What was the strategy that General George A. Custer used at Little Big Horn?

Zbeckabee

The Sioux and Northern Cheyenne encampment on the Little Big Horn River comprised a key component in Lt. Colonel George A. Custer’s field strategy at the Battle of the Little Big Horn: Indian noncombatants. Women, children, the elderly or disabled were targeted for capture to serve as hostages and human shields. Custer’s battalions intended to “ride into the camp and secure noncombatant hostages” and “forc[e] the warriors to surrender”. Author Evan S. Connell observed that if Custer could occupy the village, before widespread resistance developed, the Sioux and Cheyenne warriors “would be obliged to surrender, because if the started to fight, they would be shooting their own families.” Custer asserted in his book My Life on the Plains, published just two years before the Battle of the Little Big Horn, that: “Indians contemplating a battle, either offensive or defensive, are always anxious to have their women and children removed from all danger…For this reason I decided to locate our [military] camp as close as convenient to [Chief Black Kettle’s Cheyenne] village, knowing that the close proximity of their women and children, and their necessary exposure in case of conflict, would operate as a powerful argument in favor of peace, when the question of peace or war came to be discussed.” On Custer’s decision to advance up the bluffs and descend on the village from the east, Lieutenant Edward Godfrey of Company K surmised: “[Custer] must …have counted on finding the squaws and children fleeing to the bluffs on the north, for in no other way do I account for his wide detour [east of the village]. He must have counted on Reno’s success, and fully expected the scatteration of the non-combatants with the pony herds. The probable attack upon the families and capture of the herds were in that event counted upon to strike consternation in the hearts of the warriors, and were elements for success upon which Custer counted.” The Sioux and Cheyenne fighters were acutely aware of the danger posed by the military engagement of noncombatants and that “…even a semblance of an attack on the women and children” would draw the warriors like a “magnet” back to the village, according to historian John S. Gray. Such was their concern that merely a “feint” by Captain Yates’s E and F Companies at the mouth of Medicine Tail Coulee (Minneconjou Ford) caused hundreds of warriors to disengage from the Reno valley fight and return to deal with the threat to the village. Custer proceeded with a wing of his battalion (Yates’s Troops E and F) north and opposite the Cheyenne circle at a crossing referred to by Fox as Ford D which provided “access to the [women and children] fugitives." Indeed, Yates’s force “posed an immediate threat to fugitive Indian families…” gathering at the north end of the huge encampment. Custer persisted in his efforts to “seize women and children” even as hundreds of warriors were massing around Keogh’s wing on the bluffs. Yates’s wing, descending to the Little Bighorn River at Ford D encountered “light resistance”, undetected by the Indian forces ascending the bluffs east of the village. Custer was almost within “striking distance of the refugees” before being repulsed by Indian defenders and forced back to Custer Ridge. http://wapedia.mobi/en/Battle_of_the_Little_Bighorn?t=7. Oct 03 10, 9:05 AM

Datsmeharse

According to Bill Cosby, Custer and his men were to wait at the bottom of a hill while Sitting Bull and All the Indians in the World were to ride right down on them. (He lost the coin toss) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MGYoCNU5es Oct 03 10, 10:37 AM

star_gazer

We don't know for sure because Custer died along with all of his men. Interpretations of Custer's fight are conjecture, since none of his men survived the battle. The accounts of surviving Indians are conflicting and unclear. While the gunfire heard on the bluffs by Reno and Benteen's men was probably from Custer's fight, the soldiers on Reno Hill were unaware of what had happened to Custer until General Terry's arrival on June 26. They were reportedly stunned by the news. When the army examined the Custer battle site, soldiers could not determine fully what had transpired. Custer's force of roughly 210 men had been engaged by the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne about 3.5 miles (6 km) to the north. Evidence of organized resistance included apparent breastworks made of dead horses on Custer Hill. By this time, the Indians had already removed most of their dead from the field. The soldiers identified the 7th Cavalry's dead as best as possible and hastily buried them where they fell. By the time troops came to recover the bodies, they found most of the dead stripped of their clothing, ritually mutilated, and in an advanced state of decomposition, making identification of many impossible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Little_Bighorn Oct 03 10, 1:28 PM