Posted on 05/07/2012 1:52:47 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Death never dies here.
It just keeps getting more interesting, more beguiling. More, well, alive. Alive in every cringe-worthy detail, in every clue about its causes, in every shard of evidence waiting to be spliced to another shard . . . and another shard until a picture starts to form, an image assembled from nuggets of information collected decades or centuries ago.
Death, at least for the doctors and history buffs who gather each year at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, is the coolest of puzzles, leading them to the coolest of theories. Could Abraham Lincoln have been saved? (Yes.) Was George Custer as much a victim of a personality disorder as the Indians he was fighting? (You betcha.) What turned Florence Nightingale into a recluse? (She might have been bipolar.)
Theyve been at it for 18 years, poring over autopsy records, consulting historical texts and lobbing questions at nationally recognized experts who fly in for an annual conference hosted by the schools Medical Alumni Association that has turned into a melange of old gore, old guts and old glories. Death might scare you, but to Philip Mackowiak, the professor who dreamed up the conference, mulling human expiration no matter how ancient can be a tremendous amount of fun. These folks were House way before House was House, but unlike the riddle-solving television doctor, their preoccupation is with the dead rather than the living.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Custer’s mistake started with his failure to follow Gen. Terry’s orders. He was not supposed to start a general action until Terry and Gibbon’s column approached the Indian village from the north. Custer’s column cut across from the east far north of where he supposed to. Thus he arrived early and from the wrong direction for the planned pincer movement.
My ancestor was nowhere near Little Big Horn, but he was a scout for Custer at the Washita River.
The Custer of the Civil War and the Custer of the Indian Wars seems to me to be two very different people. Men who served with him and loved him during the Civil War ended up hating his guts out West. His court martial in 1867 and his abandonment of Maj. Elliot at the Washita come to mind as two examples of actions that seem at odds with the Custer of the Civil War.
Was he a "head case?" Beats me. But when people who had known him for years turned against him that indicates something had definitely changed in the man.
FWIW, I don't believe Custer had a clue that Black Kettle was anywhere in the area. According to Capt. Albert Barnitz, the cavalry cut a trial identified by their scouts as "hostiles" because it lacked any dog tracks. Apparently dogs did accompany hunting parties, but not war parties.
The cavalry column followed the trail through the night to an indian encampment and set up for their attack in the dark. They attacked at first light, so I doubt they even saw Black Kettle's U.S. flag until it was too late. Black Kettle may have been completely peaceful, but there were other hostile bands up and down the same river. Major Elliot could tell you. I don't for a second believe Custer and Co. deliberately set out to destroy a peaceful band of indians.
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Thanks nickcarraway . |
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