On Custer Day

• "All during June 1876, events and Custer's own mistakes conspired against him. Experience in the plains wars indicated that the problem in fighting the Indians was not so much defeating them as it was getting them to stand and fight at all. This was one of Custer's major worries. Moreover, he had been led to believe by the Bureau of Indian Affairs not to expect more than 800 hostile braves; in fact he was probably confronted by over 4,000. Finally, he was not aware that many of his future foes were armed with Winchester repeating carbines, whereas his own men were equipped with single-shot Springfields. Thus of the three major aspects of military intelligence - the number of the enemy, their willingness to fight, and their armament - Custer was ignorant and unprepared." - Bruce Rosenberg, Custer and the Epic of Defeat

• You probably knew that Crazy Horse was an important commander at Little Big Horn, repelling Reno's attack and then counterattacking and wiping out Custer's detachment. (Custer's commanding officer wrote this report to his superiors.) But Crazy Horse almost bagged another Army force in a well-organized ambush a week before, and in any event prevented it from reinforcing Custer. He also played a key role in the Fetterman Fight, the second worst whipping the Army took in the Indian wars.

• And a brief moment of respect for Red Cloud, the only Indian commander to win a war against the U.S. Army, a decade before Little Big Horn.