winchesters v springfields at the big horn

THE 7TH.

For a good number of years there has been much speculation about what was Lt. Col George Armstrong Custer‘s last gun. As he and most of his command  were killed during the Battle of Little Big Horn, everything has to be put together from spotty evidence, innuendo and guesswork. Here’s my take on the matter.
There is extant, a revealing 1870s-vintage photograph (below) of Custer and his wife, Libby, sitting in their library at Ft. Abraham Lincoln on the Missouri River, Dakota Territory. In the far right corner is the Lt. Colonel’s gun rack. Four handguns can be seen—two Smith & Wesson No. 2s that had been presented to him by Major General J.B. Sutherland, a percussion revolver which is most likely either a Colt 1861 Navy or Remington New Model Army that was given to him by Remington, and what strongly appears to be a Webley Royal Irish Constabulary revolver (pictured above).
One tradition persists that British sportsman Lord Berkeley Paget presented George Custer with a solid-frame Webley First Model Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) revolver on a buffalo hunt in 1869. The British revolver in Custer’s gun rack follows the lines of the RIC much more closely than those of the Galand, which has a rather involved under-barrel extraction mechanism and slightly different grip than the Webley. Over the years, for reasons we will mention later, it has been supposed Custer had a pair of nickel-plated RICs with ivory grips–but there is no question the gun in the Ft. Lincoln photograph has walnut grips and a darker, blued finish. Also, there is only one such gun showing, leading me to surmise that Custer, in fact, only had one RIC.
As both Smith & Wessons are displayed and there appear to be empty slots in the rack this supposition would appear to be confirmed. It was very unusual to see double-cased British cartridge revolvers at this period. Of course there is always another explanation; that being the whole Berkeley Paget thing was something of a red herring and Custer either purchased the Webley himself, or it was given to him by someone else. Just because a gun was made in England, doesn’t necessarily mean it had to come from an Englishman. British firearms of all types had been actively marketed in the States for decades prior to the 1870s.

Custer and Libby at Ft. Lincoln. Gun rack mentioned at the far right of the picture.

The Royal Irish Constabulary revolver, built by Birmingham, England gunmaker Philip Webley, took its name from the force that adopted it in 1868. This solid-frame double-action at one time or another was chambered in such calibers as .430, .442, .450, .476 and .44-40, among others. While the military version of the gun had a four-inch barrel, over its long career the gun was also made in short barreled “Bulldog” versions. “Bulldog” by the way is a British term going back at least to the latter part of the 18^th century and along with “barker” and “snapper” was slang for a short-barreled, large caliber pistol.
Due to the date of presentation and/or the Ft. Lincoln photograph, there can be little doubt that Custer’s RIC would have been a First Model, recognizable by forward locking notches on the cylinder. The caliber would unquestionably have been .442, for even though the British military had adopted the .450 round in 1868, this chambering was not offered in the RIC at the time of the surmised Berkeley Paget gifting.
After the battle Lt. Edward Godfrey, of K Company, 7^th Cavalry, noted that during the expedition Custer was carrying “two Bulldog self-cocking, English white handled pistols with a ring in the butt for a lanyard.” As we have determined, Custer’s RIC was blued with walnut grips and no lanyard ring, so it’s possible that Godfrey might have confused the Webley with the Smith & Wessons which were plated and had pearl grips, though they didn’t have lanyard rings either, and to be fair he did describe Custer’s other gear pretty accurately.
Too, the fact all of the guns seen in the gun rack are currently accounted, for with the exception of the Webley, adds more strong evidence to the assumption the RIC was the gun Custer probably had with him at Greasy Grass.
To date, no .442 cartridge cases have been found on the battlefield, but as things were getting pretty hot and heavy as the Indians approached the troopers at handgun range there’s a good chance that Custer might not have had time to fire off more than a cylinder-full of bullets. This means that the empty cases could have still been in the gun when it was taken from the commander’s dead body by one of Sitting Bull’s best. Of course, there is also the very real possibility that he never even drew his revolver and used only his .50-70 Remington rifle. There is also the excellent chance he simply had a Colt SAA.
In any event, it is a mystery that will never be completely solved. The chances of the gun turning up with decent provenance after all these years are virtually nil. Unearthing of spent .442 cases on the battlefield would certainly lend more veracity to Godfrey’s claims but as the round, while uncommon, was not unknown in the West at the time there is no way of conclusively proving they came from a revolver actually fired by Custer.
What do you think?


Read more: http://www.gunsandammo.com/2011/10/03/what-was-custers-last-gun/#ixzz2DpthcOKR

For a good number of years there has been much speculation about what was Lt. Col George Armstrong Custer‘s last gun. As he and most of his command  were killed during the Battle of Little Big Horn, everything has to be put together from spotty evidence, innuendo and guesswork. Here’s my take on the matter.
There is extant, a revealing 1870s-vintage photograph (below) of Custer and his wife, Libby, sitting in their library at Ft. Abraham Lincoln on the Missouri River, Dakota Territory. In the far right corner is the Lt. Colonel’s gun rack. Four handguns can be seen—two Smith & Wesson No. 2s that had been presented to him by Major General J.B. Sutherland, a percussion revolver which is most likely either a Colt 1861 Navy or Remington New Model Army that was given to him by Remington, and what strongly appears to be a Webley Royal Irish Constabulary revolver (pictured above).
One tradition persists that British sportsman Lord Berkeley Paget presented George Custer with a solid-frame Webley First Model Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) revolver on a buffalo hunt in 1869. The British revolver in Custer’s gun rack follows the lines of the RIC much more closely than those of the Galand, which has a rather involved under-barrel extraction mechanism and slightly different grip than the Webley. Over the years, for reasons we will mention later, it has been supposed Custer had a pair of nickel-plated RICs with ivory grips–but there is no question the gun in the Ft. Lincoln photograph has walnut grips and a darker, blued finish. Also, there is only one such gun showing, leading me to surmise that Custer, in fact, only had one RIC.
As both Smith & Wessons are displayed and there appear to be empty slots in the rack this supposition would appear to be confirmed. It was very unusual to see double-cased British cartridge revolvers at this period. Of course there is always another explanation; that being the whole Berkeley Paget thing was something of a red herring and Custer either purchased the Webley himself, or it was given to him by someone else. Just because a gun was made in England, doesn’t necessarily mean it had to come from an Englishman. British firearms of all types had been actively marketed in the States for decades prior to the 1870s.

Custer and Libby at Ft. Lincoln. Gun rack mentioned at the far right of the picture.

The Royal Irish Constabulary revolver, built by Birmingham, England gunmaker Philip Webley, took its name from the force that adopted it in 1868. This solid-frame double-action at one time or another was chambered in such calibers as .430, .442, .450, .476 and .44-40, among others. While the military version of the gun had a four-inch barrel, over its long career the gun was also made in short barreled “Bulldog” versions. “Bulldog” by the way is a British term going back at least to the latter part of the 18^th century and along with “barker” and “snapper” was slang for a short-barreled, large caliber pistol.
Due to the date of presentation and/or the Ft. Lincoln photograph, there can be little doubt that Custer’s RIC would have been a First Model, recognizable by forward locking notches on the cylinder. The caliber would unquestionably have been .442, for even though the British military had adopted the .450 round in 1868, this chambering was not offered in the RIC at the time of the surmised Berkeley Paget gifting.
After the battle Lt. Edward Godfrey, of K Company, 7^th Cavalry, noted that during the expedition Custer was carrying “two Bulldog self-cocking, English white handled pistols with a ring in the butt for a lanyard.” As we have determined, Custer’s RIC was blued with walnut grips and no lanyard ring, so it’s possible that Godfrey might have confused the Webley with the Smith & Wessons which were plated and had pearl grips, though they didn’t have lanyard rings either, and to be fair he did describe Custer’s other gear pretty accurately.
Too, the fact all of the guns seen in the gun rack are currently accounted, for with the exception of the Webley, adds more strong evidence to the assumption the RIC was the gun Custer probably had with him at Greasy Grass.
To date, no .442 cartridge cases have been found on the battlefield, but as things were getting pretty hot and heavy as the Indians approached the troopers at handgun range there’s a good chance that Custer might not have had time to fire off more than a cylinder-full of bullets. This means that the empty cases could have still been in the gun when it was taken from the commander’s dead body by one of Sitting Bull’s best. Of course, there is also the very real possibility that he never even drew his revolver and used only his .50-70 Remington rifle. There is also the excellent chance he simply had a Colt SAA.
In any event, it is a mystery that will never be completely solved. The chances of the gun turning up with decent provenance after all these years are virtually nil. Unearthing of spent .442 cases on the battlefield would certainly lend more veracity to Godfrey’s claims but as the round, while uncommon, was not unknown in the West at the time there is no way of conclusively proving they came from a revolver actually fired by Custer.
What do you think?


