The Truth Behind Little Bighorn's Battle

These hills beside the Little Bighorn River in Montana are the site of one of the most tragic events in American history. It was here in 1876 that Sitting Bull and a combined force of Northern Plains Indians inexplicably defeated the U.S. 7th Cavalry under George Armstrong Custer. How could a well-trained, highly mobile cavalry officer and his command... How could they be defeated by a bunch of heathen savages? The scale of the defeat, and its many unanswered questions, has created a heroic myth. The myth of the Battle of the Little Bighorn is a gallant, heroic, last stand to the last man and last bullet. The story of Custer's last stand is legendary. But did it really happen that way? Now, archaeologists... Using the forensic skills of a crime scene investigation, have finally begun to uncover the evidence, revealing what actually occurred at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. This was not the gallant, heroic last stand. This, in fact, was a gruesome, terrible affair. The story of Custer's last stand is legendary. How the 7th Cavalry fought heroically to the last man against a horde of Indian warriors. It's been told and retold in books and films, but it has never been brought to such vivid life as in the annual spectacle staged near the battlefield in Hardin, Montana. In 1876, Custer, a flamboyant hero of the American Civil War, was already a celebrity. People like myths. George Armstrong Custer was larger than life at the time. That adds to the mythical quality of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The myth also flourished because there were no survivors to tell the tale. In fact, there was witness testimony. That testimony comes from the oral traditions of the Lakota and the Cheyenne who fought here. Joel Medicine Crowe heard stories of the battle firsthand. His grandfather, White Man Ronson, was one of Custer's Indian scouts who survived the battle by chance. My grandfather, say, was such a huge battle, covering a huge area, that no one man is able to see it all. What the Indians did see paints a disturbing picture. They talk of chaos and panic amongst the troopers, with no gallant, vast stand. But for years, their accounts were discounted as unreliable. For some reason, the white man doesn't like to hear Indians tell it the way it was. Now, science is proving that the Indian stories are closer to the truth than the famous American legend. For thousands of years, Indian tribes roamed the Northern Plains. But by 1876, they were seen as a threat to the opening of the West. A military campaign was launched to force the Northern Plains Indians onto reservations. But Sioux Chief Sitting Bull refused to give up his traditional way of life. Sinning will send word to the various Sioux tribes who were already on the reservation, come back, come to my camp for the last big fight. It will be a good day to die. After the battle, horrified comrades found 268 bodies and buried them where they lay. Today, they are commemorated on the only battlefield in the world which marks the places where men died. The Little Bighorn battlefield is unique in one specific way. It has white marble markers that... indicate the location men fell in battle. The obvious one that people see is Last Stand Hill, where about 40-odd markers are placed. But as you move across the battlefield, there are a string of them scattered down the line, what we call South Skirmish Line, to Deep Ravine. And then there are just ones that are just scattered randomly, and they may indicate where men had tried to move and escape. Douglas Scott and Richard Fox have spent years investigating the Little Bighorn battlefield. Beneath the earth, they have found the evidence of how Custer was defeated. A battlefield site is like a crime scene. On the one hand, the material evidence, the bullets, the cartridges, and the eyewitness accounts, what the combatants saw. and what they did in the battle. The victims cannot speak, but the recovery of a trooper's bones provides the first clues to what really happened on the battlefield. To the side of marker 128, we found a burial pit containing most of the skeletal elements of an individual about 19 to 21 years old. The range of injuries on this one trooper reveals the ferocity of the battle. Massive blunt force trauma to the mandible, to the point these teeth were broken in half. Sharp force trauma to the bottom side of the collarbone. And there's a cut mark, and we think it's probably made with a knife. Sharp force trauma to both femurs, such as would be made with an axe. A gunshot wound to the left arm near the wrist. The bullet entered the bone and then did not leave it. Gunshot wounds to the thorax. Some of the bullets probably shot into him from a distance. And when the fighting closed in, perhaps they found him still bleeding and finished him off with a coup de grace to the head. The bones confirmed that the Indians used traditional weapons, but they also had guns. A gunshot wound to the hip would even provide the evidence for identification of another trooper. You can see the gunshot wound and there are little pieces of the bullet that were scraped off as the bullet passed through the bone and then continued on through the bone into the abdomen and through the large intestine. That kind of injury at that time would have been mortal. Even today you don't mess around with a... with a gunshot. This is a person who died of a gunshot wound to the hip, and we believe him to be Vincent Charlie. When Trooper Charlie was located after the Battle of Little Bighorn, he was found with the wound to his hips and with a stick jammed down his throat. Knowing that's the way he died, we can reasonably conclude this is Vincent Charlie. There are no pictures of Vincent Charlie. So leading forensic artist Betty Pat Gatliff is putting a human face on the past. Well, the purpose in forensics, of course, is for identification. But to law enforcement, finding out who the victim is can be the key to solving the crime. For until they know who the victim is, how do they find the perpetrator? The killers of Vincent Charlie are not in doubt. But his remains and the bones of other soldiers would show not just how they died, they would also show how they lived. And this evidence with battlefield archaeology would explain how a disciplined fighting unit like the 7th Cavalry could be beaten by a horde of Indian warriors. On May 17, 1876, Three columns of soldiers marched into Montana to force the Northern Plains Indians onto reservations. It was thought Indian tribes were camped near the Little Bighorn River. So George Armstrong Custer was ordered to take the 7th Cavalry and find them. On the morning of June the 25th, Custer's Crow Indian Scouts spotted an encampment far to the west. That's when my grandfather, white man, runs in, saw the Sioux camp. They could see the horse herds on the hills there. Custer separated his force into three battalions. He sent Captain Bentine to close an escape route to the south. He then commanded Captain Reno to attack the Indian camp in the Little Bighorn Valley. Custer turned north with 210 men. When he reached the crest of the hills, the Indian village was fully revealed. What he saw shocked him. Custer looked over there for the first time and... Gee whiz, his head, face turned white, whiter than ever. First time he's seen it. It's a huge camp. It was one of the largest gatherings of Northern Plains Indians with over 1,500 warriors. And even after we told them that... There's an overwhelming force down there, you better wait. But he was determined to go ahead and attack. Reno was retreating before an Indian counter-attack. Custer prepared for action. He sent a message recalling Benteen and his supplies. Then, through his interpreter, Mitch Boye, he told his Indian scouts to leave. So the interpreter, Mitch Boye, said, Boys, you're lucky. Get away from here as fast as possible. I'm stuck. I sign up. so I'm going to die with him. Joe Medicine Crow's grandfather, white man runs him, escaped the battle. Interpreter Mitch Boye fatefully rode with Custer into a valley called Medicine Tale Cooley. And it was from here that Custer and the 7th Cavalry rode into history and myth. But he left behind him a trail of clues, and more than 100 years later, archaeologists started picking up that trail. I do recall. Well the very first day, the first hour in fact, the metal detector sang. It was one find after another. The finds were spent cartridges, bullets and pieces of equipment, the remains of a battle buried for over a century. Yep, another Henry cartridge case. Double firing pin imprint. On the first day alone, we recovered cartridges, bullets, bits and other pieces of personal gear. And it was stunning. It was literally stunning. Oh, John, I got a pretty good beep right here. The searchers checked every location. unearthed objects and determined if they were from the battle. The association of a cartridge with a button will tell us where a soldier might have fired his weapon, might have been killed, or at least his uniform torn or lost. One of the most