Fire Removes WASHINGTON - A 1983 prairie fire has shed strong light on the still-controversial Battle of the Little Bighorn, where Lt. Gen. George Armstrong Custer and some 260 of his men made their historic last stand and lost their lives in 1876. The fire was “a blessing in disguise,” says archeologist Richard A. Fox Jr. The flames had laid bare the field of combat, named after a river in southeastern Montana. “Some of that land was impenetrable before the fire,” he says. For 110 years, Custer and his disastrous encounter with as many as 2,000 Sioux and Cheyenne warriors have held captive the imagination of the public. More has been said about the struggle than any other battle in American history except perhaps Get tysburg. Controversy Still Rages “Argument and speculation swirl about it, partly because Custer remains an enigma and mysteries obscure the course of the fight,” Robert Paul Jordan C 19IS NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY Battle of the Little Bighorn June 25 1876 mss ‘W BLACK REP Yi=uow PK.6HEY BROWM BART6R: TRRDINE WITHOUT the use oFMorfsyis cmuo BARTER. /TU/AS USED BE FORE moneyu/hs invented. WS STILL A COMMON CUT)/ OF TRADING /NSCMEC/V/- LTZED COUNTRIE S TODAY iNBBQRty EXPLORERS QFi\M TUB INDIANS SEME/N'£/- CHANGE FOR POOP. THE EARLY SETTLERS/NAMERICA TRADED LAMP FORA SHOT GUN AND A yORB OR OXEN. Mysteries Of Little Bighorn writes in the December National Geographic. “Those who rode with him to the end left only death’s mute testimony,” Jordan writes. “In dian accounts varied, generally were long in coming, and often conveyed what the white man wanted to hear. Even today Indian resentment Ungers at terms such as ‘hostile’ and at the mythology surrounding Custer.” But the fire that burned the grass and sagebrush cover off the un dulating heights and wrinkled draws where Custer met his doom cleared the way for two seasons of toil by archeologists and volun teers equipped with metal detectors, trowels, and sieves. The results are surprising. More than 4,000 artifacts have been unearthed: bullets and cartridge cases, iron arrowheads, pieces of firearms, buttons, a watch, and horse trappings. The almost complete skeleton of a trooper was also found. It is the first time a battlefield has been systematically plotted into a grid to chart a fight’s nch artifacts slants positions Area in whi identify combs Concentration of T^r *>*} PEACH GREEK) LT. BROWN) LT. GREY LI GREEK) Concentration of Indian artifact* 11(ill Bighorn fiiur MONTANA n * Helena M [ / 9 0 progress; the first time that modem ballistic techniques have been applied to a field of combat; and one of the few times that precise information has been recorded on the location of every relic found. “The archeologists learned that the soldiers were relatively stationary, while the Indians moved freely about as they overran one position after another,” Jordan writes. Codes on one computer printout suggest the tragic scenario of a trooper who may have been the last man to die in the struggle. Archeologists speculate that In dians fired at him with at least six guns as he tried to escape the waning battle. When he dropped, they hacked at his body with knives and hatchets. They decapitated him. Indians Outgunned Cavalry Archeologists and firearms specialists have concluded from the evidence that the Indians outgunned the soldiers. Custer’s Seventh Cavalry troops carried single-shot carbines and six-shot Colt revolvers. Ballistic studies show that the Indians had at least 41 kinds of firearms, including 16- shot repeating rifles. The investigators’ in terpretation; “With the relative lack of cover available to Custer and the dispersed deployment of his command against superior numbers of Indians with greater firepower, the reason for the outcome of the battle can no longer be significantly debated.” The studies affirm the truth of the legend of Last Stand Hill. One by one, the survivors of Custer’s five companies dropped in the gunsmoke and confusion. As the troopers’ fire dwindled, the warriors, helped by women, rushed in and finished them off .-mL- \3,m if Tji Jttmft mk Sitting Bull, preeminent leader of the seven bands of Western Sioux Indians and revered medicine man, had a prophetic vision of the defeat of George Armstrong Custer's troops at Little Bighorn. In spite of his later billing as “Custer's killer” Sitting Bull did not fight in the famous battle. with rifles, bows, clubs, and hat chets. Most were stripped naked. Some were mutilated. News of the June 25 debacle reached the American public right after the July 4,1876, celebration of the nation’s centennial, banging disbelief, shock, and anger. Nobody knows exactly how many Indians died in the brief but bloody battle. A good guess might be 100, says Jordan. “It was over,” he wntes. “But most of all it was over for the In dians. These people of the plains long had been doomed by the white man’s inexorable westward ex pansion. The Army had per petrated cruelties in earlier Indian battles as savage as any inflicted on Custer’s men. But in thrashing r^\