Read more: http://www.gunsandammo.com/2011/10/03/what-was-custers-last-gun/#ixzz2DpthcOKR

Immigrants , under aged, bad health, little oral hygiene , bad teeth, beyond their endurance, hardly any Americans
 bad bones, aged beyond their years as they rode into the battle of the valley of death.

Custer and the 7th cavalry were demolished by Dakota fighting tacticsGeneral Crook was also defeated at the Battle of Rosebud days prior to the Little Bighorn. The U.S Cavalry fought in skirmish lines just as they did during the Civil War. Who in their right mind fights like that?…The Dakota were masters at prairie battle tactics and used camoflage. Read the officers accounts of the Battle of the Rosebud. The U.S officers had no idea how fight against the Dakotas.charbens more like real 7th cavalry with a bit of conversion
 They relied on Crow scouts to reveal tactics and positions.
Your average image of the Dakota warrior is based on hollywood movies. The U.S never defeated the Dakota in battle.The plains indian fought up close and kept his friends close but his enemy even closer. Lakota and Cheyenne warriors were generally quick killers and didn't go in for a lot of torture, though they certainly mutilated the dead afterwards. When Fanny Kelly was captured by the Lakota in 1864, they dragged her off into a teepee — and made them teach her how to read. She appears never to have been raped and when she owned a house in Washington she invited any Lakota who showed up with his wife to stay over. Perhaps the greatest myth of the American West is that Indians were "savages" who did all sorts of terrible things without the slightest provocation. This is mostly  hokum , they did leave women on the savvanah with tendons cut and they did burn people alive but it seems they were not much into rape as they had all the sex they could handle with their women.
. Their most frequent initial response to white people was curiosity, sometimes followed by hospitality. Even when wars were in progress, Catholic priests and Quakers could circulate among the Plains tribes without fear because they were holy men who presented no threat. Once Episcopal Bishop Henry Whipple, visiting Lakota friends, got up on a cold night to bring his saddle into the teepee to prevent theft. "You didn't have to do that," his Lakota host told him. "You're the only white man around for 50 miles…."