poignant artifacts I have ever seen is this wedding band still encircling the finger bone, reminding us of the emotional impact that must have occurred to the families of those who were related or knew these individuals. Over 5,000 artifacts have been found. Everyone was numbered and blocked to create a detailed computer map of the battlefield. And this was only a sample of what lies buried. Even today, the battlefield reveals an extraordinary find. There she is. Yeah. Nice shape. Great condition. It's a .45 caliber carbine round, unfired. In very nice condition. It's an original 7th Cavalry bullet, still unfired, over 125 years old. and found near to Last Stand Hill. This was the one we picked up on Last Stand Hill just the other day. Oh, yeah. One fired .45, caliber Springfield. I guess that's the normal situation in combat under stress, confusion. People drop rounds, lose them. The 7th Cavalry were issued only with .45 caliber Springfield carbines and pistols, so it's easy to identify U.S. Army bullets and cartridges. But what about the hundreds of other cartridges and bullets? These can only have come from Indian guns. What can these bullets and cartridges actually tell us about the battle? When a trooper's carbine is fired, the spent cartridge is ejected and falls onto the ground. So the place where a trooper's cartridge case is found reveals a trooper's position. Lead bullets have a similar story to tell. Indian bullets are found impacted at trooper positions and trooper bullets at Indian positions. Yeah, that's a .45 carbine bullet. It was the huge amount of Indian bullets and cartridge cases that surprised the archaeologists. The quantity of cartridge cases that was found in and around these Indian positions was significant, which suggested that there were a lot of weapons there. How is it possible to know the quantity and types of guns that were used against the troopers? Cartridges and bullets can offer clues to the guns that fired them. Those are the marks we're looking for. That's what we're looking for, the firing pin impression marks and the possibility of extractor marks. When a bullet is fired... Travels down the barrel. It is marked by the rifling characteristics that are placed in that barrel. They're analogous to a fingerprint if you have enough individual characteristics to individualize a particular firearm. Analyzing the bullets reveals... that the amount and types of Indian guns were far greater than had been previously thought what we found were in excess of 47 types of firearms used by the Warriors against the soldiers at Little Bighorn that means that more than 800 warriors were armed with anything from muzzle-loading antiques to the latest repeating rifles. Custer was outgunned four to one. And we were truly surprised at the numbers of weapons that were present here. The myth of Indian warriors with only bows and arrows was overturned. But how did they acquire so many firearms? The Indians acquired weapons just like anybody else did. They could go to the trading post and purchase them or trade for them. they were used for hunting. In this case, they were used for hunting white men. Any firearm was a good firearm as far as a Plains Indian was concerned. And it could range from 75 caliber horse pistols, flintlocks to percussion rifles to cartridge guns. That's a .66 Winchester? Right, because it's very lightweight. Very appropriate for Indian use because it was like a bow and arrow that it fired very rapidly But it was still a very short-range weapon and as a warrior you wanted to get in very close And maybe use the smooth bar with a sawed-off more So you could get in you wanted to see the look on that man's face when he knew that you knew that he knew he Was going down and that's what the warfare was all about So revolvers also were incredibly popular because they were the same thing as all the other type of weapons. They were a handheld, very lightweight, rapid fire, very close range weapon. Bullets reveal much, but it would be the cartridge cases that held the clues to unravel the mystery of the defeat of the 7th Cavalry. When that cartridge is fired, it is struck from the rear by a firing pin. That firing pin impression has great value in identification. Every gun's firing pin is unique, and it leaves the same impression on every cartridge case it fires. If it's possible to match cartridge cases to the same gun, it may be possible to track the movement of guns around the battlefield. And there we have two firing pin imprints. They're different sizes and different imperfections, and that represents two different weapons. If cartridges have matching firing pin impressions, they must come from the same gun. Douglas Scott cross-checked over 1,500 cartridges looking for matching firing pin impressions. It would take hundreds of hours of painstaking work. Then, one by one, he found them. Let's bring our cartridge case up we've been looking at, and the new one on the left. We have some unique characteristics up here and here and in the middle here that say these two were fired in the same gun. This one was fired at Calhoun Hill. This one closer to Last Stand Hill, about a quarter. of a mile apart and therefore we know that weapon literally moved. It might represent a fleeing soldier or it might actually represent the captured weapon that the Indians picked up and then turned against Custer. Many groupings of Indian cartridges lay behind gullies and ridges. What did this reveal about Indian tactics? The Indian Army has been working on a new weapon that is called the Indian What it told us is how the Native Americans were able to effectively use the terrain to cover themselves from incoming fire. But they were still able to pop up and get the soldiers. By connecting the cartridge cases fired by the same gun, it was now possible to see troopers and warriors moving across the battlefield. We could see that the soldiers had moved very little. The Indians were moving all about that field. An army weapon reputed to have been at the battle was test fired to identify its firing pin impression. Amazingly, it matched the three cartridges, numbers 244, 240, and 175, all from different places on the battlefield. Here it is. This is the spot that we've picked up cartridge one. This is an Army cartridge we found on this spot. And this is the only gun in the collections here that matched. So that gun was right here? That gun was right here on this spot, 25th of June. Trooper could have been here and pointing at a warrior that direction or up on the hill here or spinning around firing in that direction. Firing at the ridge top out here where we know there were many warriors trying to protect himself until he was struck down. And it's had a lot of use since then, I can see that. And been repaired and fixed and probably was captured. May have been used against Custer elsewhere. Really rather exciting moment. We knew we had a tool that would allow us to do something no one had ever done before with a battlefield. That tool would reveal how tactics, and especially weapons, played a decisive role in this battle. But what about the men who fired those guns? Vincent Charlie was an ordinary trooper. He was mutilated and left to die. Now forensic science is revealing his face. I sometimes think about them and their families and how they must have suffered and what might really have taken place. But they were people, they were somebody's sons, possibly somebody's fathers, you know, they were real people. Do we really know about the troopers of the 7th Cavalry? Were they really the crack troopers of legend? We know the soldiers from the enlistment records are average height of 5'7", average age of 22 years old, average weight of 100. 50 pounds. Some of the ones that we found are much younger in age, 16, 17 years of age. They weren't supposed to be in the Army at that time. We know that half of them were immigrants, mostly from Ireland, England, Germany, mostly from Western Europe. Most of them were doubtlessly from poor backgrounds. These were poor immigrants, but they had joined the legendary 7th Cavalry. They should have been well-trained and fighting fit, but the troopers' bones tell a very different story. Here are teeth, and these black tarry stains suggest tobacco use, particularly in the form of pipe tobacco. He lived a tough life, little oral hygiene, bad diet, and in that way he's probably very typical. of most of the troopers. There's a tooth here that's missing a crown. It's rotted away. We also see that they had a very rough life. We can see that knowing that these guys had rheumatism and arthritis at the age of 22. So what we've got here is a vertebra, and you can see these depressions that indicate that... The disk was starting to generate, deteriorate. And so as the troopers rode over the top trails, these shock-absorbing structures would start to deteriorate, and they would end up with back problems. The 7th Cavalry were ill-prepared and poorly fed. Now, after weeks in the saddle, how fit were Custer's troops as they rode with him into the valley of the Little Bighorn? They were in terrible shape that