Deep ravine

[Beth]

Beth wrote:

QC is right about it is perfectly fine to put quotes from other sources as long as they are fully cited. Sharing graphics, photos and maps can be a bit dicier so make sure you always include the link it comes from--if it's something you have scanned in and are sharing make sure the source is public domain first. (if it is something published before 1923, it is most likely public domain but not always)

The only way that 28 men running down a Ravine makes sense is if you think of a buffalo hunt and they were chased--but that doesn't really fit the stories about the event. If you are trying to escape or get aide then why would you run towards the belly of the beast?

Question-could the stories of the actions of Company C and Company E have sort of melded together?

[Beth]

Dave wrote:

Panic which is an uncontrollable fear would certainly explain why the 28 ran from LSH would it not? If in the grip of panic they would not make clear headed decisions but rather head toward perceived safety in the ditch. They could well have not seen the depth of the ravine till they arrived and just piled in looking for cover. These soldiers were not familiar with the terrain and they were trying to save their lives amidst a host of hostiles. Very plausible answer to me.

Regards

Dave

[Beth]

QC wrote:

Dave: I could buy your argument, but cannot for two reasons.

1) Company E was much further down initially than LSH, as shown by the artifact evidence on the Bonafides Map which has a distinct skirmish line on the mid face of Cemetery Ridge oriented southwest, with a companion line of Indian cartridges in a direct line to their front. You must assume that the Company E skirmish line was dismounted, and that their horses were well to their rear in the now cemetery.

It is a pretty fair distance down from LSH to where those markers and artifacts are. What you then have to do is explain how Company E broke contact while dismounted, retrograded to LSH, and retained the strength of 28 through what we must consider a heavy firefight on LSH, remaining coherent enough of a force to make an organized movement into Deep Ravine. I say coherent, because panic effects organization, some panic, some don't, some run others do not. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, you must assume that those 28 were still a coherent fighting force under positive control. I don't see any evidence that disputes that.

2) If Company E made it to the point, keeping all of the factors above in mind, of moving into Deep Ravine, why having been on LSH would they rush into a place that they could readily see was an Indian avenue of approach. At that stage of the game there was no thought of driving anyone out of anywhere. It was a time, as Montrose says to picking your DIPPIN ground and sell your life as dearly as possible, or the alternative run like hell in any direction that did not contain Indians.

Company E and Company L were the only two of the five that we have a pretty good idea of them dying well. The other three may have but we just do not have enough evidence to say one way or the other.

[Beth]

Yan wrote:

I think Fred posted that data on the black board some years ago, and maybe he has altered his view since.

Company E lost their mounts which left them stranded, they were also one officer short and maybe Porter got hit early on which left them rudder less.

Some Indian accounts claim that E Company were caught trying to form skirmish in which to defend the cemetery area and on the back foot from the word go, and once they lost their horses due to pressure, they fled towards the river and ended up in a ravine.

[yanmacca]

Aug 12, 2016 19:34:34 GMT Beth said:

Question-could the stories of the actions of Company C and Company E have sort of melded together?

Never mind about C and E melding Beth, I think the same thing could be said about E Company running towards the river melding with men breaking loose from LSH in an attempt to escape.

[Beth]

Dave wrote:

I have no answers other than people do the strangest things when panicking. Often firemen find bodies of people who ran deeper into a house instead outside which is inexplicable. Panic is raging disease and quick to infect others in a group unless enough training has been available to offset the flight syndrome.

Having no military experience I am just winging it but I do believe the soldiers of the 7th were poorly trained and lead and very susceptible to shock and panic. All it would take, I believe, would be one or two fleeing to the river for the rest to follow.

Regards

Dave

[Beth]

Yan said:

I suppose that a line of trees would provide more cover then just an open hill side and this move was thwarted by Indians blocking their route, so they choose option B and jumped into the nearest ravine.

[quincannon]

Dave: The critical part of validating the story that Company E ran into Deep Ravine is not panic. All humans are subject to panic. Training mitigates, but cannot stop panic. The basis behind training is that the better you know your job, the less likely it is you fall into panic. When you add positive leadership to it, it mitigates it even more, and then there is the buddy effect, but neither of these will totally eliminate, what is a normal human reaction.