Jamming? Perhaps. Richard Fox 'dig' in the 80's indicated near normal 'jammed case' of those recovered.
If a .50 was the standard issue in 1874, then the G-4 of the Dept of Dakota order many hundred of thousand/rounds of the wrong .45-55 cartridges. Infantry would have also been given the incorrect 45-70 for their '.50 rifle if so issued.
Uncle Sam chapter of the James Donovan/A Terrible Glory. G-4 wins wars, G3 submitted to S3 tenacity wins battles. Virtually every level of command committed mighty errors of decision, from the President down.
There a white man among the Sioux and Cheyenne at the Battle of the Little BighornThis is a question that first arose during the battle because Americans like Peter Thompson, John Ryan, William O. Taylor and an anonymous wounded survivor heard bugle calls coming from the Indian side. Kill Eagle and John Stands In Timber said the buglers were Indians, and they probably were, but the question of whether a white man was among the Indians on June 25, 1876 remains.
Asked directly in September 1876 if there was a white among the Indians that day, Blackfeet Sioux war chief Kill Eagle replied, "There were no white men in the fight or on the field. One who had been with them went to Standing Rock Agency." Quized again one month later if their was a "Spaniard" with the Indians, Kill Eagle said, "There was once a white man in camp, but he went to Spotted Tail's [Agency] before the fight."
Oglala Sioux war chief He Dog said he "did not see any white man among Sioux." But then He Dog added significantly, "In my camp there was a Canadian half breed who spoke very good English as well as Sioux." From He Dog's testimony, it appears that this individual was present on June 25, 1876.Unreconstituted Confederate mercinary Frank Huston said, "I was a squaw man, yes; but I was not present at the Little Big Horn. I was 50 miles away headed thereto. But O -- how I would have liked to have been there! Yet as a matter of fact, there were white men there; not with the Sioux, but with other nations present. Put yourself in their place. Would you, then or now, acknowledge it?" Huston provided no details to support his assertion.
The main eye-witness evidence that there may have been one or more white man fighting on the Indian side at the Battle of the Little Bighorn comes from the accounts of survivors Peter Thompson and August De Voto, and an Anonymous Sixth Infantry Sergeant who was an eye-witness to the condition of the battlefield immediately afterwards.
Thompson provides the strongest testimony. He said he and fellow Seventh Cavalry straggler James Watson were fleeing some Sioux on the banks of the Little Bighorn when they encountered a white man and an Indian whom they at first took for friends -- until the pair dismounted, "threw their guns across their saddles" and fired at them, sending Thompson and Watson fleeing.
After the battle, August De Voto said, "we went over the ground where the Indian camp had been. There were two tepees left standing full of dead Indians. As we rode past I looked in. They were piled up like cordwood. One of them looked to me very much like a white man. I could not see his face, but his legs looked white. I had no chance to go in and make a close investigation."
Other Seventh cavalry survivors made similar statements. In a 1904 interview with Walter Mason Camp, John Martin said he saw the corpse of a white man in the village after the battle, and Camp's comments indicate Daniel Kanipe also told Camp that he saw a dead white man in the village after the battle.
An Anonymous Sixth Infantry Sergeant added, "One of the Indians that was shot by [Major Marcus] Reno's men attracted peculiar attention, and upon going up to him he was found masked, and upon removing the mask the features of a white man were disclosed, with a long, gray, patriarchial beard."
So who knows? Maybe there was one or more white men fighting on the Sioux and Cheyenne side, but the next question is, "did it matter?" and the answer is, "no, it didn't matter." As Short Bull observed of Crazy Horse as he turned from Reno to flank Custer's decapitated command, the Sioux and Cheyenne had their "business well in hand" that day. The last Seventh Cavalry survivor to leave Custer's command was Peter Thompson (also the last man to see Custer alive). Thompson 's exhausted horse "entirely played out" part way down Medicine Tail Coulee, and he was left behind when his comrades charged on to attack the huge Indian village on the other side of the Little Bighorn with Custer in the lead.
There is no evidence that any American got away and lived after this, although Seventh Cavalry survivor Edward Godfrey raised the possiblility in his 1892 Century article when he spoke of the carcass of an apparent Seventh Cavalry horse that had been shot in the head that the Americans found near the mouth of the Rosebud a few weeks after the battle.
"At the time of the discovery we conjectured that some man had escaped, and on reaching the river had killed his horse for meat and used the saddle straps to tie together a raft," wrote Godfrey.
In truth, many seem to have tried, but no one made it, as noted by Two Moon, Wooden Leg, He Dog, Foolish Elk, Flying Hawk and others.
There was also an American trooper who took his clothes off and dove in the river to hide there. The Sioux watched him breathing through his nose for a long time and then shot him dead. Another American played possom among the dead on the battlefield until after the battle when a squaw stripped him and started to hack up his supposed corpse, at which point he jumped up and ran around naked until he was killed.
Based on the eye-witness record, it is impossible to say that any of Custer's men got away and lived, but there is evidence that one or more may have gotten away, and perished from their wounds before they could reach safety.
Three or four weeks after the Battle of the Little Bighorn, some of General George Crook's troops found the remains of an American cavalry trooper "a few days journey from Custer's hill" who was identified by some as Nathan Short, a trooper with Custer on June 25, 1876.
Daniel Kanipe, who carried Custer's last order to McDougall, said, "How I came to know it was Short of my company was that he had his stuff numbered 50, and General Crook reported that the man's number was 50. He was with the company [Custer's command] when I left it, on Reno's hill."
However, there is some disagreement on how Short marked his gear (with the number 50 or the number 7), and the condition of the remains suggested they had been there longer than a month.
Sioux warrior Lights also spoke of a wounded American soldier whose corpse was found some distance from the battlefield several days after the battle. He had apparently been subsisting on frogs. The Sioux deduced this from the fact that the dead man's pockets were filled with frogs.
The original Springfield Rifle adopted by the army was not .45 caliber. It was a .50. Also the ammunition issued for the .45 jammed notoriously and was a factor in the battle. you might want to check these facts out to your satisfaction and posting improvementt may be that the Battle of the Little Bighorn is the most written about subject in American history. For more than 120 years, people have speculated about how Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer and five companies of the 7th Cavalry were overwhelmed in southeastern Montana Territory by a combined force of Lakota and Cheyenne Indians on June 25, 1876. Yet, the controversy does not appear any closer to resolution today.
A number of reasons have been given for the defeat: Custer disobeyed orders, disregarded the warnings of his scouts, violated the principles of warfare by dividing his command, was ambushed or was the victim of a conspiracy; internal regimental jealousies caused the defeat; the regiment was too tired to fight; there were too many raw recruits or too many Indians; the Indians had better weapons; or the Army had defective guns. Most of the conjectures are moot, for they can be debated endlessly–with intellectual and emotional biases interfering with reasoned arguments. Given the nature of the evidence, however, one should be able to study the role the weapons played in the battle's outcome with a modicum of objectivity.
During the battle, the 7th Cavalry troopers were armed with the Springfield carbine Model 1873 and the Colt Single Action Army revolver Model 1873. Selection of the weapons was the result of much trial and error, plus official testing during 1871­73. The Ordnance Department staged field trials of 89 rifles and carbines, which included entries from Peabody, Spencer, Freeman, Elliot and Mauser. There were four primary contenders: the Ward-Burton bolt-action rifle; the Remington rolling-block; the 'trapdoor' Springfield; and the Sharps, with its vertically sliding breechblock.
Although repeating rifles such as the Spencer, Winchester and Henry had been available, particularly in the post-Civil War years, the Ordnance Department decided to use a single-shot system. It was selected instead of a repeating system because of manufacturing economy, ruggedness, reliability, efficient use of ammunition and similarity to European weapons systems. Ironically, the board of officers involved in the final selection included Major Marcus A. Reno, who would survive the 7th Cavalry's 1876 debacle on the Little Bighorn.
The guns were all tested for defective cartridges, endurance, accuracy, rapidity of fire, firing with excessive charges, and effects of dust and rust. The Springfield was the winner. The Model 1873 carried by the 7th Cavalry was a carbine that weighed 7 pounds and had an overall length of 41 inches. It used a .45-caliber copper-cased cartridge, a 405-grain bullet and a charge of 55 grains of black powder. The best effective range for this carbine was under 300 yards, but significant hits still could be scored out to 600 yards. A bullet was driven out of the muzzle at a velocity of about 1,200 feet per second, with 1,650 foot-pounds of energy. The trapdoor Springfield could hurl a slug more than 1,000 yards and, with proper training, could be fired with accuracy 12 to 15 times per minute.
The Colt Single Action Army revolver was chosen over other Colts, Remingtons and Starrs. By 1871, the percussion cap models were being converted for use with metallic cartridges. Ordnance testing in 1874 narrowed the field to two final contenders: the Colt Single Action Army and the Smith & Wesson Schofield. The Schofield won only in speed of ejecting empty cartridges. The Colt won in firing, sanding and rust trials and had fewer, simpler and stronger parts. The Model 'P' had a barrel of 7.5 inches and fired six .45-caliber metallic cartridges with 28 grains of black powder. It had a muzzle velocity of 810 feet per second, with 400 foot-pounds of energy. Its effective range dropped off rapidly over 60 yards, however. The standard U.S. issue of the period had a blue finish, case-hardened hammer and frame, and walnut grips. The Colt became ubiquitous on the frontier. To the soldier it was a 'thumb-buster,' to the lawman a 'peacemaker' or 'equalizer,' and to the civilian a 'hog leg' or 'plow-handle.' The revolver was so strong and dependable that, with minor modifications, it was still being produced by the Colt Company into the 1980s.
Overall, the soldiers were pleased with their weapons. Lieutenant James Calhoun of Company L wrote in his diary on July 1, 1874: 'The new Springfield arms and ammunition were issued to the command today. They seem to give great satisfaction.' Although most of the men drew the standard-issue weapons, it was their prerogative to purchase their own arms. George Custer carried a Remington .50-caliber sporting rifle with octagonal barrel and two revolvers that were not standard issue–possibly Webley British Bulldog, double-action, white-handled revolvers. Captain Thomas A. French of Company M carried a .50-caliber Springfield that his men called 'Long Tom.' Sergeant John Ryan, also of Company M, used a .45-caliber, 15-pound Sharps telescopic rifle, specially made for him. Private Henry A. Bailey of Company I had a preference for a Dexter Smith, breechloading, single-barreled shotgun.
It is well-known that Custer's men each brought a trapdoor Springfield and a Colt .45 to the Little Bighorn that June day in 1876. Identification of the Indian weapons is more uncertain. Participants claimed to have gone into battle with a plethora of arms–bows and arrows, ancient muzzleloaders, breechloaders and the latest repeating arms. Bows and arrows played a part in the fight. Some warriors said they lofted high-trajectory arrows to fall among the troopers while remaining hidden behind hill and vale. The dead soldiers found pincushioned with arrows, however, were undoubtedly riddled at close range after they were already dead or badly wounded. The long range at which most of the fighting occurred did not allow the bow and arrow a prominent role.
Not until archaeological investigations were conducted on the battlefield during the 1980s did the extent to which the Indians used gunpowder weapons come to light. Modern firearm identification analysis revealed that the Indians had spoken the truth about the variety and number of weapons they carried. The Cheyenne warrior Wooden Leg went into battle with what he called a'six-shooter' and later captured a Springfield carbine and 40 rounds of ammunition. The Miniconjou One Bull, Sitting Bull's nephew, owned an old muzzleloader. The Hunkpapa Iron Hawk and the Cheyenne Big Beaver had only bows and arrows. Eagle Elk, an Oglala, started the battle with a Winchester. White Cow Bull, an Oglala, also claimed to have a repeater.
There were 2,361 cartridges, cases and bullets recovered from the entire battlefield, which reportedly came from 45 different firearms types (including the Army Springfields and Colts, of course) and represented at least 371 individual guns. The evidence indicated that the Indians used Sharps, Smith & Wessons, Evans, Henrys, Winchesters, Remingtons, Ballards, Maynards, Starrs, Spencers, Enfields and Forehand & Wadworths, as well as Colts and Springfields of other calibers. There was evidence of 69 individual Army Springfields on Custer's Field (the square-mile section where Custer's five companies died), but there was also evidence of 62 Indian .44-caliber Henry repeaters and 27 Sharps .50-caliber weapons. In all, on Custer's Field there was evidence of at least 134 Indian firearms versus 81 for the soldiers. It appears that the Army was outgunned as well as outnumbered.
Survivors of the remaining seven companies of the 7th Cavalry asserted that the Indians were equipped with repeating rifles and mentioned Winchesters as often as not. Major Marcus Reno claimed: 'The Indians had Winchester rifles and the column made a large target for them and they were pumping bullets into it.' Although some white survivors claimed to be heavily outgunned, Private Charles Windolph of Company H was probably closest to the truth when he estimated that half the warriors carried bows and arrows, one-quarter of them carried a variety of old muzzleloaders and single-shot rifles, and one-quarter carried modern repeaters.