morning in June. They'd ridden all night long. They'd been riding from Fort Abraham Lincoln since May. They hadn't had any rest. Their backs were hurting, their teeth were aching. They were in bad shape. They were in terrible shape. It probably contributed some to the overall defeat. Forensic evidence shows that the troopers were in poor condition for a fight. Now archaeology would reveal what actually happened as the 7th Cavalry fought to the death at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. How could a successful commander like George Armstrong Custer and a well-armed modern army be defeated by the Northern Plains Indians? Historical accounts say that as Major Reno charged the Indian village, Custer's battalion reached the ridges across the river. Custer then rode down to a valley called Medicine Tail Cooley, where he divided his troops into two groups. Custer rode with the left wing down to the river threatening the Indian camp. The right wing with Captain Miles Keogh was deployed on higher ground. It's here that all the detective work comes together and starts to reveal what happened to the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Indian witnesses describe their first encounter with Custer's soldiers. From across the river I see the column of soldiers turn to the left to march down to the river where the attack was to be made. Mrs. Spotted Horn Bull, Honkpapa, Lakota. The archaeological evidence here confirms the Indian stories. The left wing that came down to the river did meet some light resistance. And there's archaeological evidence of that in this flat out here. Cartridge cases. and there were personal items that were lost and counter fire from the Indians across the river. It wasn't a heavy action, no evidence of strong intensity. The reason for this was that most of the Indian warriors were still fighting Reno to the south. Unprotected, the Indian women and children fled north. Custer and his left wing of 80 troopers set off in pursuit of them. Meanwhile, the right wing's 120 men deploy near Calhoun Hill, under the command of Captain Miles Keogh. At this stage the fighting was sporadic and long distance. But surely the 7th Cavalry, even when outnumbered, had been trained to deal with any Indian attack. So how critical were their tactics to the outcome of this battle? You're going to do a little tacticking for us. Right, some skirmish line. Combat can be a very stressful situation. Tactics are a very, very good way to maintain cohesion and stability among the soldiers. Custer's cavalry tactics were laid out in a manual written in 1874. The horse got the soldier to the scene of the action. Then typically the troopers would dismount and fight on foot. The troopers formed a line, each spaced five yards apart. This was called a skirmish line. Three out of the four in a squad would rush up to the skirmish line and prepare to fire. The horse holders would then lead the lead horses back to a safe position behind the lines. The skirmish line could fire either on command or at will. The skirmish line was a response to the increasing accuracy of firearms. It was safer to spread men out to avoid massing as easy targets. Was there any evidence of these deployments on the battlefield? To find a skirmish line, we should expect to find cartridge cases from individual guns distributed at roughly five-yard intervals. At Calhoun Hill, there were cartridge cases indicating the right-wing skirmish line. The skirmish line is represented by the flags, and each one of these flags is the approximate location where we found a cartridge case or several cartridge cases, each from a different carbine, indicating where a soldier was placed along the line. Here, Indians using the terrain for cover threatened right-wing troopers exposed on their skirmish lines. And the warriors are beginning to swarm up out of the valley from all directions, particularly from here in the south. And they gained this ridge out here, and we found excellent archaeological evidence over there of a large number of warriors who were on the other side of that ridge. The Indian warrior needed no command or control. They fought individually as well-trained hunters. Most of these men being professional predators all of their life against humans and animals, you didn't have to tell them when to get down, when to hide, when to charge, when to totally take advantage of someone when they're in complete panic. The cavalry soldier was trained to fight from a distance. The Plains Indian fought up close and personal. And everything generally had a long handle on it so that on horseback, you were able to swoop down off the side of your horse and hit men that were disabled onto the ground. So they would try to knock their weapon hand out and break their wrist with one blow, and then just backhand them across the forehead or on the temple like that. The limitations of the troopers' tactics were soon evident. Dismounted, the cavalry had no mobility, and the need for horse-holders reduced a quarter of their available firepower. The United States military was trained to fight a conventional standing army, the Prussians, the French, whatever. They were not trained to fight the Great Plains Indians. So why did the US Army fail to adjust to the Indian tactics? The army was very rigid by the book, didn't have a lot of room to ad lib, so in an open fight on a... Dusty hot ridge, conventional army was probably at a disadvantage. As the warriors closed in on Custer's right wing, Indian accounts describe Captain Keogh's desperate retaliation. About 40 of the soldiers came galloping from the east part of the ridge, within Lake Northern Cheyenne. But the Indians counterattacked and the soldiers fell back. Tactics were designed to control men. and direct firepower. So what happens when fear and panic sets in? Under extreme duress, panic can overcome and people bunch together. So I thought that would be recognizable in the archaeological record, and there it was. There is one place on the battlefield where cartridges form skirmish lines, and nearby, a cluster of cartridges suggests that troopers began bunching in panic. And that bunching, as archaeology shows, took place right in here. Was Calhoun Hill the turning point where the battle was lost? Richard Fox combed through Indian accounts for corroboration. The archaeology indicated the transition from tactical stability to tactical disintegration. And I found that in the eyewitness testimony given by warriors who were here. The Indian accounts describe the soldiers' panic. The white men acted as if they were besides themselves, shooting wildly in the air. White Bull, Cheyenne. One of the elements that exacerbated the panic and fear that developed here was the disparity between soldiers who were mounted and those who were dismounted. And in the end, the entire right wing disintegrated. It's the evidence of matching cartridge cases that reveals the flight of guns and men away from Calhoun Hill. Captain Keel's company eye fell here. From here, right-wing survivors fled north towards the left wing, which would eventually end up on Custer Hill. The archaeology here indicates it was a pretty one-sided affair. Not much evidence of cartridge cases on behalf of the soldiers, but lots of Indian bullets. And Indian accounts speak of a very terrible event, too. They speak of riding up and striking soldiers down, soldiers firing wildly in every way, some feigning death. Runze, an Amik, said it was like a stampede of buffalo. Almost the entire right wing was slaughtered on the desperate running fight to last stand hill. For decades... These markers were interpreted as a skirmish line, but in the context of the Custer myth, the gallant last stand of the last man and the last bullet, probably not so. Probably flight. The battle was already lost. Custer had fatally split his command and now lost half of it. But why did the tactics and stability of Custer's right wing fail so dramatically? The answer may lie with the different types of guns used on the battlefield. This particular weapon was the primary weapon used by the 7th Calvary Troopers. What we have here is an 1873 Springfield carbine. This is a single-shot weapon, trapdoor. It had a range of 600 to 700 yards, which in the hands of a trained cavalryman could do considerable damage. It shoots a little high, Doug, but... When you shoot this, you really are going back in time. Range, stopping power, and accuracy made the Springfield superior to any Indian weapon. But it had one major disadvantage against the Indian's weapon of choice. And the Henry rifle is an outstanding weapon in terms of its rapid fire capability. You could load and fire cartridges in a matter of seconds. The Henry was highly effective. Within a 200-yard range, and the warriors eventually got within 200 yards, and were able to use the Henry rifle quite effectively. With warriors in close. The advantage swung to whichever gun could fire more rapidly. A 30-second test reveals the answer. Let's do a time check. How long it takes to get the 13 rounds off compared to how many you get off. Let's do it. 30 seconds. How