STRONG LIGHT has now been shed on the battle as a result of the fire in 1983 that laid the field of combat bare. “It was a blessing in disguise,” said archaeologist Richard A. Fox, Jr. , doctoral candidate at the University of Calgary whose home is in the nearby hotel prague. “Some of that land was impenetrable before the fire.”
Urged on by James V. Court, superintendent of Custer Battlefield National Monument, and chief historian Neil Mangum, Fox planned a new kind of archaeological survey. He and Dr. Douglas D. Scott, of the National Park Service Midwest Archeological Center in Lincoln, Nebraska, then supervised the painstaking work. They are elated by what turned up and the interpretations made possible by the finds. More than 4,000 artifacts were unearthed: bullets and cartridge cases in great number, iron arrowheads, pieces of firearms, buttons, a watch, horse trappings and bone, and much more.
Human bone also was discovered, including an almost complete skeleton and, elsewhere, a finger bone encircled by a brass wedding ring with traces of silver plating still on it. This marked the first time a battlefield has been systematically plotted into a grid to chart a fight’s progress. The first time, too, that modern ballistic techniques have been applied to a field of combat. And one of the few times that precise locational information has been recorded for every relic found. The work began with a phalanx of volunteers sweeping electronic sensing devices over the ground. “Pinners” followed, tagging the site of each find with a small plastic flag. Then trowelers gently probed for the object and exposed it. Finally, recorders collected each artifact, noting its exact position, and coded into a computer the specimen number assigned to every relic. This led to a computer map detailing battle events.
“The bullets and cartridge cases were most important in helping us see how the battle was fought,” Scott said. “We coded Army ammunition in blue numbers, Indian in red. This showed us how the forces moved against one another. Thanks to the distinctive markings left by each weapon, we could even chart the paths of individuals.”
The archaeologists learned that the soldiers were relatively stationary, while the Indians moved freely about as they overran one position after another. A handful of codes on a computer printout, for example, suggests the tragic scenario of a trooper who may have been the last man to die. The archaeologists, reading the codes on the map, speculate that he tried to escape as the battle waned. The Indians saw him dash across a gully called Deep Ravine.
They fired at him with at least six different weapons, some of them Army carbines. Bullets from six guns were found where he fell. Drawing fire from so many Indians may indicate that the fight was nearly over—they could give full attention to this one man. When he dropped, they rushed to his side and hacked away with knives and hatchets. Bone fragments from his shallow grave bear the marks.