Post by Beth on Jun 30, 2018 19:40:34 GMT
This article is more of a rehash of the battle with the local boy mentioned at the end.
Out of Our Past: Richmond soldier was among the fallen at battle of Little Bighorn
Steve Martin Published 9:00 a.m. ET June 24, 2018
link
Marion E. Horn of Richmond was one of the soldiers killed at the battle of Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876.
He was 22 years old when he lost his life in one of the most famous military blunders of all time.
It was on a hot, blazing June day that the Richmond native and his troupe under the command of General George Armstrong Custer met their fate.
Custer had ranked last in his class at the U.S. Military Academy, but during the Civil War he gained fame as a fearless cavalry leader. Early in the war when General George McClelland would not cross a river to chase Confederate soldiers because its depth was unknown, young Custer brashly rode his horse to the middle and said, “It’s this deep, sir.”
At the age of 23 Custer was made brigadier general. By age 25 he was a major general.
After the war he joined the Seventh Cavalry and won great fame fighting Indians in the southern Great Plains and in the Dakota and Montana Territories, but many thought him too cocksure of his abilities and called him a “glory hunter.”
Being a “glory hunter” would later lead to his demise and to the destruction of his men.
On May 17, 1876, Custer and his troop left Fort Abraham Lincoln in the Montana Territory and were in the saddle for 40 days.
The morning of June 25, Custer’s scouts found an Indian village about 15 miles away in the valley along the Little Bighorn River.
Custer expected to find 1,000 Indians composed of unwary men, women and children, and believed his 650 men could capture the village in a surprise attack.
What he didn’t know was the village had 2,000 Sioux and Cheyenne warriors whose leaders included Chief Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, the largest gathering of Indian warriors in western history. Including women and children, there may have been as many as 7,000 Native Americans.
Custer decided to attack, and split his regiment into three groups. The first group went south to prevent the Indians from escaping that direction. The second group crossed the river and attacked the village. Custer’s group turned north and went downstream to attack the village at a weak point, his biggest mistake.
After intense fighting and losing huge numbers of men, the second group swept back across the river and retreated into the hills, realizing they were vastly outnumbered. The first group also realized the folly of the attack and departed also.
Custer and his group of 210 men — about four miles away — attacked where they thought the village weakest… and quickly found out it was not the Indians who needed an escape route.
The Native Americans, like a slumbering beast awakened, swarmed in retaliation to extract swift revenge.
Custer’s troopers were no longer on the hunt; they were the prey, trying to flee, but unable. Effectively surrounded in a ring of death, they made a last stand.
Among the soldiers in Custer’s 7th Cavalry was Private Marion E. Horn, who was born Aug. 26, 1853 in Richmond, Ind. He was the son of John and Sarah Ellen Anderson Horn. He had enlisted in the Army on Nov. 15, 1872 at Cincinnati. He had hazel eyes, brown hair, a florid complexion, and was 5 feet, 6 ½ inches tall. The 1872 Richmond City Directory lists him as a laborer who resided at 14 S. Fifth St.
Horn had just written a letter to his sister that was never delivered, and which today is on view at the Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park, near Bismarck North Dakota, along with a footlocker stamped with Horn’s name. This final letter, written back home to Richmond, stated prophetically, and with some alarm, that he and his comrades’ concerns were well founded that “there is one of the greatest Indian wars expected this year.”
Horn was right.
His life would end in the hell of the battle as Indians warred forth “listing relentlessly…Bullets and arrows and bludgeons struck as fists, the human sacrifice not just impacted but impinged in starry hole’d designs, and each man saw the blank gap of eternity struck in a bleak chasm of extinction, locked down to where his feet should have been, suddenly hurled back by the impact of shot and blade and arrow-tip into shards unspooling shattering ends of sentience, till the spirit projected its misery unrivaled upon the field of battle.”