many did you fire? 13 rounds in 30 seconds. I got four off. At close quarters, the Henry rifle is three times more effective than the Springfield carbine. The troopers lost their standoff capability because of tactical disintegration. They were not able to concentrate their firepower, and as a result, the Indians were allowed to get closer and closer and closer, and consequently, the repeating weapons came into play. The end result is complete chaos on the part of the troopers. Forensic evidence shows that the Indians had over 200 repeating rifles. The amount of firepower that the Indians had, the types of weapon that they had, was the key in their defeating the U.S. Cavalry in that particular battle. No question about it. At the battle, the right wing collapsed and ran in flight towards Custer and the left wing. Of the 120 men in the right wing, only 20 survived to join Custer and the left wing on Last Stand Hill. 105 men left in the battalion. Half the battalion. Clearly, the defensive has begun. The offense is lost. The archaeology confirms that the Indians now had many Springfield carbines taken from dead and wounded right-wing troopers on Calhoun Hill. These guns were leveled at Custer's desperate men huddled together on Last Stand Hill. The Indian accounts leave clues that shortly after consolidation on Custer Hill there were attempts at reorganization. Trumpet calls, men shouting and barking orders. And shortly after these attempts, 40 dismounted men came rushing off the hill toward the river. Accompanying the men were anywhere from five to nine riders. Those on foot took to the guzzy while the mountain ones tried to get away. wing he done Ogallala soon and they say the riders rushed south but they also tell us that none of them ever made it beyond the battlefield warriors including crazy horse was swarming around Custer Hill a few soldiers were still alive sensing the end they too ran in panic The troopers jumped up and started to run towards the river. They did not fire back. Big Beaver, Northern Cheyenne. In the meantime, the Sioux and Cheyenne warriors were coming. We had them surrounded, and in a little while they were all dead. Last Stand Hill was where the bodies of Custer and his immediate command were found. Below is a line of markers indicating the route of flight to a place called Deep Ravine. This enduring myth, I think in the public's imagination, is here at Last Stand Hill, that this is where the last gallant fight occurred. And we both agree that isn't quite the case. That's right. It was a desperate struggle here on the hill, and it was a matter of life and death, and I think we can all relate to that. But it was over in minutes. Few trooper cartridge cases have been found on Last Stand Hill, but many Indian bullets. The archaeological evidence for a heroic Last Stand is non-existent. This unfired bullet recently found is a silent witness to the final minutes of the battle. This was the one we picked up on Last Stand Hill just the other day. It's one of the cavalry rounds. It's incredible. It's absolutely incredible. Well, to think that some young guy got off a boat in New York and wound up frantically trying to shove this in. It was Springfield Carbine in the last moments of his life fighting against a force of individuals who were fiercely trying to defend their hope of existence and all of that swirling around. And that's the bit of evidence left behind of all those kind of tumultuous events. It's difficult to have this in my hand and not... not be moved by it. It was a desperate, grim struggle. It lasted only briefly, and in fact, not only was there no gallant last stand, the last fighting did not even take place here. Custer was outnumbered, outgunned, and outfought. But if the mythical last stand wasn't on Custer Hill, Where did the last of Custer's men die? The Battle of the Little Bighorn lasted no more than 90 minutes. 268 men were killed, 210 of them with Custer. After a two-day siege, Reno and Benteen's horrified troopers came to bury the dead. They could only identify 56 of their comrades. So badly had they been mutilated. When they found out it was Custer's outfit, they went up there and mutilated these bodies, you know, cut their throats, arms off, feet off. The variety of injuries that we... We're able to see in the bone remains, in the hard tissue, were incredibly graphic. There's a skull that's been shot from the back and top. We repeatedly saw cut marks in various bones. And these are cuts that went through two or three inches of muscles before finally hitting the bone. Blunt force trauma included blows to the face literally would shatter the skull and shatter the jaw. And you can't see them here, but there are actually cuts on the inside of the socket, too, indicating that they removed the person's thigh. We would see sharp force trauma consistent with scalping, literally lifting the scalp, just repeated knife marks. These are cuts suggesting castration of the trooper. The Indians often mutilated the dead to impair their spirits in the afterlife. Now the earthly remains of 44 troopers have been found. In one case, a skull fragment would give clues to its identity. These are the facial bones recovered at markers 32 and 33. What we have are the nose and upper teeth and left eye orbit of the individual who's determined to be between 35 and 45 years of age. The wear on the teeth indicate that he, as a male, was a pipe smoker, worn his teeth down. In this area here, there was a blunt instrument blow to the face causing the eye socket to be crushed and the nose to be broken. So we have evidence of trauma at or about the time of death. The heavy high cheekbones suggest Native American ancestry and the teeth themselves. Suggest white ancestry indicating a racially admixed individual. The only person who fits this description is Mitch Boyer, Custer's scout, who was killed at the Little Bighorn. When the bone fragment is superimposed on a picture of Mitch Boyer, the match is uncanny. It was Mitch Boyer who saved the life of Joe Medicine Crow's grandfather. When he told the Scots to leave, his remains were found below Custer Hill. Near to a place called Deep Ravine, Indian accounts speak of 28 men buried there, but there are no grave markers. Was this the last stand of the Little Bighorn? Talbul, a northern Cheyenne, was there, and he says, I heard a big war hoop that soldiers were coming. Soldiers came on foot and ran right through us into the Deep Ravine. And this was the last of the fight and the men were killed in this gully. So the last fighting was not on Last Stand Hill. We saw soldiers start running down the hill towards us. Nearly all of them were afraid. I think they were so scared they didn't know what to do. They were doomed. Some of them shot their guns in the air. Ironhawk, Hunkpapasuit. This is the upper reaches of Deep Ravine. The last fighting took place here. We have Indian cartridge cases up along the sides of the ravine here, indicating Indians firing down at soldiers who were trying to hide, to escape, to evade. And we also have historical accounts, Indian and white, talking about soldiers' bodies found down here. The mystery of Deep Ravine is simply where are the men who died here? And we have looked, but haven't yet found them. Somewhere, perhaps where we're standing, are 28 bodies, maybe more, waiting to be found. It must have been a frightening experience. It must have been terrible. My feeling is war is terrible. It's a horrible thing and people had to die. People had to defend. Too bad it had to happen that way. The last fighting was a deep ravine, not Custer Hill. There was no heroic last stand. We believe this to be Vincent Charlie, a soldier who died at the Little Bighorn. He represents one of 268 men killed at the Little Bighorn. He was foreign-born, just like 40% of the soldiers were, a Swiss immigrant. He's a little taller than average at 5'10", give or take a little bit, and he's a little older, in between 25 and 30 years of age, when most were only around 22. So he does really represent many of these people. So to put a face on this skull allows us to see one person who lived and died at the Little Bighorn. I like him. I think he's somebody I'd like to know. Vincent Charlie is now reunited with his fellow troopers in the mass grave at the Little Bighorn battlefield. Custer's remains are said to lie at West Point. More than 50 Indian warriors and an unknown number of Indian women and children also died that day. The reason why the Indians finally decided to make their last stand, because they were being pushed out of their land and massacred from here and there. So it was Sitting Bull's last stand, not Custer's last stand. The work of Douglas Scott and Richard Fox has confirmed the Indian stories. Now, after more than a century, the battlefield recognizes not just their oral history, but also their fallen dead. In June 1876, Lakota and Cheyenne warriors defeated Custer's 7th Cavalry. But their victory was short-lived. Never again would the Northern Plains Indians have the freedom of the plains. It was the beginning of the end of their way of life.

