That sound byte is somewhat better than most, it is certainly better than the History Channel myth perpetuating version. In every book, movie and documentary there is inevitably errors that taint any historical fact that is presented. In my view no one has got the story totally correct or provided an unbiased and well researched reconstruction. The forensic evidence of the violence is much more comprehensively reported in "Archeological Perspectives on the Battle of the Little Big Horn," by Douglas A. Scott, et.al., University of Oklahoma Press, 1989.

Much of what has been written and presented in film has perpetuated the myths and legends, and done little to provide an understanding of the dynamics of the battle. I invite your attention to "Custer's Last Stand, The Anatomy of an American Myth," by Brian W. Dippie, University of Nebraska Press, 1996. The often used statement "Custer's Last Stand" begs the question when did he ever conduct a "stand" of any kind. His Civil War combat service was mostly brash cavalry attacks and his previous Indian engagements had been nothing more than raids. There was never in any of his previous combat experiences where he had been seriously engaged by anyone to the point that he had to make a defensive "stand." So we could just as easily say "Custer's first, only and last stand."

The battle was insignificant except as it impacted the public at the time and unreasonably generated interest since. The plains tribes that had left the reservations eventually returned to those miserable places and the subjugation of the Native Americans continued as if nothing happened in 1876.

I happened to visit the battle field on the 99th anniversary of the battle and a couple of times since. The most striking thing that I realized was how badly scattered the individual monuments are on the battlefield. Although there is a certain degree of continuity to the location of the five companies they were in non-mutually supporting positions and clearly engaged in hasty defensive battles, that is each company fought its own battle and the battalion was defeated in detail.

One aspect of the "recreation" of the Army uniforms and equipment of the time aggravates me because there is plenty of information available but the people that do the reenactments seem determined to put a little "Hollywood" into their portrayals. When I visited the battle field in 1975 there was a man that I guess was a Park Service Ranger that was wearing uniform and equipment and lecturing on the battle, which looked exactly what he was: an overweight middle-aged ridiculously inaccuratly uniformed and equipped history buff. I didn't bother to stay around long enough to hear his dialog.

One of the sorriest aspects of the History Channel version of the battle was the perpetuation of the myth that the Indians were well armed with repeating firearms and that the cavalry troops involved in the battle had problems with the carbines frequent failure to extract. These two "facts" it was cited as contributing to the disaster. The Indians in the movies are invariably well armed but those that fought the Battle of the Greasy Grass weren't and archeological evidence proves it. As to the myth that the cartridges frequently "jammed" in the carbines, the question was originally raised at the Reno Court of Inquiry. What everyone seems to forget is that at the Reno-Benteen defensive position the carbines remained in action for the better part of two days and no such malfunctions were reported by the nearly 400 soldiers that survived the action.

BTW Reno was not court martialed for his actions or failure of his duty at the Little Big Horn, but had been severely criticized and requested a Court of Inquiry to clear his reputation which it did. Despite the findings by the Court of Inquiry he continued to be shunned by other officers. He was in fact later court martialed for failure to perform his duties mainly because of inebriation and cashiered from the Army. He has since been reinstated.

I am not going to quote the entire discussion of The Question of Extraction Failure (pages 113-115) in Archeological Perspectives on the Battle of the Little Bighorn, but will attempt to give a brief synopsis. The report provides a rather complex analysis of the cartridges, cartridge cases and projectiles recovered on the battle using modern methods of firearms forensics. Unfired cartridges are of course meaningless to the question of the type firearm used and any problems encountered in the cycle of operation of the firearm except that a very small sample of unfired cartridges with firing pin strikes were reported. What may be of more general interest is the identification of cartridges fired in the wrong type firearm which was obviously the Indians using anything that functioned.

I have to mention that the authors of Archeological Perspectives on the Battle of the Little Bighorn use ambiguous terminology such as "jammed" in discussing this issue that exhibits a rather unsophisticated knowledge of military firearms, terminology and functioning.

The historical record indicates that Maj. Reno reported six carbines out of 380 in his command with cases that failed to extract and required more than immediate action to clear. It is acknowledged that it was known that there were carbines that had cartridge cases that failed to extract but were cleared by the soldiers applying immediate action to remove the cases. The number of these incidents will never be known for obvious reasons. It was also reported that carbines with failure to extract were cleared using the cleaning rod from the rifle carried by Capt. French. Capt. Michaelis, Ordnance Department, reported to have examined one carbine with unextracted cartridge case that he found had been "carelessly handled and the cartridge was dirty."

The Indians recovered all of the firearms that they could and reported they experienced an unspecified number of failures to extract in the caerbines captured. Native American Wooden Leg related that he recovered a carbine on the battlefield, found it had an unextracted case and threw the carbine into the river. It should also be noted that when Weir advanced to what is now called Weir Point that the Indians advanced on the position and were using captured carbines in the attack.

In a collection of 1,625 .45/70 cartridge cases held by the Park Service and in a private collection, three cases were identified to have unspecified evidence of extraction problems. Of the cartridge cases recovered during the excavation and recovery effort reported in Archeological Perspectives on the Battle of the Little Bighorn three cartridge cases from the "Custer battlefield" and six cases from the Reno-Benteen defense site exhibit marks that could have been caused by forced or pried extraction from the chamber. One was positively identified to have been pried from the chamber.

So there is both historical information and archeological evidence that there were problems of unextracted cartridge cases during the Battle of the Greasy Grass. The question is how significant was the problem to the outcome of the Custer battalion fight? There are other factors that should be considered: for example apparently the fight of the Custer battalion was a more or less series of meeting engagements with some movement of troops until forced into hasty defensive positions. It is believed that at times the soldiers fired their carbines while mounted. The historical evidence is that the enlisted soldiers were issued 100 rounds of carbine ammunition two or three days prior to the battle, so there should not have been an issue of corroded cartridge cases as is sometimes speculated. Of the one hundred rounds of ammunition issued at least half were in the saddle bags of the cavalry mounts that Indian accounts indicate were stampeded away from the troops, if not killed on the battlefield. The point is that the troops with Custer had varying experiences in the length and intensity of their involvement in the battle and the availability of ammunition. Presumably a carbine with unextracted cartridge case hampered sustained fire and certainly reduced the volume of fire and probably meant that the carbine was out of action long enough that there was no opportunity for the incidence of subsequent failures to extract. Volume of fire is only used to achieve superiority of fire in a situation in which it is necessary to suppress enemy fire. Volume of fire is not usually well aimed fire and produces few casualties. So any discussion of "firepower" and how much effect it produced is speculative. The soldiers involved in the fight were hardly veterans and most were recent recruits with no previous combat experience. On the Indian side there were few warriors that were not combat veterans and personal bravery was expected by the society.

What I am attempting to relate here is that there are so many factors that are related to the dynamics of the battle that pointing to one or two factors that one believes are significant to the outcome is a very speculative thing to do. Much like the O.J. Simpson murder trial it was a great deal more than the "planted" bloody sock and the glove that didn't fit.