The critical part is how did they manage to get up to LSH from their initial position in the first place. The distance I am not sure of, but it is several hundred yards, I want to guess five to six hundred (Steve,Tom correct me.

If they break down there and run that distance back, having broken those hostiles would be on them like stink on defecation. If they come back by bounds, how do they:

a. Manage to make it that distance with no apparent casualties?

b. Manage to make it that distance without those horse thieves on Cemetery Ridge getting in behind them and cutting them off? (Check out Ian's Bonafides, and see where that line of markers are, and see where the cemetery is as denoted by the wooded patch. I say line of markers, only to give you a distance fro LSH perspective, because I can't find that artifact line on the printed map, but I am looking at it on mine)

To use your fire analogy - This is like 28 men together having escaped from a fire, then sudden panic sets in and they run back into the fire.

Just as there is an argument to be made against the escape from the bottom, there is an equal argument to be made with regard to what possible tactical reason they would have for running down into Deep Ravine. I have been looking at that for nearly sixty years, when I first read one of those old Landmark books for kids about this. In the book Custer (himself) leads this glorious breakout to the river. I did not buy that either.

I would be willing to bet next months retirement check on Company E falling in the general vicinity of where those markers are, and am open to the possibility that some few ( 3 or 4)of Company E ran toward those small ravines you see along the river, and not Deep Ravine as we know it today.

[yanmacca]

I would ask the question why some one would order this 37 man unit to hold on to this piece of grazing land in the first place, as they are fully exposed and are vulnerable to be out flanked.

It would have been a big ask to expect this unit to hold out on their own, but Company F may have been in a similar predicament holding off Indian in the basin area, but they managed to retire back to LSH.

[Beth]

Aug 12, 2016 20:33:59 GMT quincannon said:

Dave: The critical part of validating the story that Company E ran into Deep Ravine is not panic. All humans are subject to panic. Training mitigates, but cannot stop panic. The basis behind training is that the better you know your job, the less likely it is you fall into panic. When you add positive leadership to it, it mitigates it even more, and then there is the buddy effect, but neither of these will totally eliminate, what is a normal human reaction.

The critical part is how did they manage to get up to LSH from their initial position in the first place. The distance I am not sure of, but it is several hundred yards, I want to guess five to six hundred (Steve,Tom correct me.

If they break down there and run that distance back, having broken those hostiles would be on them like stink on defecation. If they come back by bounds, how do they:

a. Manage to make it that distance with no apparent casualties?

b. Manage to make it that distance without those horse thieves on Cemetery Ridge getting in behind them and cutting them off? (Check out Ian's Bonafides, and see where that line of markers are, and see where the cemetery is as denoted by the wooded patch. I say line of markers, only to give you a distance fro LSH perspective, because I can't find that artifact line on the printed map, but I am looking at it on mine)

To use your fire analogy - This is like 28 men together having escaped from a fire, then sudden panic sets in and they run back into the fire.

Just as there is an argument to be made against the escape from the bottom, there is an equal argument to be made with regard to what possible tactical reason they would have for running down into Deep Ravine. I have been looking at that for nearly sixty years, when I first read one of those old Landmark books for kids about this. In the book Custer (himself) leads this glorious breakout to the river. I did not buy that either.

I would be willing to bet next months retirement check on Company E falling in the general vicinity of where those markers are, and am open to the possibility that some few ( 3 or 4)of Company E ran toward those small ravines you see along the river, and not Deep Ravine as we know it today.

I agree (at least based on personal experience) that training doesn't make you immune to panic but it does allow you to recover much quicker from that initial 'fight or flight' response and then respond accordingly.  Also I don't think that panicked people run blindly--they tend to run to perceived safety (though at the time what might be seen as safe is anything but).  Why would panicked soldiers run towards a ravine that they have been seeing NA pour out of?  They might be driven into it but they wouldn't run into it.