How could they be defeated by a bunch of heathen savages? The scale of the defeat, and its many unanswered questions, has created a heroic myth. The myth of the Battle of the Little Bighorn is a gallant, heroic, last stand to the last man and last bullet.

The story of Custer's last stand is legendary. But did it really happen that way? Now, archaeologists...

Using the forensic skills of a crime scene investigation, have finally begun to uncover the evidence, revealing what actually occurred at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. This was not the gallant, heroic last stand. This, in fact, was a gruesome, terrible affair. The story of Custer's last stand is legendary.

How the 7th Cavalry fought heroically to the last man against a horde of Indian warriors. It's been told and retold in books and films, but it has never been brought to such vivid life as in the annual spectacle staged near the battlefield in Hardin, Montana. In 1876, Custer, a flamboyant hero of the American Civil War, was already a celebrity. People like myths.

George Armstrong Custer was larger than life at the time. That adds to the mythical quality of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The myth also flourished because there were no survivors to tell the tale. In fact, there was witness testimony.

That testimony comes from the oral traditions of the Lakota and the Cheyenne who fought here. Joel Medicine Crowe heard stories of the battle firsthand. His grandfather, White Man Ronson, was one of Custer's Indian scouts who survived the battle by chance.

My grandfather, say, was such a huge battle, covering a huge area, that no one man is able to see it all. What the Indians did see paints a disturbing picture. They talk of chaos and panic amongst the troopers, with no gallant, vast stand. But for years, their accounts were discounted as unreliable. For some reason, the white man doesn't like to hear Indians tell it the way it was.

Now, science is proving that the Indian stories are closer to the truth than the famous American legend. For thousands of years, Indian tribes roamed the Northern Plains. But by 1876, they were seen as a threat to the opening of the West. A military campaign was launched to force the Northern Plains Indians onto reservations.

But Sioux Chief Sitting Bull refused to give up his traditional way of life. Sinning will send word to the various Sioux tribes who were already on the reservation, come back, come to my camp for the last big fight. It will be a good day to die.

After the battle, horrified comrades found 268 bodies and buried them where they lay. Today, they are commemorated on the only battlefield in the world which marks the places where men died. The Little Bighorn battlefield is unique in one specific way.

It has white marble markers that... indicate the location men fell in battle. The obvious one that people see is Last Stand Hill, where about 40-odd markers are placed.

But as you move across the battlefield, there are a string of them scattered down the line, what we call South Skirmish Line, to Deep Ravine. And then there are just ones that are just scattered randomly, and they may indicate where men had tried to move and escape. Douglas Scott and Richard Fox have spent years investigating the Little Bighorn battlefield.

Beneath the earth, they have found the evidence of how Custer was defeated. A battlefield site is like a crime scene. On the one hand, the material evidence, the bullets, the cartridges, and the eyewitness accounts, what the combatants saw. and what they did in the battle. The victims cannot speak, but the recovery of a trooper's bones provides the first clues to what really happened on the battlefield.

To the side of marker 128, we found a burial pit containing most of the skeletal elements of an individual about 19 to 21 years old. The range of injuries on this one trooper reveals the ferocity of the battle. Massive blunt force trauma to the mandible, to the point these teeth were broken in half.

Sharp force trauma to the bottom side of the collarbone. And there's a cut mark, and we think it's probably made with a knife. Sharp force trauma to both femurs, such as would be made with an axe.

A gunshot wound to the left arm near the wrist. The bullet entered the bone and then did not leave it. Gunshot wounds to the thorax.

Some of the bullets probably shot into him from a distance. And when the fighting closed in, perhaps they found him still bleeding and finished him off with a coup de grace to the head. The bones confirmed that the Indians used traditional weapons, but they also had guns.

A gunshot wound to the hip would even provide the evidence for identification of another trooper. You can see the gunshot wound and there are little pieces of the bullet that were scraped off as the bullet passed through the bone and then continued on through the bone into the abdomen and through the large intestine. That kind of injury at that time would have been mortal. Even today you don't mess around with a... with a gunshot.

This is a person who died of a gunshot wound to the hip, and we believe him to be Vincent Charlie. When Trooper Charlie was located after the Battle of Little Bighorn, he was found with the wound to his hips and with a stick jammed down his throat. Knowing that's the way he died, we can reasonably conclude this is Vincent Charlie.

There are no pictures of Vincent Charlie. So leading forensic artist Betty Pat Gatliff is putting a human face on the past. Well, the purpose in forensics, of course, is for identification.

But to law enforcement, finding out who the victim is can be the key to solving the crime. For until they know who the victim is, how do they find the perpetrator? The killers of Vincent Charlie are not in doubt.

But his remains and the bones of other soldiers would show not just how they died, they would also show how they lived. And this evidence with battlefield archaeology would explain how a disciplined fighting unit like the 7th Cavalry could be beaten by a horde of Indian warriors. On May 17, 1876, Three columns of soldiers marched into Montana to force the Northern Plains Indians onto reservations. It was thought Indian tribes were camped near the Little Bighorn River.

So George Armstrong Custer was ordered to take the 7th Cavalry and find them. On the morning of June the 25th, Custer's Crow Indian Scouts spotted an encampment far to the west. That's when my grandfather, white man, runs in, saw the Sioux camp.

They could see the horse herds on the hills there. Custer separated his force into three battalions. He sent Captain Bentine to close an escape route to the south. He then commanded Captain Reno to attack the Indian camp in the Little Bighorn Valley.

Custer turned north with 210 men. When he reached the crest of the hills, the Indian village was fully revealed. What he saw shocked him. Custer looked over there for the first time and... Gee whiz, his head, face turned white, whiter than ever.

First time he's seen it. It's a huge camp. It was one of the largest gatherings of Northern Plains Indians with over 1,500 warriors. And even after we told them that...

There's an overwhelming force down there, you better wait. But he was determined to go ahead and attack. Reno was retreating before an Indian counter-attack.

Custer prepared for action. He sent a message recalling Benteen and his supplies. Then, through his interpreter, Mitch Boye, he told his Indian scouts to leave. So the interpreter, Mitch Boye, said, Boys, you're lucky.

Get away from here as fast as possible. I'm stuck. I sign up. so I'm going to die with him.

Joe Medicine Crow's grandfather, white man runs him, escaped the battle. Interpreter Mitch Boye fatefully rode with Custer into a valley called Medicine Tale Cooley. And it was from here that Custer and the 7th Cavalry rode into history and myth. But he left behind him a trail of clues, and more than 100 years later, archaeologists started picking up that trail. I do recall.

Well the very first day, the first hour in fact, the metal detector sang. It was one find after another. The finds were spent cartridges, bullets and pieces of equipment, the remains of a battle buried for over a century.

Yep, another Henry cartridge case. Double firing pin imprint. On the first day alone, we recovered cartridges, bullets, bits and other pieces of personal gear. And it was stunning.

It was literally stunning. Oh, John, I got a pretty good beep right here. The searchers checked every location. unearthed objects and determined if they were from the battle. The association of a cartridge with a button will tell us where a soldier might have fired his weapon, might have been killed, or at least his uniform torn or lost.

One of the most poignant artifacts I have ever seen is this wedding band still encircling the finger bone, reminding us of the emotional impact that must have occurred to the families of those who were related or knew these individuals. Over 5,000 artifacts have been found. Everyone was numbered and blocked to create a detailed computer map of the battlefield. And this was only a sample of what lies buried. Even today, the battlefield reveals an extraordinary find.