The Winchester, in fact, was almost a duplicate of the repeater developed by B. Tyler Henry, who was to become superintendent at Oliver Winchester's New Haven Arms Company. The success of Henry's rifles ensured Winchester's success, and the primary weapon carried by the Indians at the Little Bighorn was either Henry's model or the slightly altered Winchester Model 1866. Both fired a .44-caliber Henry rimfire cartridge. The Henry used a 216-grain bullet with 25 grains of powder, while the Winchester used a 200-grain bullet with 28 grains of powder. Velocity was 1,125 feet per second, with 570 foot-pounds of energy. Cartridges were inserted directly into the front of the Henry magazine, while the Winchester 1866 had a spring cover on the right side of the receiver. The carbine and the rifle had a capacity of 13 and 17 cartridges respectively.
Even though the board selected the Springfield as the top single-shot weapon, the Indians' arms fared nearly as well in subsequent tests. The Springfields recorded 100 percent accuracy at 100 yards, but so did the Winchesters, Henrys, Sharps, Spencers and various muzzleloaders. At 300 yards, the Springfield .45-55 carbine's accuracy dropped to 75 percent, while the repeaters fell to about 40 percent. Weapons such as the Springfield .50-70 rifle and the Sharps .45-70 rifle, however, still produced 100 percent accuracy at 300 yards. At 600 yards, both Springfields could still hit the mark 32 percent of the time, while the Winchesters and Henrys were almost useless at ranges over 300 yards.
In effect, all of these weapons fared equally well at short ranges. The Army's Springfields had an accuracy advantage over the Indians' repeaters at medium ranges (200­500 yards), plus they were more rugged and durable. The long-range weapons the Indians had were too few (there is evidence of only one Sharps .45-70 at the battle) to make much of a difference. Their preponderance of repeaters increased the Indians' firepower, but the repeaters were only good at short ranges. And the Indian narratives tell a story of a battle that, until the last desperate moments, was fought generally from long range (more than 500 yards)–a dubious advantage to the cavalrymen, since the relatively slow muzzle velocity of their Springfields meant a high trajectory that made chances of hitting anything slim.
Overall, the pluses and minuses probably canceled each other out. It has been said that the 7th Cavalry might have won had it still used the seven-shot Spencers it carried at the Washita battle in 1868, but the Spencers were no better in range or accuracy than the Henrys or Winchesters, and they carried fewer bullets. The contention that the Springfields suffered from a significant number of extractor failures was not borne out. Only about 2 percent of the recovered specimens showed evidence of extractor problems. Custer has been criticized for not taking along a battery of Gatling guns, but General Nelson A. Miles commented on their usefulness: 'I am not surprised that poor Custer declined' taking them along, he said. 'They are worthless for Indian fighting.' Equipping the cavalry with another type of weapon probably would not have made much of a difference at the Little Bighorn.
What, then, was the reason that the soldiers made such a poor showing during the West's most famous Army-Indian battle? While Custer's immediate command of 210 men was wiped out and more than 250 troopers and scouts were killed in the fighting on June 25-26, the Indians lost only about 40 or 50 men. The explanation appears to lie in the fact that weapons are no better than the men who use them. Marksmanship training in the frontier Army prior to the 1880s was almost nil. An Army officer recalled the 1870s with nostalgia. 'Those were the good old days,' he said. 'Target practice was practically unknown.' A penurious government allowed only about 20 rounds per year for training–a situation altered only because of the Custer disaster. And the 20 rounds of ammunition often were expended in firing at passing game rather than in sharpshooting. The 7th Cavalry was not hampered by new recruits, for only about 12 percent of the force could be considered raw. What handicapped the entire regiment, however, was inadequate training in marksmanship and fire discipline.
It is a perplexing incongruity in a citizen-soldier army, but the vast majority of soldiers, when the time comes to kill, become conscientious objectors. It has been asserted that man is essentially a killer at heart, yet recent studies have found evidence quite to the contrary. Men, soldiers or not, simply have an innate resistance to killing. It is fairly well-established that when faced with danger, a man will usually respond by fight or flight. New studies, however, have argued that there are two other likely possibilities: posture or submit.
It is the posturing that has increased with the introduction of firearms to the battlefield. It is almost impossible for a man to shirk battle when at arm's length from an enemy wielding sword or pike, but it is easier to remain aloof at rifle range. One has other options besides immediate fight or flight. The Rebel yell or the Union 'hurrah,' for example, were simply means to bolster one's courage while trying to frighten the enemy. The loud crack of the rifle also served the same purpose, filling a deep-seated need to posture–i.e., to put on a good show and scare the enemy, yet still leave the shooter far away from a hand-to-hand death struggle. In reality, those good shows were often harmless, with the rifleman firing over the heads of the enemy.
Firing high has always been a problem, and it apparently does not stem solely from inadequate training. Soldiers and military historians from Ardant du Picq to Paddy Griffith and John Keegan have commented on the phenomenon. In Civil War battles, 200 to 1,000 men might stand, blasting away at the opposing lines at 30 to 50 yards distance, and only hit one or two men per minute. Commanders constantly admonished their troops to aim low and give the enemy a blizzard at his shins. Regardless, the men continued to fire high–sometimes intentionally, sometimes without consciously knowing what they were doing.
In Vietnam, it was estimated that some firefights had 50,000 bullets fired for each soldier killed. In the Battle of the Rosebud, eight days before the Little Bighorn fight, General George Crook's forces fired about 25,000 rounds and may have caused about 100 Indian casualties–about one hit for every 250 shots. One of the best showings ever made by soldiers was at Rorke's Drift in an 1879 battle between the Zulus and the British infantry. There, surrounded, barricaded soldiers delivered volley after volley into dense masses of charging natives at point-blank range where it seemed that no shot could miss. The result: one hit for every 13 shots.
Indeed, it was at times even difficult to get soldiers to fire at all. After the Battle of Gettysburg, 24,000 loaded muskets were recovered; only 12,000 of them had been loaded more than once, 6,000 had from three to 10 rounds in the barrel, and one weapon had been loaded 23 times! One conclusion is that a great number of soldiers are simply posturing and not trying to kill the enemy.
At the Little Bighorn, about 42,000 rounds were either expended or lost. At that rate, the soldiers hit one Indian for about every 840 shots. Since much of the ammunition was probably lost–Indians commented on capturing ammunition in cartridge belts and saddlebags–the hit rate must have been higher. Yet the results do not speak highly of a supposedly highly trained, 'crack' cavalry regiment.
High fire very plainly took place at the Little Bighorn, most notably on Reno's skirmish line in the valley. Troopers went into battle with 100 rounds of Springfield ammunition and 24 rounds of Colt ammunition. About 100 troopers on Reno's line may have fired half of their ammunition toward the southern edge of the Indian village. The 5,000 bullets only hit one or two Indians, but they certainly damaged the lodges. A Hunkpapa woman, Moving Robe, claimed 'the bullets shattered the tepee poles,' and another Hunkpapa woman, Pretty White Buffalo, stated that 'through the tepee poles their bullets rattled.' The relatively low muzzle velocity of the Springfield meant that the soldier would have had to aim quite a bit over the head of an Indian for any chance to hit him at long distance. If the officers called for the sights to be set for 500 yards to hit Indians issuing from the village–and did not call for a subsequent sight adjustment–by the time the Indians approached to 300 yards, the bullets would be flying 12 feet over their heads. As a comparison, the modern M-16 round, traveling at 3,250 feet per second, has an almost flat trajectory, and the bullet will hit where it is aimed with very little sight adjustment.
The soldiers' difficulty in hitting their targets was also increased by the fact that the Indians stayed out of harm's way for almost all of the battle. One archaeological field study located the Indian positions and discovered that nearly every location was 300 to 1,200 yards away from the troopers. Given the distances involved, the fact that soldiers tended to shoot high, the lack of marksmanship training and the conscious or subconscious posturing involved, it is not surprising that the troopers scored so few hits.
Arguably, posturing has been a factor at every gunpowder battle, as it most likely was at the Little Bighorn–but how about submission? It was drummed into the common soldier that he should save the last bullet for himself. He supposedly would place his Colt to his head, pull the trigger and go to Fiddler's Green, rather than take the chance of being captured alive. Custer had even requested that his wife, Elizabeth, who often rode with the cavalry, should be shot by an officer rather than chance being taken by the Indians. As strange as it may seem, even with this dread of being captured, surrender attempts were made at the Little Bighorn fight. Indian accounts tell of white men who, at the last second, threw their hands up in surrender and offered their guns to the onrushing warriors. The Lakotas and Cheyennes were not swayed.
Given all these factors operating against the citizen-soldier, how could commanders ever go into battle expecting to win? The answer, again, lies not in the weapons the soldiers used, but in the soldiers themselves–and their officers.
Dividing up a command in the near presence of an enemy may be an act to be avoided during large-scale maneuvers with army-sized units, but such is not the case during small-scale tactical cavalry maneuvers. Custer adhered to the principles for a successful engagement with a small, guerrilla-type, mobile enemy. Proven tactics called for individual initiative, mobility, maintaining the offensive, acting without delay, playing not for safety but to win, and fighting whenever the opportunity arose. It was accepted that Regular soldiers would never shirk an encounter even with a superior irregular force of enemies, and that division of force for an enveloping attack combined with a frontal assault was a preferable tactic. On a small scale, and up to a certain point, Custer did almost everything he needed to do to succeed.
Problems arose, however, when tactics broke down from midlevel and small-scale, to micro-scale. According to then Brevet Major Edward S. Godfrey, fire discipline–the ability to control and direct deliberate, accurate, aimed fire–will decide every battle. No attack force, however strong, could reach a defensive line of steady soldiers putting out disciplined fire. The British army knew such was the case, as did Napoleon. Two irregular warriors could probably defeat three soldiers. However, 1,000 soldiers could probably beat 2,000 irregulars. The deciding factor was strength in unity–fire discipline. It was as Major Godfrey said: 'Fire is everything, the rest is nothing.'
Theoretically, on the Little Bighorn, with a small-scale defense in suitable terrain with an open field of fire of a few hundred yards, several companies of cavalrymen in close proximity and under strict fire control could have easily held off two or three times their number of Indian warriors. In reality, on the Little Bighorn, several companies of cavalrymen who were not in close proximity and had little fire control, with a micro-scale defense in unsuitable, broken terrain, could not hold off two or three times their number of Indian warriors.
The breakdown stems from an attitude factor. Custer exhibited an arrogance, not necessarily of a personal nature, but rather as a part of his racial makeup. Racial experience may have influenced his reactions to the immediate situation of war. It was endemic in red vs. white modes of warfare and implies nothing derogatory to either side. Historically, Indians fled from large bodies of soldiers. It was Custer's experience that it was much harder to find and catch an Indian than to actually fight him. Naturally influenced by his successful past experiences with small-unit tactics, Custer attacked. He was on the offensive. He knew he must remain on the offensive to be successful. Even after Reno had been repulsed, Custer was maneuvering, looking for another opportunity to attack.
The positions that Custer's dead were found in did not indicate a strong defensive setup. Even after the Indians had taken away the initiative, Custer's mind-set was still on 'attack.' Although a rough, boxlike perimeter was formed, it appeared more a matter of circumstance than intent. Custer probably never realized that his men's very survival was on the line, at least notuntil it was too late to remedy the situation. The men were not in good defensible terrain. They were not within mutual supporting distance. They were not under the tight fire control of their officers. Custer's troopers were in detachments too small for a successful tactical stance. When the critical point was reached, the soldiers found themselves stretched beyond the physical and psychological limits of fight or posture–they had to flee or submit.
Seemingly out of supporting distance of his comrades, the individual trooper found himself desperately alone. The 'bunkie' was not close enough. The first sergeant was far away. The lieutenant was nowhere to be seen. The trooper responded as well as he could have been expected to. He held his ground and fought, he fired into the air like an automaton, he ran, he gave up. Some stands were made, particularly on and within a radius of a few hundred yards of the knoll that became known as Custer Hill, where almost all of the Indian casualties occurred. When it came down to one-on-one, warrior versus soldier, however, the warrior was the better fighter.
George Armstrong Custer may have done almost everything as prescribed. But it was not enough to overcome the combination of particular circumstances, some of his own making, arrayed against him that day. Inadequate training in marksmanship and poor fire discipline resulting from a breakdown in command control were major factors in the battle results. Neither Custer's weapons nor those the Indians used against him were the cause of his defeat.
 The event was romanticised as "Custer's Last Stand", but military analysts and historians soon cast doubt on this supposed hero's feats.