Men died screaming; some committed suicide by shooting themselves. The carnage was absolute. Remnants of Custer’s troop clustered together, returning fire, fighting desperately as their numbers dwindled. They surged whatever direction they could, keeping close, gorily whittled away in death-swathe disarray. The pattern of where the dead fell revealed that the heart of the battle kept shifting, as if the men frantically sought to find a way out but could not. Bodies were strewn in clustered spots. The doomed brotherhood, trapped in a massacre, stayed close to their longhaired leader, who now realized his folly, and his impending slaughter.
Cheyenne Chief Two Moon recalled the battle and his is the only eyewitness account, “The shooting was quick, quick. Pop, pop, pop, very fast. Some of the soldiers were down on their knees, some standing. The smoke was like a great cloud, and everywhere… the dust rose… We circled all around Custer, swirling like water around a stone. We shoot, we ride fast, we shoot again. Soldiers drop and horses fall on them.”
The deadly battle lasted under an hour. One Indian described it as taking the time that a man can calmly eat a full meal.
After the massacre the Indians removed the bodies of their dead. The bodies of the soldiers and officers were mutilated, and left for carrion. Disfigured beyond recognition, the corpses were later hastily buried where they perished.
In 1881 the remains were exhumed and reburied in a common grave at the base of a memorial that bears the names of the slain, including that of Richmond’s Marion E. Horn. It is here that the Richmond man likely rests today, a victim of a military commander’s grandiose bid for glory.
Americans at the time found it impossible to believe any group of Native Americans could vanquish such a well-known officer and his troops. Custer’s loss shocked the nation the way Pearl Harbor and 911 later did. News of the defeat arrived in the East just as the nation was observing its centennial. Americans used to battlefield victories, convinced of their inherent superiority and claim to manifest destiny, were stunned incredulous. Outraged, the nation quickly demanded retribution. Boundary lines were redrawn, placing the Black Hills outside the reservation and open to white settlement. The Sioux nation within a year was broken.
Custer’s Last Stand was their last stand as well.
Custer’s final battle lives in the annals of military history as a deadly blunder for which an egoistic general – and his men - paid dearly. The Indians won the battle that day, but later lost the war and their independent way of life. Marion E. Horn of Richmond lost his life also.
Contact columnist Steve Martin at stephenmonroemartin@gmail.com.
Out of Our Past: Richmond soldier was among the fallen at battle of Little Bighorn
Steve Martin Published 9:00 a.m. ET June 24, 2018
link
Marion E. Horn of Richmond was one of the soldiers killed at the battle of Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876.
He was 22 years old when he lost his life in one of the most famous military blunders of all time.
It was on a hot, blazing June day that the Richmond native and his troupe under the command of General George Armstrong Custer met their fate.
Custer had ranked last in his class at the U.S. Military Academy, but during the Civil War he gained fame as a fearless cavalry leader. Early in the war when General George McClelland would not cross a river to chase Confederate soldiers because its depth was unknown, young Custer brashly rode his horse to the middle and said, “It’s this deep, sir.”
At the age of 23 Custer was made brigadier general. By age 25 he was a major general.
After the war he joined the Seventh Cavalry and won great fame fighting Indians in the southern Great Plains and in the Dakota and Montana Territories, but many thought him too cocksure of his abilities and called him a “glory hunter.”
Being a “glory hunter” would later lead to his demise and to the destruction of his men.
On May 17, 1876, Custer and his troop left Fort Abraham Lincoln in the Montana Territory and were in the saddle for 40 days.
The morning of June 25, Custer’s scouts found an Indian village about 15 miles away in the valley along the Little Bighorn River.
Custer expected to find 1,000 Indians composed of unwary men, women and children, and believed his 650 men could capture the village in a surprise attack.
What he didn’t know was the village had 2,000 Sioux and Cheyenne warriors whose leaders included Chief Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, the largest gathering of Indian warriors in western history. Including women and children, there may have been as many as 7,000 Native Americans.
Custer decided to attack, and split his regiment into three groups. The first group went south to prevent the Indians from escaping that direction. The second group crossed the river and attacked the village. Custer’s group turned north and went downstream to attack the village at a weak point, his biggest mistake.