There she is. Yeah. Nice shape.

Great condition. It's a .45 caliber carbine round, unfired. In very nice condition.

It's an original 7th Cavalry bullet, still unfired, over 125 years old. and found near to Last Stand Hill. This was the one we picked up on Last Stand Hill just the other day.

Oh, yeah. One fired .45, caliber Springfield. I guess that's the normal situation in combat under stress, confusion.

People drop rounds, lose them. The 7th Cavalry were issued only with .45 caliber Springfield carbines and pistols, so it's easy to identify U.S. Army bullets and cartridges. But what about the hundreds of other cartridges and bullets? These can only have come from Indian guns.

What can these bullets and cartridges actually tell us about the battle? When a trooper's carbine is fired, the spent cartridge is ejected and falls onto the ground. So the place where a trooper's cartridge case is found reveals a trooper's position.

Lead bullets have a similar story to tell. Indian bullets are found impacted at trooper positions and trooper bullets at Indian positions. Yeah, that's a .45 carbine bullet. It was the huge amount of Indian bullets and cartridge cases that surprised the archaeologists. The quantity of cartridge cases that was found in and around these Indian positions was significant, which suggested that there were a lot of weapons there.

How is it possible to know the quantity and types of guns that were used against the troopers? Cartridges and bullets can offer clues to the guns that fired them. Those are the marks we're looking for. That's what we're looking for, the firing pin impression marks and the possibility of extractor marks. When a bullet is fired...

Travels down the barrel. It is marked by the rifling characteristics that are placed in that barrel. They're analogous to a fingerprint if you have enough individual characteristics to individualize a particular firearm. Analyzing the bullets reveals... that the amount and types of Indian guns were far greater than had been previously thought what we found were in excess of 47 types of firearms used by the Warriors against the soldiers at Little Bighorn that means that more than 800 warriors were armed with anything from muzzle-loading antiques to the latest repeating rifles.

Custer was outgunned four to one. And we were truly surprised at the numbers of weapons that were present here. The myth of Indian warriors with only bows and arrows was overturned.

But how did they acquire so many firearms? The Indians acquired weapons just like anybody else did. They could go to the trading post and purchase them or trade for them.

they were used for hunting. In this case, they were used for hunting white men. Any firearm was a good firearm as far as a Plains Indian was concerned.

And it could range from 75 caliber horse pistols, flintlocks to percussion rifles to cartridge guns. That's a .66 Winchester? Right, because it's very lightweight.

Very appropriate for Indian use because it was like a bow and arrow that it fired very rapidly But it was still a very short-range weapon and as a warrior you wanted to get in very close And maybe use the smooth bar with a sawed-off more So you could get in you wanted to see the look on that man's face when he knew that you knew that he knew he Was going down and that's what the warfare was all about So revolvers also were incredibly popular because they were the same thing as all the other type of weapons. They were a handheld, very lightweight, rapid fire, very close range weapon. Bullets reveal much, but it would be the cartridge cases that held the clues to unravel the mystery of the defeat of the 7th Cavalry. When that cartridge is fired, it is struck from the rear by a firing pin.

That firing pin impression has great value in identification. Every gun's firing pin is unique, and it leaves the same impression on every cartridge case it fires. If it's possible to match cartridge cases to the same gun, it may be possible to track the movement of guns around the battlefield. And there we have two firing pin imprints. They're different sizes and different imperfections, and that represents two different weapons.

If cartridges have matching firing pin impressions, they must come from the same gun. Douglas Scott cross-checked over 1,500 cartridges looking for matching firing pin impressions. It would take hundreds of hours of painstaking work.

Then, one by one, he found them. Let's bring our cartridge case up we've been looking at, and the new one on the left. We have some unique characteristics up here and here and in the middle here that say these two were fired in the same gun. This one was fired at Calhoun Hill.

This one closer to Last Stand Hill, about a quarter. of a mile apart and therefore we know that weapon literally moved. It might represent a fleeing soldier or it might actually represent the captured weapon that the Indians picked up and then turned against Custer. Many groupings of Indian cartridges lay behind gullies and ridges. What did this reveal about Indian tactics?

The Indian Army has been working on a new weapon that is called the Indian What it told us is how the Native Americans were able to effectively use the terrain to cover themselves from incoming fire. But they were still able to pop up and get the soldiers. By connecting the cartridge cases fired by the same gun, it was now possible to see troopers and warriors moving across the battlefield.

We could see that the soldiers had moved very little. The Indians were moving all about that field. An army weapon reputed to have been at the battle was test fired to identify its firing pin impression.

Amazingly, it matched the three cartridges, numbers 244, 240, and 175, all from different places on the battlefield. Here it is. This is the spot that we've picked up cartridge one. This is an Army cartridge we found on this spot. And this is the only gun in the collections here that matched.

So that gun was right here? That gun was right here on this spot, 25th of June. Trooper could have been here and pointing at a warrior that direction or up on the hill here or spinning around firing in that direction.

Firing at the ridge top out here where we know there were many warriors trying to protect himself until he was struck down. And it's had a lot of use since then, I can see that. And been repaired and fixed and probably was captured.

May have been used against Custer elsewhere. Really rather exciting moment. We knew we had a tool that would allow us to do something no one had ever done before with a battlefield. That tool would reveal how tactics, and especially weapons, played a decisive role in this battle.

But what about the men who fired those guns? Vincent Charlie was an ordinary trooper. He was mutilated and left to die. Now forensic science is revealing his face. I sometimes think about them and their families and how they must have suffered and what might really have taken place.

But they were people, they were somebody's sons, possibly somebody's fathers, you know, they were real people. Do we really know about the troopers of the 7th Cavalry? Were they really the crack troopers of legend?