 
THE FLYNN FILM 
Custer, war hero and dandy
All the other cadets are dressed like normal 1857 folk, but Custer (Errol Flynn) turns up at West Point military academy dressed in a fur-trimmed jacket, a plumed hat, pirate-style knee boots, and some alarmingly tight trousers, accessorised with a regimental sword and a pack of hounds. He looks ready for the battlefield, if the battlefield were in France about 200 years earlier and fictional. "My, that's a dashing looking outfit," observes a fellow soldier, sarcastically. Custer misses the joke, and murmurs thoughtfully: "I must get myself a tiger skin as soon as possible." Flamboyant though he was, the film's implication that Custer arrived at West Point a privileged rich boy is completely wrong. He grew up in an ordinary working-class household and attended the academy on a scholarship.

The film's retelling of Custer's early adventures in the civil war is riddled with so many errors that there isn't enough space here to list them all. Dates are wrong, details of battles are fudged, events appear in the wrong order, Custer's career path is imaginatively fictionalised, and Winfield Scott has his term as commander-general extended by about five years so that Sydney Greenstreet gets a better role. After the war, Custer sinks into depression, acquiring a mullet and a drinking problem, both of which are refreshingly factual. Eventually, he is posted to the Dakota frontier. It turns out to be a land of ne'er-do-wells, hostile tribes and egregious historical inaccuracy.

Not smoking the peace pipe ...
Custer is shown trying to make peace with the Lakota Sioux nation. He is thwarted by an evil businessman, Ned Sharp, who announces that there is gold in the Black Hills and provokes a war. Sharp is fictional: the person who really announced that he had found gold in the Black Hills, causing a rush which violated the Treaty of Fort Laramie and started the Great Sioux war, was George Armstrong Custer

Read more: http://www.gunsandammo.com/2011/10/03/what-was-custers-last-gun/#ixzz2DpsqGSbr

.

