information in this section of Conversations With Crazy Horse Source Materials is excerpted from the following books. For more information -- and a good read -- please consult the complete book. And if you purchase the book(s) through the Amazon.com links below, you help support this free Astonisher.com American history study resource. Nothing reads like a book! |
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