If we can, with which animal in the story would we like to talk? Hannibal’s last elephant? (called Surus, according to Roman sources), Cleopatra’s serpent? Elsa from Born free? Rudraprayag’s leopard?Bucephalus?,Snowflake? Without a doubt, all of them would have very interesting things to tell us, whether we understood them in the manner of Dr. Dolittle or they spoke in style. Mister Ed or the mule Francis. And let’s not say what fictional animals such as Moby Dick, King Kong, Rocinante or Spielberg’s shark. But if we had to choose just one, a single animal witness to notable events, it would be exciting to hear what he could have told us Comanche, the 7th Cavalry horse that was the sole survivor of the contingent killed with General Custer by the Sioux and their allies at the Battle of Little Bighorn.
That fateful (for the soldiers) June 25, 1876, Custer, pure lieutenant colonel, divided his famous regiment into four groups (one failure, George) and commanding the most powerful, a battalion with five companies (two hundred men altogether) he launched himself, with all the joy that man was capable of when it came to chasing Indians, against the camp by the Little Bighorn River, which turned out to be a hornet’s nest. Of Custer’s unit that went into battle with him, no one was left alive (a trumpet sent as liaison and several scouts natives escaped before things got serious) and the rest of the regiment, in a mixture of incompetence, cowardice and prudence, was too far away to be able to see what was going on. So about how the part of the action that Custer led (the most legendary phase of the battle) and the consequent scuffle of his troops unfolded, we do not know for sure almost anything and most of what is told, for much emphasis and you want to put it, they are guesswork.
It is true that it was full of people who survived: the victorious Indians; but his way of narrating the events was not very reliable. For example, they told you that the battle had lasted as long as it takes for a meal —which is already a random calculation if one takes into account that the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapajo did not eat coffee or dessert after the bison—, they assumed implausible episodes or many claimed to have recognized Custer for his long hair, the famous golden locks of the dreaded centaur of the Washita, when it turns out that he had cut it too short for the campaign. In that situation, count on the testimony of a thoroughbred horse like Comanche (as opposed to Crazy Horse, and forgive the easy joke) would clarify many things: tactical and also morbid things like if the soldiers of Custer’s last stand, the legendary Last Stand, committed suicide or if they even finished off their boss, which It would have been a pious act seen how the Indians were cruel to the bodies of their enemies. In that sense I have discovered, in Bugles, Banners and War Bonnets, by Ernest L. Reedstrom, a meticulous and passionate study of Custer’s 7th Cavalry — Bonanza (sic) Books, 1986 — that the Cheyenne, so nice they were, made necklaces with the fingers of their enemies. Nothing to surprise the Long Knives, by the way, who made tobacco pouches out of the intimate anatomy of the Indian women slaughtered in Sand Creek.
Anyway, the one Comanche Being unable to speak does not make your life any less interesting. And in fact numerous biographies have been published on the lucky horse. My favorites are Anthony Amaral’s, Comanche: The Horse that Survived the Custer Massacre (Westernlore Press, 1961) and that of David Appel, Comanche: the Story of America’s Most Heroic Horse (World Publishing, 1951). I recently read a great article on War & society on the subject, The Story of Comanche: Horsepower, Heroism and the Conquest of the American West, in which historian Karen Jones, from the University of Kent, reviews the history of the famous animal to analyze the role that horses played in the military history of the Far West and in the construction of the imaginary of the heroic rider in the Indian wars. Among the very interesting that Jones tells is that General Crook loved his mule very much, Apache, and that he preferred her to horses.
The official biography of Comanche (c.1862-1891), a 15-handed tall bay mustang (1.5 meters at the withers) and a white star on his forehead, begins when he was captured in Texas in 1868, at the age of six, with a herd of wild horses. Taken to Saint Louis, where it was castrated (the West was a tough place) and put up for sale, it was purchased by the US Army for $ 90 (€ 79). Although it might seem otherwise, being a military horse, “four legged soldier”, as Sergeant Festus Mulcahy would say, was not a bad destiny, as it assured you good food and care, including veterinary service, not to mention that you saw a lot of the world and you lived great adventures. Marked with the letters “US” on the left shoulder and the letter “C” for cavalry on the thigh on the same side, he was requisitioned at Fort Leavenworth for his regiment by Tom Custer, the general’s very brother and fallen with him and a lot more. of relatives (Custer’s 7th was an apotheosis of nepotism) in Little Bighorne. In Fort Hays (Kansas) he began his training as an equine recruit, which included getting used to shooting, horns and drums, as well as military maneuvers since they would sing the song to you all day Garry owen. Jones emphasizes that horses were usually treated well in the army, as they were too valuable to mistreat, more than men, in fact. Riders were generally fond of them, which is natural when you think about what it’s like to hike through Wyoming and Montana. Abusing them was punishable by heavy penalties.