An odd mixture of dubious movie Injun-speak and political correctness. Anthony Quinn, playing Crazy Horse, comes out with lines such as, "Crazy Horse war chief Sioux. My people want make peace." At the same time, Custer is cast, improbably, as a passionate defender of Native American rights. He tries to send an English soldier away from the last stand, saying that this is an American fight (again, improbably:
THE 7TH.
the 7th Cavalry contained a substantial proportion of Europeans). "The only real Americans in this merry old parish are on the other side of the hill with feathers in their hair," remarks the Englishman. "You're probably right about that," Custer replies, thoughtfully. Custer as a Lakota hero? This is a moment comparable to the awarding of the Nobel peace prize to Henry Kissinger, when Tom Lehrer commented that political satire would henceforth be obsolete.

Action-packed ... 

Read more: http://www.gunsandammo.com/2011/10/03/what-was-custers-last-gun/#ixzz2DpsqGSbr

For a good number of years there has been much speculation about what was Lt. Col George Armstrong Custer‘s last gun. As he and most of his command  were killed during the Battle of Little Big Horn, everything has to be put together from spotty evidence, innuendo and guesswork. Here’s my take on the matter.
There is extant, a revealing 1870s-vintage photograph (below) of Custer and his wife, Libby, sitting in their library at Ft. Abraham Lincoln on the Missouri River, Dakota Territory. In the far right corner is the Lt. Colonel’s gun rack. Four handguns can be seen—two Smith & Wesson No. 2s that had been presented to him by Major General J.B. Sutherland, a percussion revolver which is most likely either a Colt 1861 Navy or Remington New Model Army that was given to him by Remington, and what strongly appears to be a Webley Royal Irish Constabulary revolver (pictured above).
One tradition persists that British sportsman Lord Berkeley Paget presented George Custer with a solid-frame Webley First Model Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) revolver on a buffalo hunt in 1869. The British revolver in Custer’s gun rack follows the lines of the RIC much more closely than those of the Galand, which has a rather involved under-barrel extraction mechanism and slightly different grip than the Webley. Over the years, for reasons we will mention later, it has been supposed Custer had a pair of nickel-plated RICs with ivory grips–but there is no question the gun in the Ft. Lincoln photograph has walnut grips and a darker, blued finish. Also, there is only one such gun showing, leading me to surmise that Custer, in fact, only had one RIC.
As both Smith & Wessons are displayed and there appear to be empty slots in the rack this supposition would appear to be confirmed. It was very unusual to see double-cased British cartridge revolvers at this period. Of course there is always another explanation; that being the whole Berkeley Paget thing was something of a red herring and Custer either purchased the Webley himself, or it was given to him by someone else. Just because a gun was made in England, doesn’t necessarily mean it had to come from an Englishman. British firearms of all types had been actively marketed in the States for decades prior to the 1870s.


Read more: http://www.gunsandammo.com/2011/10/03/what-was-custers-last-gun/#ixzz2DpsqGSbr

the last stand by atlantic in 54mm

the legion , the early years

France's experience in Africa was conditioned by two things. First, France had a longstanding interest in the region bordering the Mediterranean Sea thanks to its own coast line between Italy and Spain, its active role in the Crusades and its incorporation into the Roman Empire. Second, France lost most of its original overseas empire in the Seven Years War (1756-1763) and the Napoleonic Wars (1790s-1815) and it suffered a major setback in its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871). Thus, French imperialism was an effort to regain lost power rather than a continuation of previous successes, and its African empire grew out of developments along the North African coast.
The French first occupied African soil in Algeria in 1830 while trying to reestablish their authority in the Mediterranean. Since 1684, when Louis XIV ordered the bombardment of Algiers in an effort to retrieve Christian slaves, to the reprisals launched after the Napoleonic Wars against cities along the "Barbary Coast" that supported pirates, the French viewed North Africa as a source of opposition. After peace was restored in 1815, the piracy stopped but relations remained very tense.
In 1828 Hussein, the Dey of Algiers, struck French consul Pierre Deval with his fly whisk. Deval reported it back to his king as an insult and two years later, Charles X used it as a pretext to invade Algiers. The invasion began on 5 July 1830 and the French quickly occupied the city. That ignited resistance in the Algerian interior and during two wars that were fought between 1832 and 1837, rural Berbers united behind Abd al-Qadir (alternate spelling: Abd el-Kader) to oppose the French.
After a third war against al-Qadir's forces failed to defeat him in 1840-1841, the French began to use terror tactics that included the destruction of wells and crops. On two occasions, French military forces pursued al-Qadir into land claimed by Morocco--an independent country--and finally captured him in 1847.
 To quiet Moroccan protests, France signed the Treaty of Tangier on September 10, 1844 which provided French recognition of Moroccan independence and promises not to invade Morocco again.

WW1 French Colonial Marine/Foreign Legion Tunic
Berber uprisings continued in central Algeria until 1873 when the French occupied the strategically-located oasis of El Golea, 540 miles south of Algiers. Resistance continued deeper in the desert and in 1880-1881, the nomadic Tuaregs wiped out an expedition led by the French Colonel Paul Flatters as it tried to survey a railroad route acress the Sahara Desert. Resistance continued in the desert until 1932 when the use of airplanes, radios and trucks made it possible to locate and pursue nomads. [NOTE: Resistance by desert dwellers against outsiders flared up occasionally after that, and led to guerilla warfare against the independent governments of Algeria, Mali, Mauritania and Niger as recently as 2003.]
The first French initiative south of the Sahara took place along the Senegalese coast in 1843 under the leadership of Governor General Bouet Willaumez. He initiated a period of expansion by capturing the port of St. Louis at the mouth of the Senegal River and allowing privately-owned trading companies (mostly from Bordeaux) to handle the administration of the town. That ended in 1848 when the new French government of the Second Republic took over the local administration.
Imperial France gradually absorbed the territories of present-day Mauritania from the Senegal river area and upwards, starting in the late 19th century. In 1901, Xavier Coppolani took charge of the imperial mission. Through a combination of strategic alliances with Zawiya tribes, and military pressure on the Hassane warrior nomads, he managed to extend French rule over the Mauritanian emirates: Trarza, Brakna and Tagant quickly submitted to treaties with the colonial power. these are hat zouves but the trousers are more that of early french foreign legion, just change the headgear to a kepi. (1903–04), but the northern emirate of Adrar held out longer, aided by the anticolonial rebellion (or jihad) of shaykh Maa al-Aynayn. It was finally defeated militarily in 1912, and incorporated into the territory of Mauritania, which had been drawn up in 1904. Mauritania would subsequently form part of French West Africa, from 1920.
French rule brought legal prohibitions against slavery, and an end to interclan warfare. During the colonial period, the population remained nomadic, but many sedentary peoples, whose ancestors had been expelled centuries earlier, began to trickle back into Mauritania. As the country gained independence in 1960, the capital city Nouakchott was founded at the site of a small colonial village, the Ksar, while 90% of the population was still nomadic.
The great Sahel droughts of the early 1970s caused massive problems in Mauritania. With independence, larger numbers of indigenous Sub-Saharan African peoples (Haalpulaar, Soninke, and Wolof) entered

