A Native American Timeline-- Part 6: George Armstrong Custer and the Little Bighorn

**  NOVEMBER 27, 1868:  Lt.Col. George Armstrong Custer leads an early morning attack on Cheyenne living with Chief Black Kettle destroying the village and killing more than 100 people, including Black Kettle.

**  1873:  Crazy Horse encounters George Custer for the first time.

**  1874:  Gold is discovered in South Dakota's Black Hills.  U.S. troops ignore a treaty and invade the territory which has been set aside for the Indians.

**  JUNE 25, 1876:  In the Battle of the Little Big Horn, also known as Custer's Last Stand, troops under Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer fight Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, along the Little Bighorn River.

Custer and his soldiers are killed, increasing tensions between the Indians and white Americans.

**  OCTOBER 6, 1879:  The first students attend Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.   This is the country's first off-reservation school, created by Civil War veteran Richard Henry Pratt.  It is designed to assimilate Indian students into American society.

--Cooter

The Belangiga Massacre-- Part 3: Massacre and U.S. Retaliation "I Want No Prisoners"

Continued from  April 12.

On the morning of September  28, 1901, the villagers made their move.  Filipino prisoners on communal duty overpowered their American guards.  They then attacked other Americans having  breakfast.  Of the 74 men of Company C, 36 were killed including all its commissioned officers.  Twenty-two were wounded and four MIA.

Eight later died of wounds and only four escaped unscathed.  The villagers lost  28 dead and 22 wounded.

American retaliation was swift.  Company G of the 9th U.S. Infantry sailed to the Belangiga, found it abandoned, burned the American dead and then burned the town.

American reaction to the news was horrified, comparing it to Custer's massacre at the Little Bighorn in 1876.  Major General  Adna R. Chaffee, military governor of the Philippines, received a message from  President Theodore Roosevelt to pacify Samar.

General Jacob G. Smith instructed Major Littleton Waller, USMC, :: "I want no prisoners.  I wish you to kill and burn, and the more you kill and burn, the better it will please me....  The interior of Samar must be made a howling wilderness."

As a result of this order, General Smith became known as "Howling Wilderness Smith."

--Cooter

June 25, 1876 A Real Bad Day for the Custer Family

On June 25, 1876, five members of the Custer family were killed at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, including three brothers, a nephew and a brother-in-law.  Of course, the real famous one was George Armstrong Custer.

I have been doing a lot of research on the family of George Armstrong Custer in my Not So Forgotten War of 1812 blog.  He had a strong connection with veterans of the War of 1812.  Plus, he was from Monroe, Michigan, the site of the infamous River Raisin Massacre during that war.

Plus, two of the Custer family are buried in Woodland Cemetery.

Go to the site by clicking on My Blogs to the right of this to find out what happened June 25, 1876.

Plus, you can find out where George and his brother Tom are buried.

--DaCoot

Those "Wild West Shows"-- Part 2: Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show

In 1893, Buffalo Bill's (William Frederick Cody) Wild West Slow performed at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and reportedly drew 18,000 spectators.

Along with acts, Buffalo Bill had re-enactments of the Pony Express, an Indian Attack on a wagon train and stagecoach robberies.  It was said that he closed with an re-enactment of Custer's Last Stand with Cody playing the role of Custer.  But most often it ended with an Indian attack on a settler's cabin with Cody leading a group of cowboys to save them.

Unfortunately, in the late 1800s, the country's economy reached a low and people did not have the money to purchase tickets.

Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show closed in 1913.

--Cooter

July 20.... Events On This Date

Quite a few things happened of not on July 20.  here are some:

1862--  See my Civil war blog.

1881--  Sioux Indian leader Sitting Bull, a fugitive since the Battle of Little Big Horn, surrendered to federal troops.

1917--  The World War I draft lottery began.

1919--  Mountain climber and Antarctic explorer Edwin Hillary, the first man (with Tibetan mountaineer Tenzig Norgay) to climb Mt. Everest, was born in Auckland, New Zealand.

1923--  Mexican revolutionary and guerrilla leader was assassinated at age 45.

1937--  Inventor and physicist Guglielmo Marconi, winner of the Nobel Prize for his work in developing wireless telegraphy, died in Rome at age 63.

1944--  See my World War II blog.

1969--  Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon as they stepped out of their lunar module.

I sure remember that as I was glued to the TV with friends.  There is a story about the "Moon Dust" out now.

--Cooter

Battle of the Little Bighorn Still Resonates All these Years Later

From the Jan. 9, 2011 Standard-Examiner "Battle of Little Bighorn resonates after 134 years" by Janet K. Keeler of the St. Ptersburg Times.

This past December 17, 2010, a frayed American flag found on a dead soldier at the Little Bighorn Battlefield brought $1.9 million at Sotheby's New York auction house.

It is a swallowtail Culbertson guidon, named after the soldier who found it and owned by the Detroit Institute of Arts for more than a hundred years.

Even after all this time, the battle, also known as Custer's Last Stand. ens of books have been written about it, along with movies, songs and paintings.

Nearly all 270 men of the 7th Cavalry died at the hands of Indians. Col. Custer, his brother Tom and many of the 7th died at what is today named Last Stand Hill.

Hardin, Montana, has a Bighorn festival every June where there is a re-enactment of the battle four times in three days. The actual battle site, the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, is several miles away.

The discovery of gold in the Black Hills of what today is South Dakota skewered an uneasy peace between the Indians and whites.

One of the Big US Losses. --DaCoot