Comanche He became the favorite horse of Captain Myles Keogh, a highly appreciated and respected officer in the 7th, and who, what you have to see, had fought in Italy with an Irish contingent in defense of Pope Pius IX in the Vatican Guard. Keogh had another mount for the marches (Custer also had two, Vic and Dandy) and reserved to Comanche for war actions. Our horse, all-rounder, courageous and “resilient”, according to his biographers, lived exciting days in the regiment. In an action against the Comanches in 1868 in the Cimarrón River, they stabbed an arrow in his hindquarters, which must hurt, and I say that as an archer. The shaft broke and the blacksmiths removed the tip days later. Tradition wants the horse to scream like a Comanche, precisely, and that’s where its name came from. In 1870 he was injured again, in Saline River, Kansas, this time in the right leg, which caused a temporary limp.
A little scandal
The 1876 spring and summer campaign against the Sioux proved hard on the horses (in fact, it has been argued that one of the causes of Custer’s defeat was that the saddles of the 7th arrived exhausted at the Little Bighorn). In any case, how did it unfold Comanche In the battle we do not know because he did not speak, as has been said, and neither were Keogh and his company, I. Comanche near Last Stand Hill whinnying pitifully. He limped over to the soldiers with his saddle dangling. They found three serious injuries. One, from a bullet that had pierced him from side to side, corresponded to the one in the knee of Keogh’s corpse, so he received it as his rider mounted it. Apparently, the soldiers who collected the dead of the 7th found other horses still alive, but in such bad condition that they were sacrificed in situ. Why didn’t they also dispatch Comanche it’s a mystery (and it was lucky for him). Maybe because people liked Keogh and keeping his horse was like a detail.
Comanche, very weak to move, he was transported on a tarp to support steam Far west and treated by a veterinarian with poultices of Hennessy brandy, which he became fond of, like whiskey and beer, to which he was usually invited. It took him a year to recover. And when he did, he was already the famous “sole survivor” of the massacre of Custer and his family, although rumors arose that Vic, the general’s horse was seen in an Indian camp years later, which could be considered desertion or at least fraternization. Be that as it may, the celebrity of Comanche he was in crescendo as a revered (and decorated) war veteran and was treated accordingly: in the 7th barracks he could move freely and was not subject to regiment discipline except in ceremonies, in which he played a role very prominent. Every June 25, in the old tradition of the riderless mount of which it would later become part black Jack, John F. Kennedy’s funeral horse, was saddled in mourning and symbolically rear-facing, empty boots were placed on the stirrups to parade in honor of the fallen.
There was a small scandal when it was learned that there was a great demand from the women of the garrison to ride it from foreigners for a walk. Major Sturgis, whose son had died with Custer, was outraged and issued an order sharply prohibiting such trusts with Comanche, sacrosanct body and living icon of a bloody and heroic tragedy. It would have been another thing for the widower, Libbie Custer, to ride it: it gives me chills to think of the symbolism …
The death in action at Wounded Knee in December 1890 of his caretaker, the blacksmith Gustav Korn, appears to have depressed Comanche, who went into decline and died at Fort Riley of colic on November 6, 1891, at age 29. But his surprising story does not end there. The 7th officers decided that the horse deserved to be preserved and commissioned a notable taxidermist, Professor Lewys Diche, to dissect it. The bill was expensive – $ 450 (393 euros) – and it was decided that Diche would have the prerogative of exhibiting Comanche for two years while the sum was being collected. But after that time there was no refund and the horse was kept at the Museum of Natural History at the University of Kansas. And there it continues.
Of popularity post mortem from Comanche attests that it had to be repaired several times because everyone gave it a pat when they saw it and they pulled hairs from its tail like good luck charms (its tail had to be changed for this reason several times). In keeping with the new times of political correctness and the review of the battle of Little Bighorne as something that also affects Native Americans a lot, the “sole survivor” that appeared on the cartouche of the stuffed horse was changed in 1971 to “symbol of the conflict ”. It’s hard to say what he will think of it ComancheBut if you drop by one day in Kansas and put your ear close to its old lips, you may hear a proud neigh, and the beginning of a good story.
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