This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
50-150 indinas killed?!?... No, only 6 (six), 5 Lakota and 1 Cheyenne. I'm sorry. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.26.11.29 ( talk • contribs) 10:28, November 23, 2009
G.B. Grinnell gives an account of two participating Cheyenne warriors, giving a number of ~400 warriors and 3 dead (Sioux and Cheyenne combined). A reprint can be found in "Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 1865-1890: The long war for the Northern Plains" by Peter Cozzens, accessible via google books. Though it's quite normal in recorded history that "official" casualty estimates for the enemy side are to high by a wide margin (see e.g. Battle of Britain), it's really astonishing that in regard of the indian wars the numbers of indian casualties given by the "white" side are sometimes orders of magnitude higher than the numbers given by the "red" side (and these high numbers then tend to end up as the "public" versions of history). I find it rather illuminating that the reciprocal is not nearly the case. A nice commentary regarding the veracity of indian accounts can be found in the foreword to G.B. Grinnells Fighting Cheyennes. It boils down to "If you can get a plains indian to trust you enough to tell you his version of what happened, and if you are able to get around the culture/language barrier, than you can assume that it will be as accurate as an eyewitness account can be." ( 78.42.137.120 ( talk) 09:53, 1 December 2009 (UTC))
It is universally understood that the one group best qualified to state who went into a fight, did what in the fight, was wounded, killed or came back unscathed is the group these people belong to. In the heat of battle you mostly don't have time to make a reliable assessment of how many enemies get killed or wounded - unless you happen to wipe out the entire enemy force, are in control of the battlefield afterwards and have the time for a body count. That's not what we're talking about in 99% of the fights in the Indian wars, certainly not here. Numerous Indian sources, gleaned from participants, agree that six warriors got killed and six wounded, and that the Indians didn't view this fight as a defeat at all. We reakly have to get a semblance of balance into these discussions. I will make an effort when I have time. Lookoo ( talk) 09:07, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
Can someone actually confirm the quote attributed to Stephen Ambrose that occurs at the end of this article?
"This was the last large charge Crazy Horse ever led against whites occupying a strong defensive position. He had learned that Indians with bows and arrows could not overwhelm whites armed with breech-loaders inside a fortification."
I am disturbed by the inclusion of "white" in there, since not all settlers, soldiers, and civilians were "white."
CopaDave ( talk) 17:51, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
50-150 indinas killed?!?... No, only 6 (six), 5 Lakota and 1 Cheyenne. I'm sorry. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.26.11.29 ( talk • contribs) 10:28, November 23, 2009
G.B. Grinnell gives an account of two participating Cheyenne warriors, giving a number of ~400 warriors and 3 dead (Sioux and Cheyenne combined). A reprint can be found in "Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 1865-1890: The long war for the Northern Plains" by Peter Cozzens, accessible via google books. Though it's quite normal in recorded history that "official" casualty estimates for the enemy side are to high by a wide margin (see e.g. Battle of Britain), it's really astonishing that in regard of the indian wars the numbers of indian casualties given by the "white" side are sometimes orders of magnitude higher than the numbers given by the "red" side (and these high numbers then tend to end up as the "public" versions of history). I find it rather illuminating that the reciprocal is not nearly the case. A nice commentary regarding the veracity of indian accounts can be found in the foreword to G.B. Grinnells Fighting Cheyennes. It boils down to "If you can get a plains indian to trust you enough to tell you his version of what happened, and if you are able to get around the culture/language barrier, than you can assume that it will be as accurate as an eyewitness account can be." ( 78.42.137.120 ( talk) 09:53, 1 December 2009 (UTC))
It is universally understood that the one group best qualified to state who went into a fight, did what in the fight, was wounded, killed or came back unscathed is the group these people belong to. In the heat of battle you mostly don't have time to make a reliable assessment of how many enemies get killed or wounded - unless you happen to wipe out the entire enemy force, are in control of the battlefield afterwards and have the time for a body count. That's not what we're talking about in 99% of the fights in the Indian wars, certainly not here. Numerous Indian sources, gleaned from participants, agree that six warriors got killed and six wounded, and that the Indians didn't view this fight as a defeat at all. We reakly have to get a semblance of balance into these discussions. I will make an effort when I have time. Lookoo ( talk) 09:07, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
Can someone actually confirm the quote attributed to Stephen Ambrose that occurs at the end of this article?
"This was the last large charge Crazy Horse ever led against whites occupying a strong defensive position. He had learned that Indians with bows and arrows could not overwhelm whites armed with breech-loaders inside a fortification."
I am disturbed by the inclusion of "white" in there, since not all settlers, soldiers, and civilians were "white."
CopaDave ( talk) 17:51, 31 October 2016 (UTC)