After intense fighting and losing huge numbers of men, the second group swept back across the river and retreated into the hills, realizing they were vastly outnumbered. The first group also realized the folly of the attack and departed also.
Custer and his group of 210 men — about four miles away — attacked where they thought the village weakest… and quickly found out it was not the Indians who needed an escape route.
The Native Americans, like a slumbering beast awakened, swarmed in retaliation to extract swift revenge.
Custer’s troopers were no longer on the hunt; they were the prey, trying to flee, but unable. Effectively surrounded in a ring of death, they made a last stand.
Among the soldiers in Custer’s 7th Cavalry was Private Marion E. Horn, who was born Aug. 26, 1853 in Richmond, Ind. He was the son of John and Sarah Ellen Anderson Horn. He had enlisted in the Army on Nov. 15, 1872 at Cincinnati. He had hazel eyes, brown hair, a florid complexion, and was 5 feet, 6 ½ inches tall. The 1872 Richmond City Directory lists him as a laborer who resided at 14 S. Fifth St.
Horn had just written a letter to his sister that was never delivered, and which today is on view at the Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park, near Bismarck North Dakota, along with a footlocker stamped with Horn’s name. This final letter, written back home to Richmond, stated prophetically, and with some alarm, that he and his comrades’ concerns were well founded that “there is one of the greatest Indian wars expected this year.”
Horn was right.
His life would end in the hell of the battle as Indians warred forth “listing relentlessly…Bullets and arrows and bludgeons struck as fists, the human sacrifice not just impacted but impinged in starry hole’d designs, and each man saw the blank gap of eternity struck in a bleak chasm of extinction, locked down to where his feet should have been, suddenly hurled back by the impact of shot and blade and arrow-tip into shards unspooling shattering ends of sentience, till the spirit projected its misery unrivaled upon the field of battle.”
Men died screaming; some committed suicide by shooting themselves. The carnage was absolute. Remnants of Custer’s troop clustered together, returning fire, fighting desperately as their numbers dwindled. They surged whatever direction they could, keeping close, gorily whittled away in death-swathe disarray. The pattern of where the dead fell revealed that the heart of the battle kept shifting, as if the men frantically sought to find a way out but could not. Bodies were strewn in clustered spots. The doomed brotherhood, trapped in a massacre, stayed close to their longhaired leader, who now realized his folly, and his impending slaughter.
Cheyenne Chief Two Moon recalled the battle and his is the only eyewitness account, “The shooting was quick, quick. Pop, pop, pop, very fast. Some of the soldiers were down on their knees, some standing. The smoke was like a great cloud, and everywhere… the dust rose… We circled all around Custer, swirling like water around a stone. We shoot, we ride fast, we shoot again. Soldiers drop and horses fall on them.”
The deadly battle lasted under an hour. One Indian described it as taking the time that a man can calmly eat a full meal.
After the massacre the Indians removed the bodies of their dead. The bodies of the soldiers and officers were mutilated, and left for carrion. Disfigured beyond recognition, the corpses were later hastily buried where they perished.
In 1881 the remains were exhumed and reburied in a common grave at the base of a memorial that bears the names of the slain, including that of Richmond’s Marion E. Horn. It is here that the Richmond man likely rests today, a victim of a military commander’s grandiose bid for glory.
Americans at the time found it impossible to believe any group of Native Americans could vanquish such a well-known officer and his troops. Custer’s loss shocked the nation the way Pearl Harbor and 911 later did. News of the defeat arrived in the East just as the nation was observing its centennial. Americans used to battlefield victories, convinced of their inherent superiority and claim to manifest destiny, were stunned incredulous. Outraged, the nation quickly demanded retribution. Boundary lines were redrawn, placing the Black Hills outside the reservation and open to white settlement. The Sioux nation within a year was broken.
Custer’s Last Stand was their last stand as well.
Custer’s final battle lives in the annals of military history as a deadly blunder for which an egoistic general – and his men - paid dearly. The Indians won the battle that day, but later lost the war and their independent way of life. Marion E. Horn of Richmond lost his life also.
Contact columnist Steve Martin at stephenmonroemartin@gmail.com.