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.

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