After the Second Republic gave way to the Second Empire in 1852, French expansion in Senegal resumed during the administration of Governor Louis Faidherbe, a military officer. From 1854 to 1863, he directed a series of expeditions that established a line of French forts along the lower Senegal River as far east as Médine. During the same period, the French government took complete control over the local administration of the port city of St. Louis from the Bordeaux merchant firms. TtHE ABOVE IS MY OWN CRESCENT CONVERSION OF THEIR 54MM FIGURE Alfred-Amédée Dodds (6 February 1842 - 18 July 1922) was a French General, commander of French forces in Sénégal from 1890, commander of French forces in the second expeditionary force to suppress The Boxer Rebellion, and commander of French forces during the Second Franco-Dahomean War. As both an octoroon and a metis, he was famed in the African Diaspora at the beginning of the Twentieth century as an example of African leadership, despite the fact that he led the destruction of one of West Africa's most powerful pre-colonial states. The African diaspora was the movement of Africans and their descendants to places throughout the world—predominantly to the Americas also to Europe, the Middle East and other places around the globe. The term has been historically applied in particular to the descendants of the Africans who were enslaved and shipped to the Americas by way of the Atlantic slave trade, with the largest population in Brazil (see Afro-Brazilian). In modern times, it is also applied to Africans who have emigrated from the continent in order to seek education, employment and better living for themselves and their children. People from Sub-Saharan Africa, including many Africans, number at least 800 million in Africa and over 140 million in the Western Hemisphere, representing around 14% of the world's population. It is believed that this diaspora has the potential to revitalize Africa. Primarily, many academics, NGOs, and websites such as Social Entrepreneurs of the African Diaspora view social entrepreneurship as a tool to be used by the African diaspora to improve themselves and their ancestral continent. the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) interrupted French exploration by producing a budget crisis after France lost and was forced to pay Germany for the costs of the war. French exploration resumed in 1875 when a naval officer, Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, began to lead the first of three expeditions intended to find a route to the Congo River. The main dispute among Europeans was over navigation and commercial rights in the Congo River basin. The first Europeans to claim the area were the Portuguese who explored the mouth of the river in the 15th century. Although the Upper Congo River was navigable for hundreds of miles, a series of waterfalls made it impossible for ships to reach the upper part of the river directly from the Altantic Ocean. The Portuguese claims went unchallenged for several centuries until French naval officer Pierre-Paul-François de Brazza-Savorgnan (known simply as Savorgnan de Brazza) began to explore the area. From 1875-1878, he followed the Ogoué River (located north of the Congo) upstream in search of an alternate route to the Upper Congo River that avoided Portuguese territory. Although he failed on his first attempts, he tried again in 1879-1882 and succeeded in reaching the Congo River by following the Ogoué River and proceeding overland to the Lefini River, a tributary of the Congo. During this expedition, he signed a treaty on September 10, 1880 with the chief of the Batéké people who lived on the north side of the Upper Congo River. The treaty granted France a protectorate over the Batéké land which included a stretch of the north bank of the Upper Congo River at Ntambo (known as Stanley Pool during the colonial period and Malebo Pool since independence). Before Savorgnan de Brazza left, he placed the new post under the command of a Senegalese sergeant named Malamine and two other Senegalese soldiers, then returned to the coast by following along the Congo itself. Along the way, Savorgnan de Brazza met H. M. Stanley, who was leading an expedition from the Atlantic Coast to Ntambo on behalf of his employer, King Leopold of Belgium. Stanley was enraged to learn that the Frenchman had beaten him to the Upper Congo and when he arrived at Ntambo he tried to intimidate Malamine and his soldiers into leaving. The Senegalese refused to leave and in 1883, Savorgnan de Brazza returned with a larger force to organize the colony that became the French Congo. The British had no direct claim on the Congo basin, nor did they have any particular need for one. Their empire was based in Asia and their African interests were solely intended to safeguard communication with India. On the other hand, the British had close relations with the Portuguese, so they acquired commercial rights in their colonies in exchange for protecting the Portuguese claims against encroachment by other Europeans. On February 26, 1884 Britain and Portugal signed a treaty that reserved navigation rights on the Congo River to Britain alone, in exchange for Britain's support for Portuguese control of the mouth of the river. The treaty angered all of the other major European powers, and in particular, prevented the French from taking advantage of Savorgnan de Brazza's treaties. Although international protest forced the Portuguese and British to abandon their treaty on June 26, the issue remained unresolved. It became one of the reasons to call the Congress of Berlin.  Savorgnan de Brazza's efforts resulted in the French claiming land along the right bank of the Upper Congo River (as seen from a boat headed downstream) from Lake Chad to the mouth of the Congo.

The French post at Bakel on the Senegal River in 1887. Source: Joseph Gallieni, Deux campagnes au Soudan Francais

SOUDAN

The "French Soudan" or "Western Sudan" should not be confused with the modern country of Sudan, or with the colony that was known as "Anglo-Egyptian Sudan" during most of the 20th century. Although similar in climate and latitude, the British Sudan was located on the east side of Africa near the Nile River while the French Soudan was located west of Lake Chad. The French viewed the Soudan as the link between their holdings in Algeria and Senegal, as well as the gateway to the Congo via Lake Chad.
Consequently, the French exhausted an enormous amount of effort to claim it even though its economic value was small.
Prior to the 1850s, there was no French presence in the Soudan, although French explorer René Caillié passed through the area enroute to becoming the first European to return from Timbuktu in 1827-1828. In 1855 Faidherbe's troops began their advance towards the Upper Senegal River and built a fort at Médine, just below the Félou waterfall. Beyond that lay the empire of Ahmadu Tall with its capital at Ségou on the Niger River, and the empire of Samory Touré to the south east, with a capital at Sanankoro on the south side of the Niger River.
For a time, the French felt no need to formalize their presence, but as the British began to move inland from the mouth of the Niger River, the French began to fear that the British would seize the Middle Niger Valley and perhaps even reach the Upper Senegal Valley. That fear inspired a new episode of French aggression from 1876-1881 when Governor Brière de l'Isle authorized the construction of a railroad to the Niger and the creation of a military government of Haut Senegal et Niger (literally "Upper Senegal and Niger"), an area encompassing the modern states of Mali and Niger. [For more on this episode, see

The African empires offered resistance, so it took a decade for the French to conquer Ségou and almost twenty more years to defeat Samory. Resistance continued in the region around Lake Chad until 1900 and in the Sahara Desert until the 1930s. But by 1899, the French were able to place the Soudan under its own administration.   IVORY COAST The campaign against Samory Touré dragged on much longer than expected, and by 1887, the French began to send military expeditions north from the "Ivory Coast" in hopes of outflanking Samory. The Ivory Coast, located between the Gold Coast and Liberia, received its name from 16th century traders who knew it as a good source of "elephant teeth." French merchant firms operated long-established trading posts on the coast at Bassam and Assinie, but neither became particularly large or important due to the climate, which Europeans detested, and the lack of adequate port facilities.

Samory Touré, leader of the last major anti-French resistance in the western Sudan Source: Gallieni, Deux campagnes ...

After the Berlin Conference, the French government used Bassam and Assinie as bases from which to establish claims over as much of the interior as possible. In 1887, an expedition headed inland from Bassam along the Comoe River and in December 1888 at the interior trading town of Kong, it met up with a second detachment sent from the Soudan. In 1891, the French managed to send another column all of the way from the coast to the Soudan and in 1892, Colonel Gustave Binger, recently retired from the military, was named governor of the new colony of Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast). Third Anglo-Ashanti War   in 1894, they received help from newspaper correspondents who wrote unconfirmable accounts of African cruelty and barbaric acts. Since the only Europeans in a position to verify such reports were soldiers, the public never heard anyone defend African culture.