The story of Company C has never made sense and I believe that it is an injustice to just chalk the unexplained to 'panic'

[dave]

QC
I am going out on a limb, luckily I am a slender person, with my thoughts about the 22 men seen by CAPT Benteen in a deep ravine 100 yards or so from the river. I do not have the books in front of me so I am unable to cite sources for my ideas. Others cited 28 bodies in a ravine near the river or 700 yards from LSH.  Many eyewitnesses claimed to see the 20 plus bodies of men from E company in a deep ravine near the river yet others testified they saw few or no bodies. Benteen seems to me to be the most solid witness and I go with him.

Were any artifacts, bones or equipment found in the excavations of Cemetery Ravine? I have a difficult time understanding how Benteen could have confused Deep Ravine with Cemetery Ravine as he spent a good bit of time while the bodies were being covered, not buried in any sense of the word, by his troops. Also there was a great distance between the two features.

Also could Deep Ravine been deeper and steeper in 1876 and more susceptible to wash outs during the rain storms along with scavenging by apex predators? Would that account for the lack of any remains in Deep Ravine during the dig? Was the upper part of Deep Ravine ever excavated or searched? I admit to being unable to provide any proof or certainty of my ideas but am always open to better ideas and thoughts along with solid evidence.
Regards
Dave

[Beth]

Just some questions--no answers.

Did Benteen ever go back to the battlefield after the fact? As for mistaking Cemetery Ravine from Deep Ravine--they wouldn't have those names at the time. Cemetery Ravine couldn't have gotten that moniker until the cemetery went in which was after 1886.

Did contemporary maps even show Cemetery Ravine to give Benteen the option of saying no not that one, it was this ravine or were most maps only showing one ravine.

As for flooding--a little bit of rain (instead of slow soaking rain) is going to have a very large runoff. A friend of my just bought a new house and was shocked by his water bill (it included his yard irrigation). He did some math and figured out that one inch of rain on an acre is a bit more than 27,100 gallons of water.

I checked Hardin's annual rainfall is nearly 12 inches--so just one acre of land draining into Deep Ravine  means that most of 324000 gallons of water have to travel annually through the ravine. When you multiple it by the actual number of acres that are in the Deep Ravine watershed the number is going to be huge so you can imagine how much water goes through that area in just a single downpour where you get an inch or so of rain very quickly. (I don't know how common they are around LBH but around Boise we would get a couple really strong down pours a year.)

When you think about the depth and width of those ravines you can imagine how a heavy downpour is going to force the speed of the water to wash just about everything loose in the ravine then straight out into the river.  On the other hand slow draining of rain or places where the water slows down because of obstacles is going to cause heavier items to settle down into a silt. (BTW weight isn't the only factor on what will settle out-think of how a finger bone is going to move through water versus perhaps a piece of metal the same size and shape.

Did you ever as a kid build dams and waterways in the gutter to trap the rain into pools and stream then watch how leaf boats float through them? It used to be one of my favorite things to do as a kid.  Granted I was a weird kid but how water moves always fascinates me. 

BTW an inch of rain on 25 acres is enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool, -imagine that pool draining quickly from down from the head of Calhoun coulee to run through to the river.  (on a smaller scale a 4' deep by 18 feet around pool holds about 7700 gallons)  Pool popping 

[yanmacca]

Myles Moylan drew a map showing the way the companies searched the battlefield for bodies, I think they lined up on the southern end of the battlefield in this order;

West to East:
Companies: B - D - K - A - H - G - M
So Company B would have covered that area.

They apparently each company divided into two columns and left a gap of a hundred yards between each company.

Here is the map sourced by Donahue courtesy of the BCWC Collection.

[quincannon]

I was in error. I apologize for putting out false information.

I repaired my Bonafides to such an extent that I saw something that was not there. I mistook my repair efforts for artifact lines on the face of Cemetery Ridge.

Dave: With regard to Deep Ravine. The Bonafides separates Deep Ravine into Upper and Lower. I think it is quite possible that some of E did make it into LDR which matches the Benteen description to a tee. I just don't believe those people came off of LSH though. It is much too far away. LDR is one of those cuts I spoke about earlier along the river. It is also possible that UDR and LDR connected at one time near the South Skirmish line, and has been filled with erosion and debris over the years.

[yanmacca]

Is this ok;