American Rifle - Alexander Rose [247]
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19. Brisbin, Belden, pp. 377–78.
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20. S. Gibson, “The Wagon Box Fight” in G. R. Hebard and E. A. Brininstool, The Bozeman Trail . . . (1922; reprint New York: AMS Press, 1978), pp. 2:39–71.
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21. M. Littman, “The Wagon Box Fight as I Saw It,” in Hebard and Brininstool, Bozeman Trail, pp. 2:72–82.
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22. King, Campaigning with Crook, pp. 135–36.
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23. Quoted in L.A. Garavaglia and C.G. Worman, Firearms of the American West (1803–1865, 1866–1894), 2 vols. (1984–85; reprint Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1997–98), pp. 2:355.
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24. Seymour, Indian Agents, pp. 39–40, 48; Garavaglia and Worman, Firearms of American West, p. 2:361.
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25. J. H. Taylor, Sketches of Frontier and Indian Life on the Upper Missouri and Great Plains, 3d ed. (Bismarck, N.D.: J. H. Taylor, 1897), pp. 62–63.
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26. Brisbin, Belden, p. 393.
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27. A. Garcia, Tough Trip Through Paradise, 1878–1879, ed. B. H. Stein (1967; reprint Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 2001), pp. 150–53.
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28. J. C. Cremony, Life Among the Apaches (San Francisco: A. Roman & Company, 1868), p. 194.
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29. J. E. Parsons and J. S. du Mont, Firearms in the Custer Battle (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole, 1953), p. 31. See also, for further examples, D. G. McCrady, Living with Strangers: The Nineteenth-Century Sioux and the Canadian-American Borderlands (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006).
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30. Garavaglia and Worman, Firearms of American West, p. 2:362, 356.
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31. F. B. Linderman, Plenty-Coups: Chief of the Crow (1930; reprint Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1962), pp. 106–7. It took time for warriors accustomed to molding their own ammunition from lead and pouring powder down the muzzle to familiarize themselves with the new metallic cartridges. Henry Stanley, soon to set off for Africa to find the vanished explorer Dr. Livingstone, was in Nebraska at the time and was told that several Spencer armed Indians, “not being posted in the breech-loading business,” had injured their hands after trying to pound the explosive metallic cartridges down the barrel. H. M. Stanley, My Early Travels and Adventures in America and Asia (1895; reprint London: Gerald Duckworth & Co., 2001), pp. 135–36.
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32. “Official Report of the Engagements with Indians on the 4th and 11th Ultimo,” August 15, 1873, by Custer, printed in E. B. Custer, “Boots and Saddles,” or, Life in Dakota with General Custer (1885; reprint Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961), p. 247. Three years later Richard Hughes was touring the Black Hills and recorded that “the adult [Ogalallas] were splendidly armed—indeed much better than the average man of our party—their guns being mostly Sharps’ or Winchester rifles of late pattern.” R. B. Hughes, Pioneer Years in the Black Hills, ed. A. W. Spring (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1957), pp. 41–42.
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33. C. Windolph, I Fought with Custer . . . (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947), p. 92. Windolph had emigrated from Germany and joined the Seventh Cavalry in 1870. He won the Medal of Honor during the fight on Reno’s Hill while exposing himself to heavy hostile fire as he covered a water-fetching party. On Indian armament at the battle, see Parsons and Du Mont, Firearms in the Custer Battle, pp. 26–27. Their account corresponds with Windolph’s. During the subsequent Court of Inquiry, Major Reno testified that “the Indians had Winchester rifles and the column made a large target for them and they were pumping bullets into it.”
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34. D.D. Scott, R.A. Fox Jr., M.A. Connor, and D. Harmon, Archaeological Perspectives on the Battle of the Little Bighorn (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), p. 119.
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35. Crook quoted in Jamieson, Crossing the Deadly Ground, p. 44.
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36. Quoted in Garavaglia and Worman, Firearms of American West, p. 2:366.
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