We know the soldiers from the enlistment records are average height of 5'7", average age of 22 years old, average weight of 100. 50 pounds. Some of the ones that we found are much younger in age, 16, 17 years of age. They weren't supposed to be in the Army at that time. We know that half of them were immigrants, mostly from Ireland, England, Germany, mostly from Western Europe. Most of them were doubtlessly from poor backgrounds. These were poor immigrants, but they had joined the legendary 7th Cavalry. They should have been well-trained and fighting fit, but the troopers' bones tell a very different story. Here are teeth, and these black tarry stains suggest tobacco use, particularly in the form of pipe tobacco. He lived a tough life, little oral hygiene, bad diet, and in that way he's probably very typical. of most of the troopers. There's a tooth here that's missing a crown. It's rotted away. We also see that they had a very rough life. We can see that knowing that these guys had rheumatism and arthritis at the age of 22. So what we've got here is a vertebra, and you can see these depressions that indicate that... The disk was starting to generate, deteriorate. And so as the troopers rode over the top trails, these shock-absorbing structures would start to deteriorate, and they would end up with back problems. The 7th Cavalry were ill-prepared and poorly fed. Now, after weeks in the saddle, how fit were Custer's troops as they rode with him into the valley of the Little Bighorn? They were in terrible shape that morning in June. They'd ridden all night long. They'd been riding from Fort Abraham Lincoln since May. They hadn't had any rest. Their backs were hurting, their teeth were aching. They were in bad shape. They were in terrible shape. It probably contributed some to the overall defeat. Forensic evidence shows that the troopers were in poor condition for a fight. Now archaeology would reveal what actually happened as the 7th Cavalry fought to the death at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. How could a successful commander like George Armstrong Custer and a well-armed modern army be defeated by the Northern Plains Indians? Historical accounts say that as Major Reno charged the Indian village, Custer's battalion reached the ridges across the river. Custer then rode down to a valley called Medicine Tail Cooley, where he divided his troops into two groups. Custer rode with the left wing down to the river threatening the Indian camp. The right wing with Captain Miles Keogh was deployed on higher ground. It's here that all the detective work comes together and starts to reveal what happened to the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Indian witnesses describe their first encounter with Custer's soldiers. From across the river I see the column of soldiers turn to the left to march down to the river where the attack was to be made. Mrs. Spotted Horn Bull, Honkpapa, Lakota. The archaeological evidence here confirms the Indian stories. The left wing that came down to the river did meet some light resistance. And there's archaeological evidence of that in this flat out here. Cartridge cases. and there were personal items that were lost and counter fire from the Indians across the river. It wasn't a heavy action, no evidence of strong intensity. The reason for this was that most of the Indian warriors were still fighting Reno to the south. Unprotected, the Indian women and children fled north. Custer and his left wing of 80 troopers set off in pursuit of them. Meanwhile, the right wing's 120 men deploy near Calhoun Hill, under the command of Captain Miles Keogh. At this stage the fighting was sporadic and long distance. But surely the 7th Cavalry, even when outnumbered, had been trained to deal with any Indian attack. So how critical were their tactics to the outcome of this battle? You're going to do a little tacticking for us. Right, some skirmish line. Combat can be a very stressful situation. Tactics are a very, very good way to maintain cohesion and stability among the soldiers. Custer's cavalry tactics were laid out in a manual written in 1874. The horse got the soldier to the scene of the action. Then typically the troopers would dismount and fight on foot. The troopers formed a line, each spaced five yards apart. This was called a skirmish line. Three out of the four in a squad would rush up to the skirmish line and prepare to fire. The horse holders would then lead the lead horses back to a safe position behind the lines. The skirmish line could fire either on command or at will. The skirmish line was a response to the increasing accuracy of firearms. It was safer to spread men out to avoid massing as easy targets. Was there any evidence of these deployments on the battlefield? To find a skirmish line, we should expect to find cartridge cases from individual guns distributed at roughly five-yard intervals. At Calhoun Hill, there were cartridge cases indicating the right-wing skirmish line. The skirmish line is represented by the flags, and each one of these flags is the approximate location where we found a cartridge case or several cartridge cases, each from a different carbine, indicating where a soldier was placed along the line. Here, Indians using the terrain for cover threatened right-wing troopers exposed on their skirmish lines. And the warriors are beginning to swarm up out of the valley from all directions, particularly from here in the south. And they gained this ridge out here, and we found excellent archaeological evidence over there of a large number of warriors who were on the other side of that ridge. The Indian warrior needed no command or control. They fought individually as well-trained hunters. Most of these men being professional predators all of their life against humans and animals, you didn't have to tell them when to get down, when to hide, when to charge, when to totally take advantage of someone when they're in complete panic. The cavalry soldier was trained to fight from a distance. The Plains Indian fought up close and personal. And everything generally had a long handle on it so that on horseback, you were able to swoop down off the side of your horse and hit men that were disabled onto the ground. So they would try to knock their weapon hand out and break their wrist with one blow, and then just backhand them across the forehead or on the temple like that. The limitations of the troopers' tactics were soon evident. Dismounted, the cavalry had no mobility, and the need for horse-holders reduced a quarter of their available firepower. The United States military was trained to fight a conventional standing army, the Prussians, the French, whatever. They were not trained to fight the Great Plains Indians. So why did the US Army fail to adjust to the Indian tactics? The army was very rigid by the book, didn't have a lot of room to ad lib, so in an open fight on a... Dusty hot ridge, conventional army was probably at a disadvantage. As the warriors closed in on Custer's right wing, Indian accounts describe Captain Keogh's desperate retaliation. About 40 of the soldiers came galloping from the east part of the ridge, within Lake Northern Cheyenne. But the Indians counterattacked and the soldiers fell back. Tactics were designed to control men. and direct firepower. So what happens when fear and panic sets in? Under extreme duress, panic can overcome and people bunch together. So I thought that would be recognizable in the archaeological record, and there it was. There is one place on the battlefield where cartridges form skirmish lines, and nearby, a cluster of cartridges suggests that troopers began bunching in panic. And that bunching, as archaeology shows, took place right in here. Was Calhoun Hill the turning point where the battle was lost? Richard Fox combed through Indian accounts for corroboration. The archaeology indicated the transition from tactical stability to tactical disintegration. And I found that in the eyewitness testimony given by warriors who were here. The Indian accounts describe the soldiers' panic. The white men acted as if they were besides themselves, shooting wildly in the air. White Bull, Cheyenne. One of the elements that exacerbated the panic and fear that developed here was the disparity between soldiers who were mounted and those who were dismounted. And in the end, the entire right wing disintegrated. It's the evidence of matching cartridge cases that reveals the flight of guns and men away from Calhoun Hill. Captain Keel's company eye fell here. From here, right-wing survivors fled north towards the left wing, which would eventually end up on Custer Hill. The archaeology here indicates it was a pretty one-sided affair. Not much evidence of cartridge cases on behalf of the soldiers, but lots of Indian bullets. And Indian accounts speak of a very terrible event, too. They speak of riding up and striking soldiers down, soldiers firing wildly in every way, some feigning death. Runze, an Amik, said it was like a stampede of buffalo. Almost the entire right wing was slaughtered on the desperate running fight to last stand hill. For decades... These markers were interpreted as a skirmish line, but in the context of the Custer myth, the gallant last stand of the last man and the last bullet, probably not so. Probably flight. The battle was already lost. Custer had fatally split his command and now lost half of it. But why did the tactics and stability of Custer's right wing fail so dramatically? The answer may lie with the different types of guns used on the battlefield. This particular weapon was the primary weapon used by the 7th Calvary Troopers. What we have here is an 1873 Springfield carbine. This is a single-shot weapon, trapdoor. It had a range of 600 to 700 yards, which in the hands of a trained cavalryman could do considerable damage. It shoots a little high, Doug, but... When you shoot this, you really are going back in