BATTLE OF LITTLE BIGHORN Original Period Dug Artifacts Custer's Last Stand

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Seller: floramadisonantiques ✉️ (607) 0%, Location: Flora, Mississippi, US, Ships to: US & many other countries, Item: 123873914316 BATTLE OF LITTLE BIGHORN Original Period Dug Artifacts Custer's Last Stand.

#1 Brass casing with no head marks.

#2A Is an Brass back Eagle I Infantry gilded cuff button from Little Bighorn area. Missing eye. No back marks. #2B is a Eagle cuff button with eye and back mark of "Scovill & Co / Extra"

Could have been worn by an Indian or soldier.

I traded Vicksburg Civil War relics for this stuff years ago when almost no one wanted Indian War relics.

Archaeological Perspectives on the Battle of the Little Bighorn  (p. 105) identifies forty-two firearm types used in the battle. Based on cartridge cases and bullets found at both battle sites, this book lists (table 8, p. 112) an astonishing number of different revolvers like the .32 Forehand and Wadsworth, .36 Colt, .38 Colt, .42 Forehand and Wadsworth, .44 Smith and Wesson, .44 Colt 1860, .44 Colt 1871, .44 Colt 1872, .44 Remington 1858 and the .45 Colt 1873.

Rifles and carbines used included the .40 Sharps, .44 Evans, .44 Henry, .44 Ballard, .45 Springfield 1873, .45 Sharps sporting rifle, .45 Sharps, .50 Maynard, .50 Sharps, .50 Springfield, .50 Smith, .54 Starr, .56/56 Spencer, 56/50 Spencer and .577 Enfield. There was also at least one shotgun used in the fight.

No one knows how many thousands of cartridge cases, spent bullets and arrowheads souvenir hunters spirited away before archaeologists started work on the battlefield in 1984. I’ve read a number of accounts of visitors wandering around both sites picking up souvenirs in the first fifty years after the battle.

Had souvenir hunters stayed away and left the battlefield in a more or less pristine state, the archeologists would have found thousands more artifacts. And chances are we would have learned of several more firearm types, especially those in the hands of Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors.

Anyway, if you count three other types of firearms previously identified by battlefield historian B. William Henry, the total of firearm types goes to forty-five.

Henry identified a .44 rimfire Frank Wesson rifle, a Boxer-primed .44 Colt, and a .58-caliber muzzleloader, based on a single artifact for each firearm. Archeological Insights into the Custer Battle  cites John S. DuMont’s Custer Battle Guns  (Fort Collins, Colorado: Old Army Press, 1974) as its source for Henry’s findings.

The archeologists arriving in 1984 found nine metal arrowheads on the battlefield. Historical accounts, including Thomas Bailey Marquis’s Wooden Leg: A Warrior Who Fought Custer , confirm that many bows were used in the fight. And there were other weapons:

Weapons, other than firearms, used at the Battle of the Little Bighorn are limited to cutting and crushing implements. These include knives, arrows, spears or lances, tomahawks or belt axes, and war clubs.

— Archaeological Perspectives , p. 102

Troopers of the U.S. 7th Cavalry were armed with .45-caliber Model 1873 Springfield carbines and .45-caliber Colt Single Action Army Model 1873 revolvers.

Some men carried .45-caliber Smith & Wesson Model 3 revolvers (sometimes called the Schofield after Major George Wheeler Schofield, who modified the Model 3 for the cavalry).

A few officers and senior noncoms are known to have taken their own rifles into the battle. Captain Thomas French, for example, used a .50/70 infantry rifle at the Reno-Benteen site, but he wasn’t the only one who did so. According to Archaeological Perspectives  (p. 115), cartridge case analysis points to six different .50/70 Springfields:

Other officers or enlisted personnel may have favored that caliber over the Model 1873 carbine. However, it is more likely that the civilian packers and Indian scouts were issued these older-model guns.

Sergeant John Ryan carried a Sharps sporting rifle chambered for the standard government carbine round (that is, a 405-grain, .45-caliber bullet propelled by a 55-grain powder charge).

What about George Armstrong Custer’s firearms? The authors have this to say:

No direct evidence for George Custer’s personal firearms (a Remington sporting rifle and Royal Irish Constabulary pistols) was located on the Custer battlefield. However, a single .50-caliber bullet fired from a Remington sporting rifle was found at the Reno-Benteen defense site. The bullet was found embedded in the hospital area, and its orientation suggests it was fired from an Indian position east of the defense site. The bullet is not definitive evidence of Custer’s Remington in Indian hands, but it shows that at least one .50-caliber Remington sporting rifle was used in the battle.

— Archaeological Perspectives on the Battle of the Little Bighorn , p. 116

The authors estimate that between 354 and 414 Indian firearms were used at the main battle site:

These figures suggest Custer’s command was outgunned about two to one. These projections also suggest that 198 to 232 of the Indian guns were Henrys or Winchester Models 1866 or 1873. At the Reno-Benteen defense site the projected number of Indian guns ranges between 239 and 300, with the repeating guns ranging between 154 and 174.

If one projects the amount of ammunition with which the repeating guns at the Custer battlefield could be loaded, if each magazine was full at the beginning of the battle, the result is about 3,792 rounds. That means that when these guns were brought to bear on Custer’s men, there were more than eighteen bullets for each of the men who died with Custer. And this only counts the repeating arms.

— Archaeological Perspectives , p. 118

The archeologists draw an interesting conclusion:

When all the firearm data are taken into account, it becomes readily apparent that Custer and his men were outgunned, if not in range or stopping power, then certainly in firepower. U.S. Army ordnance reports (War Department 1879) comparing the Springfield carbine to a surrendered Sharps and a repeating rifle clearly demonstrate that the Springfield was superior in stopping power, range and accuracy. However, the repeating rifles would have been very effective, perhaps even superior in firepower, to the single-shot Springfield carbines as the Indians drew progressively closer to the cavalry positions.

— Archaeological Perspectives , pp. 119, 121

Ironically, a weapon that was definitely not used at the Little Bighorn was the one often depicted in famous early paintings of the battle—the cavalry saber. The 7th Cavalry left its sabers behind at the Powder River depot before marching up the Rosebud to the Little Bighorn.

Douglas D. Scott, Richard A. Fox Jr., Melissa A. Connor and Dick Harmon, with contributions by John R. Bozell, John Fitzpatrick, C. Vance Haynes Jr., Ralph Heinz, Patrick Phillips and Clyde Collins Snow, Archaeological Perspectives on the Battle of the Little Bighorn  (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989)

Douglas D. Scott and Richard A. Fox, Jr., with a contribution by Dick Harmon,Archeological Insights into the Custer Battle: An Assessment of the 1984 Field Season (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987)

Douglas D. Scott, P. Willey and Melissa A. Connor, They Died with Custer: Soldiers’ Bones from the Battle of the Little Bighorn  (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998)

  • Condition: Used
  • Condition: Dug by Texas resident relic hunter in the 70s

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