There’s some truth to that I think. Some weapons experts will refute that. I personally believe the single shot Springfield’s the Cavalry were issued were horrible for that type of warfare.
There was a battle in Colorado about 8 years before this one called Beecher’s Island. About 50 troops held off over 1,000 Sioux and Cheyenne in that battle and it was mostly because of the repeating rifles those troops were issued. Spencer Carbines had 7 round capacity.
The Army had field trials in 1872 or 1873 and went to the US Springfield single shot rifle .45-70. IMHO, that was a bad move.
Also note that prior to LBH, every single trooper carried his rifle ammo in pouches or sacks. After this battle, the battle belt was standardized or common since most troops fought on foot and couldn’t keep going back to the satchel on the horse.
A real reason they probably got overwhelmed besides numbers was that they lost all of their ammo when the horses were stampeded.
Spencer Carbines were used in the Civil War.
The 7th should’ve had them at LBH.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_repeating_rifle
I think Nash was the cartoonist who did the political cartoons decrying how poorly equipped and too small the Western army was. He claimed it was inadequate to defend the homesteading and other population.
“...The Army had field trials in 1872 or 1873 and went to the US Springfield single shot rifle .45-70. IMHO, that was a bad move...” [Roman_War_Criminal, post 30]
The design of the M1873 rifle (aka “Trapdoor”) descended directly from the M1868 and M1870 rifles, which were reworked from the muzzleloader rifle-muskets left over in huge numbers, from the American Civil War. Designed by Erskine S Allin, chief engineer at the National Armory at Springfield, Massachusetts, the M1873 was selected as a less costly alternative to competing designs, of which the highly-praised Remington Rolling Block was the most prominent.
Historian Joe Bilby, widely recognized as an authority on small arms of the 1860s and 1870s, compared the Trapdoor and the Rolling Block and judged them equally good.