{"id":9366,"date":"2026-08-22T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/?p=9366"},"modified":"2026-08-23T16:18:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T20:18:47","slug":"i-didnt-know-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/i-didnt-know-that\/","title":{"rendered":"I DIDN\u2019T KNOW THAT\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Most of my recreational reading is history and biography. One of my favorite writers is Tom Clavin. I just read his new book \u201cVengeance: the Last Stands of Custer, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull.<\/a>\u201d I had been reading about Custer\u2019s Last Stand since I was a little boy, and this book taught me a few things I didn\u2019t know.
It turned out that the fierce Crazy Horse took his time getting to the battle. Writes Clavin, \u201cAccording to Thomas Powers in The Killing of Crazy Horse<\/a>, \u2018Without his medicine and time for a prayer or song, he would be weak. A 17-year-old Oglala named Standing Bear reported that after the first warnings Crazy Horse had called on a wicasa wakan (medicine man) to invoke the spirits and then took so much time over his preparations\u2019 that many of his warriors became impatient.\u201d
Clavin doesn\u2019t dwell much on weapons versus weapons. The old saw that the \u201cblue coats had guns and the Indians only had arrows\u201d doesn\u2019t stand up here. The cavalry had single shot Springfield rifles (and there were allegations that spent casings were jamming in the chambers when the guns heated up) while as Clavin notes, \u201cTroopers on the high ground were being targeted and were trapped by the firing of Winchester and Henry repeating rifles.\u201d Moreover, when cavalrymen went prone behind dead horses for cover against straight-in rifle fire, the opposing warriors arced arrows over the barricades of horseflesh and into the soldiers.
There were many lessons from this incident. There is such a thing as payback. Massacre of innocent Indian women and children prior had aroused a burning hatred for the US Cavalry among the tribes. There\u2019s a reason the historian titled this book \u201cVengeance.<\/a>\u201d Don\u2019t rush into the unknown if you don\u2019t need to. Never underestimate a foe. If you can\u2019t outnumber the enemy, you can at least hope to outgun him. (Custer had reportedly left multiple Gatling guns behind, reasoning that the heavy weapons would slow down his troops.)
Crack open this new Clavin book. I found it a fascinating read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most of my recreational reading is history and biography. One of my favorite writers is Tom Clavin. I just read his new book \u201cVengeance: the Last Stands of Custer, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull.\u201d I had been reading about Custer\u2019s Last Stand since I was a little boy, and this book taught me a few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9367,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9366\/revisions\/9367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}