time. Range, stopping power, and accuracy made the Springfield superior to any Indian weapon. But it had one major disadvantage against the Indian's weapon of choice. And the Henry rifle is an outstanding weapon in terms of its rapid fire capability. You could load and fire cartridges in a matter of seconds. The Henry was highly effective. Within a 200-yard range, and the warriors eventually got within 200 yards, and were able to use the Henry rifle quite effectively. With warriors in close. The advantage swung to whichever gun could fire more rapidly. A 30-second test reveals the answer. Let's do a time check. How long it takes to get the 13 rounds off compared to how many you get off. Let's do it. 30 seconds. How many did you fire? 13 rounds in 30 seconds. I got four off. At close quarters, the Henry rifle is three times more effective than the Springfield carbine. The troopers lost their standoff capability because of tactical disintegration. They were not able to concentrate their firepower, and as a result, the Indians were allowed to get closer and closer and closer, and consequently, the repeating weapons came into play. The end result is complete chaos on the part of the troopers. Forensic evidence shows that the Indians had over 200 repeating rifles. The amount of firepower that the Indians had, the types of weapon that they had, was the key in their defeating the U.S. Cavalry in that particular battle. No question about it. At the battle, the right wing collapsed and ran in flight towards Custer and the left wing. Of the 120 men in the right wing, only 20 survived to join Custer and the left wing on Last Stand Hill. 105 men left in the battalion. Half the battalion. Clearly, the defensive has begun. The offense is lost. The archaeology confirms that the Indians now had many Springfield carbines taken from dead and wounded right-wing troopers on Calhoun Hill. These guns were leveled at Custer's desperate men huddled together on Last Stand Hill. The Indian accounts leave clues that shortly after consolidation on Custer Hill there were attempts at reorganization. Trumpet calls, men shouting and barking orders. And shortly after these attempts, 40 dismounted men came rushing off the hill toward the river. Accompanying the men were anywhere from five to nine riders. Those on foot took to the guzzy while the mountain ones tried to get away. wing he done Ogallala soon and they say the riders rushed south but they also tell us that none of them ever made it beyond the battlefield warriors including crazy horse was swarming around Custer Hill a few soldiers were still alive sensing the end they too ran in panic The troopers jumped up and started to run towards the river. They did not fire back. Big Beaver, Northern Cheyenne. In the meantime, the Sioux and Cheyenne warriors were coming. We had them surrounded, and in a little while they were all dead. Last Stand Hill was where the bodies of Custer and his immediate command were found. Below is a line of markers indicating the route of flight to a place called Deep Ravine. This enduring myth, I think in the public's imagination, is here at Last Stand Hill, that this is where the last gallant fight occurred. And we both agree that isn't quite the case. That's right. It was a desperate struggle here on the hill, and it was a matter of life and death, and I think we can all relate to that. But it was over in minutes. Few trooper cartridge cases have been found on Last Stand Hill, but many Indian bullets. The archaeological evidence for a heroic Last Stand is non-existent. This unfired bullet recently found is a silent witness to the final minutes of the battle. This was the one we picked up on Last Stand Hill just the other day. It's one of the cavalry rounds. It's incredible. It's absolutely incredible. Well, to think that some young guy got off a boat in New York and wound up frantically trying to shove this in. It was Springfield Carbine in the last moments of his life fighting against a force of individuals who were fiercely trying to defend their hope of existence and all of that swirling around. And that's the bit of evidence left behind of all those kind of tumultuous events. It's difficult to have this in my hand and not... not be moved by it. It was a desperate, grim struggle. It lasted only briefly, and in fact, not only was there no gallant last stand, the last fighting did not even take place here. Custer was outnumbered, outgunned, and outfought. But if the mythical last stand wasn't on Custer Hill, Where did the last of Custer's men die? The Battle of the Little Bighorn lasted no more than 90 minutes. 268 men were killed, 210 of them with Custer. After a two-day siege, Reno and Benteen's horrified troopers came to bury the dead. They could only identify 56 of their comrades. So badly had they been mutilated. When they found out it was Custer's outfit, they went up there and mutilated these bodies, you know, cut their throats, arms off, feet off. The variety of injuries that we... We're able to see in the bone remains, in the hard tissue, were incredibly graphic. There's a skull that's been shot from the back and top. We repeatedly saw cut marks in various bones. And these are cuts that went through two or three inches of muscles before finally hitting the bone. Blunt force trauma included blows to the face literally would shatter the skull and shatter the jaw. And you can't see them here, but there are actually cuts on the inside of the socket, too, indicating that they removed the person's thigh. We would see sharp force trauma consistent with scalping, literally lifting the scalp, just repeated knife marks. These are cuts suggesting castration of the trooper. The Indians often mutilated the dead to impair their spirits in the afterlife. Now the earthly remains of 44 troopers have been found. In one case, a skull fragment would give clues to its identity. These are the facial bones recovered at markers 32 and 33. What we have are the nose and upper teeth and left eye orbit of the individual who's determined to be between 35 and 45 years of age. The wear on the teeth indicate that he, as a male, was a pipe smoker, worn his teeth down. In this area here, there was a blunt instrument blow to the face causing the eye socket to be crushed and the nose to be broken. So we have evidence of trauma at or about the time of death. The heavy high cheekbones suggest Native American ancestry and the teeth themselves. Suggest white ancestry indicating a racially admixed individual. The only person who fits this description is Mitch Boyer, Custer's scout, who was killed at the Little Bighorn. When the bone fragment is superimposed on a picture of Mitch Boyer, the match is uncanny. It was Mitch Boyer who saved the life of Joe Medicine Crow's grandfather. When he told the Scots to leave, his remains were found below Custer Hill. Near to a place called Deep Ravine, Indian accounts speak of 28 men buried there, but there are no grave markers. Was this the last stand of the Little Bighorn? Talbul, a northern Cheyenne, was there, and he says, I heard a big war hoop that soldiers were coming. Soldiers came on foot and ran right through us into the Deep Ravine. And this was the last of the fight and the men were killed in this gully. So the last fighting was not on Last Stand Hill. We saw soldiers start running down the hill towards us. Nearly all of them were afraid. I think they were so scared they didn't know what to do. They were doomed. Some of them shot their guns in the air. Ironhawk, Hunkpapasuit. This is the upper reaches of Deep Ravine. The last fighting took place here. We have Indian cartridge cases up along the sides of the ravine here, indicating Indians firing down at soldiers who were trying to hide, to escape, to evade. And we also have historical accounts, Indian and white, talking about soldiers' bodies found down here. The mystery of Deep Ravine is simply where are the men who died here? And we have looked, but haven't yet found them. Somewhere, perhaps where we're standing, are 28 bodies, maybe more, waiting to be found. It must have been a frightening experience. It must have been terrible. My feeling is war is terrible. It's a horrible thing and people had to die. People had to defend. Too bad it had to happen that way. The last fighting was a deep ravine, not Custer Hill. There was no heroic last stand. We believe this to be Vincent Charlie, a soldier who died at the Little Bighorn. He represents one of 268 men killed at the Little Bighorn. He was foreign-born, just like 40% of the soldiers were, a Swiss immigrant. He's a little taller than average at 5'10", give or take a little bit, and he's a little older, in between 25 and 30 years of age, when most were only around 22. So he does really represent many of these people. So to put a face on this skull allows us to see one person who lived and died at the Little Bighorn. I like him. I think he's somebody I'd like to know.

Vincent Charlie is now reunited with his fellow troopers in the mass grave at the Little Bighorn battlefield. Custer's remains are said to lie at West Point. More than 50 Indian warriors and an unknown number of Indian women and children also died that day. The reason why the Indians finally decided to make their last stand, because they were being pushed out of their land and massacred from here and there. So it was Sitting Bull's last stand, not Custer's last stand.

The work of Douglas Scott and Richard Fox has confirmed the Indian stories. Now, after more than a century, the battlefield recognizes not just their oral history, but also their fallen dead. In June 1876, Lakota and Cheyenne warriors defeated Custer's 7th Cavalry.

But their victory was short-lived. Never again would the Northern Plains Indians have the freedom of the plains. It was the beginning of the end of their way of life.

Transcript for:The Truth Behind Little Bighorn's Battle

Transcript for:
The Truth Behind Little Bighorn's Battle