By the time the "Scramble for Africa" ended the French had more territory in West Africa than any other European nation. In addition to the places already discussed, the French acquired Tunisia in 1881, the territory surrounding the "three rivers" (French Guinea) in 1893, Morocco in 1911 and even part of German Kamerun (Cameroon) and all of Togo after World War I. But one last acquisition deserves special mention because of the attention it received in France--the conquest of Dahomey.
Dahomey was located between British Nigeria and German Togo along what Europeans called the "Slave Coast." French merchants began to trade there in the 17th century and in 1851, traders from Marseille signed a treaty of protection with King Guezo of Abomey which gave the French the right to build a permanent base on the coast at Ouidah. Another French trader named Daumas signed a similar treaty with King Sodji of Porto-Novo in 1863. Sodji's successor (Mekpu) tried to renounce the treaty with the French, but after he was defeated by a rival with French assistance in 1883, the French government became confident enough to make Porto Novo the capital of their possessions in the Gulf of Benin.
This was an affront to the kings of Abomey, who considered Porto Novo to be part of their realm. King Glegle of Abomey revoked his father's treaty in 1884 and the French sent a military expedition to restore their control. Glegle's death in 1889 placed his son Behanzin on the throne, and when Behanzin appeared likely to continue his father's opposition, the French responded by occupying Cotonou, a coastal village near the Abomey capital.
French newspapers helped drum up support for this effort with descriptions of human sacrifices that accompanied Behanzin's coronation. They also lavished attention on the troops who fought for the French including Foreign Legionnaires from Algeria and Tirailleurs (African troops in the French colonial army) from Senegal. The use of new technology such as the telegraph, repeating rifles, steam gunboats and machine guns also attracted interest, while reports of Dahomeyan "Amazons"-- military units composed entirely of women--titillated the French public's imagination.
The climax came in 1892 when an expedition led by a Senegalese mulatto, Colonel Alfred Amédée Dodds, marched from Ouidah to Abomey with four thousand soldiers. Following a series of battles in September and October, including several that pitted Legionnaires against Abomey's Amazons. the French reached the capital on November 17. King Behanzin had already fled, so the French amused themselves by collecting souvenirs including a white parasol decorated with human jawbones that received a great deal of attention from the press. Behanzin remained on the run until January 1894 when he was captured and exiled to Martinique. The French finished the campaign with 81 dead, 436 wounded and about 2,000 other casualties due to illness.
The 1892 French campaign in Dahomey affected European attitudes about Africa. It seemed to confirm that even a prosperous and well-organized state like Dahomey depended on practices--human sacrifice, women soldiers--that scandalized Victorian Europe. When the British launched the

Scholars debate the motivations that led to the Scramble for Africa and conclude that the French acted for different reasons than the British. The British motivation seems fairly clear-- first to safeguard their passage to India and secondly to profit from economic opportunities. French expansion, which led to the annexation of huge areas of unprofitable desert and jungle, was motivated by a more complex mixture of interests that included deliberate efforts on the part of soldiers, merchants, geographic societies and groups like the Comité de l'Afrique Française and Union coloniale française to promote the idea of empire.
Supporters of French expansion proposed both practical and idealistic goals. Practically speaking, French imperialists hoped to enhance the French economy to help pay the Prussian indemnity and to recover from the Great Depression of the 1870s. They also wanted to block British expansion in West Africa. On a more idealistic level, French imperialists envisioned the creation of a Greater French Empire that would promote what they considered to be the universal ideals of the Enlightenment. Coincidentally, such an empire was expected to extend and glorify French culture.
Philosophy professor Albert Memmi wrote in The Colonist and the Colonized (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1967) that the French had to have a grandiose concept of their own culture in order for expansion to succeed because the colonial system attracted only the most mediocre Europeans. Memmi argued that the colonizers were aware of their own mediocrity, so they bolstered their position with respect to colonized Africans by extolling the virtues of the French civilization. Coincidently, they viewed themselves as the best representatives of that civilization.
Writing about French politics in Jules Ferry and the Renaissance of French Imperialism, (London: King's Crown Press, 1944)., Thomas Power agreed with Memmi that the economic motive was secondary and argued that France's principle motivations were strategic and ideological. Power wrote that the economic arguments advanced by Jules Ferry to justify expansion, were created after the fact as a way to obtain financial support from the French legislature for projects that were already underway. [Power, 1944, 198.]
Once treaties were signed and French administration put in place, the French tried to convert Africans into citizens who understood the ideals of French civilization. To create citizens from uneducated Africans, the French employed a policy of assimilation which relied on white Frenchmen as teachers and models for African pupils whose object was to mimic French culture.
Not only did this serve the French government's need to demonstrate high moral purpose by "raising up the heathen," it also offered cost advantages. Africans who wanted to become French were not likely to revolt, so the French could do without expensive military garrisons to maintain order. Assimilated Africans also served in the lower levels of administration, saving the cost of bringing Europeans to Africa to fill their positions.
Viewed as an episode in French history, the conquest of Africa was a continuation of expansion of power that began under Louis XIII. In roughly three centuries, French governments extended their control from the Ile de France (surrounding Paris) to the North African coast. The conquest of West Africa was just the next step in this long process. From the perspective of other Europeans, France's expansion was seen as a form of opposition to Great Britain. The British felt threatened by it, the German prime miniser Bismarck encouraged it and the rest of the European nations tried to imitate it. 

crockett by jecsan

el durado

The lust for gold spans all eras, races, and nationalities. To possess any amount of gold seems to ignite an insatiable desire to obtain more.
Through the centuries, this passion gave rise to the enduring tale of a city of gold. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Europeans believed that somewhere in the New World there was a place of immense wealth known as El Dorado. Their searches for this treasure wasted countless lives, drove at least one man to suicide, and put another man under the executioner's ax.
"El Dorado shifted geographical locations until finally it simply meant a source of untold riches somewhere in the Americas," says Jim Griffith, a folklorist in Tucson, Arizona.
But this place of immeasurable riches hasn't been found.
The origins of El Dorado lie deep in South America. And like all enduring legends, the tale of El Dorado contains some scraps of truth. When Spanish explorers reached South America in the early 16th century, they heard stories about a tribe of natives high in the Andes mountains in what is now Colombia. When a new chieftain rose to power, his rule began with a ceremony at Lake Guatavita. Accounts of the ceremony vary, but they consistently say the new ruler was covered with gold dust, and that gold and precious jewels were thrown into the lake to appease a god that lived underwater.
The Spaniards started calling this golden chief El Dorado, "the gilded one." The ceremony of the gilded man supposedly ended in the late 15th century when El Dorado and his subjects were conquered by another tribe. But the Spaniards and other Europeans had found so much gold among the natives along the continent's northern coast that they believed there had to be a place of great wealth somewhere in the interior. The Spaniards didn't find El Dorado, but they did find Lake Guatavita and tried to drain it in 1545. They lowered its level enough to find hundreds of pieces of gold along the lake's edge. But the presumed fabulous treasure in the deeper water was beyond their reach.
Raleigh's Quest
English courtier Sir Walter Raleigh made two trips to Guiana to search for El Dorado. During his second trip in 1617, he sent his son, Watt Raleigh, with an expedition up the Orinoco River. But Walter Raleigh, then an old man, stayed behind at a base camp on the island of Trinidad. The expedition was a disaster, and Watt Raleigh was killed in a battle with Spaniards. Eric Klingelhofer, an archaeologist at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, says Walter Raleigh was furious at the survivor who informed him of Watt's death and accused the survivor of letting his son be killed. "The man goes into his cabin on the ship and kills himself," says Klingelhofer, who is trying to find the site of Raleigh's base camp on Trinidad.
Raleigh returned to England, where King James ordered him beheaded for, among other things, disobeying orders to avoid conflict with the Spanish.
The legend of El Dorado endures because "you want it to be true," says Jose Oliver, a lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology at University College London. "I don't think we've ever stopped seeking El Dorado."
So where is this lost city of gold? In his 1849 poem "El Dorado," writer Edgar Allan Poe offers an eerie and eloquent suggestion: "Over the Mountains of the Moon, down the Valley of the Shadow, ride, boldly ride…if you seek for El Dorado."

bersaglieri cane e atlantic

indian infantry by atlantic

reamsa spanish naps