1) Thursday, who leads a charge into an canyon, mounted in fours, against a vastly superion , entrnched enemy ---
OR
2) Custer (upon whom the character is based) -- Who divides his command into three columns (before knowing the disposition of the enemy), and charges across a river at an encampment, where he is outnumbered atleast 10 to 1.
"Richard's in good hands, Robin. The best in England."
A) Custer divided his troops into three columns because he knew where the Indians were and what they were doing and how many were there.
B) There were between 1,200 and 1,500 Indian combatants facing just under 700 members of the Seventh Cavalry, a figure that includes Indian scouts and armed civilian contractors. At most he was outnumbered by just over two to one. This would be negated by the fact that the Indians would be dividing their time between fighting and protecting their women, children, and elderly.
C) Custer was part of an expedition to round up the Indians and return them to the reservation. He reached the Indian camp three days before the rest of the army arrived. He could have asked the Indians to wait, but it is highly unlikely that they would have accepted such an invitation.
D) Custer's intelligence was accurate and his strategy was correct given his orders and resources. He had every reason to believe that he would be successful.
E) Comparing a real person to a fictional character is a waste of time. The real person is limited to what he has done. The fictional character can do anything his creator wants him to do.
F) Movies about or based on historical characters are poor sources of history. Read a book.
custer lost the element of surprise. his indian scouts told him there were more hostiles than the soldiers had ammunition. the indian scouts changed back into their "civilian clothes". these are all good clues.the hostiles had many repeating rifles,while custers men were armed with single shot breech loaders which were prone to jam when hot,and hot they were. he should have gathered everybody up and headed into a wind for long range volley fire,or practically anything but what he did. audacity will only take you so far.
shareThere have been literally hundreds of books, articles, documents and films on the subject of Custer's last fight and all of them have just fuelled the controversy surrounding the facts of what actually happened to him and his five companies after he split his regiment into three. Historians have debated and conjectured for years on Custers orders/decisions but the truth is no one really knows. Even the Indians who fought that day did not know it was "Yellowhair" they had massacred, it was many days after the fight that they discovered who it was they had killed out there on the greasy grass which subsequently generated dozens of "I killed him" claims by dozens of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors. All highly unreliable and extremely inaccurate.
nd12strings gives a good synopsis and I will just add a few background facts to support his/her comments. Custer was not a fool regardless of some authors claims of a reckless rash insubordinate glory-hunter. One only has to look at his Civil War record where his tactical prowess and courage served him well in many set piece engagements against Confederate troops. But these skills that stood him in good stead in Maryland and Virginia did not transfer well to the Great Plains, he did not understand Indian fighting anymore than American officers who performed well fighting Germans in WWII understood fighting Communist guerillas in Vietnam.
And making Custer the single fall guy definitely removed the spot-light from other officers on that campaign whose performances were abysmal throughout. Also and important to the Custer saga was the year. 1876 was not only the cennential it was a presidential election year and Custer had been a fierce critic of the very corrupt Grant administration, the Little Big-Horn massacre reverberated across the States and such an event normally gets blamed on the incumbent government hence the very swift communiques from the War Department, that Custer had dis-obeyed orders and caused the unnecessary loss of his command, allowing Grant to distance himself from "Custers blunder" and ensured the Republican Party continued their tenure in the Whitehouse.
History has treated Custer unfairly and films such as Fort Apache/Little Big Man and Custer of the West and many other versions have only added to the Glory Hunter Syndrome so one cannot answer the question based on fictional screenplays. John Ford often quoted that he had killed more Indians than Custer, on film he was most probably right!. My point exactly!
having read more on Custer,he becomes a somewhat more agreeable character.
there is a dual bio of Custer and Crazy Horse that is excellent.
No doubt Ford was familiar with the works of Mrs. Custer,Libby,who gives a good account of life on the frontier.er was afraid the Indians would dissappear
she was also the keeper of her husbands legacy,so no one was so unfeeling to dispute her while she lived her very long life.
Fort Apache was probably the first revisionist look at Custer after her death.
Anyway,on purely military grounds Custer thought he was doing the right thing.
I perceive that Custer was probably better like tha Thursday. Custer certainly did'nt drink,nor was he a stickler for regulations.
As Ford said Thursday was a type of Custer.
I would say that you are the big dummy..No one knows what happned at Little Big Horn for a cetainty..Col. Thursday was a fictional character with no resemblance to Custer or anyone else..Grow up!!!
shareCuster was a worse commander than Thursday in several ways:
1. He refused to take artillery and a Gatling gun to the fight, figuring it would only slow down his charging columns. No one ever painted a valorious portrait of a general standing behind a machine gun.
2. He faced an enemy he knew had just knocked the snot out of Gen. Crook's force, and which his own scouts said vastly outnumbered him. (The 500-plus members of the 7th Cavalry were outnumbered by more than three-to-one, even counting camp followers and the odd journalist riding with the Seventh.) As he proceeded into the Little Bighorn Valley, his Indian scouts sang their death songs, knowing what was up. Custer paid them no mind.
3. He refused to wait for reinforcement despite the fact that help was on the way and he was under orders to find and observe, not attack (General Terry was just a day or so away by forced march; Custer could have held his ground and pinioned the Sioux and Cheyenne tribes against Terry's infantry but preferred to risk his men's lives by going alone.)
4. As he moved forward, he split his command into three groups, each well out of sight of the other. (There was a fourth group, the pack train, with over 100 soldiers, much like Capt. Yorke's force in the movie). This despite the high odds he faced, the obvious fact he was under observation, and the problem of coordinating an attack on hilly terrain with out-of-sight subordinates.
You can go on and on. You don't have to be a revisionist historian to get it, either. Custer was roundly disliked in his command, as Thursday was in his, but not because of his martinet ways so much (he could be exacting) as his tendency to get his own people killed, and not just at the Little Bighorn. His commands during the Civil War had one of the highest casualty rates in the U.S. Cavalry. At *beep* River in 1868 he lost sight of a column led by Maj. Elliot, subsequently wiped out in a battle that otherwise saw few white casualties. One junior officer, Frederick Benteen, claimed Custer abandoned Elliot and his men to their deaths, a view shared by others. Benteen was at the head of one of several cliques in the 7th Cavalry which compromised Custer's ability to command. Custer, a gloryhound concerned with his own monument-building, let the bulk of the command rot while concentrating his charisma on a coterie of yes-men who followed him to his grave.
Give Thursday credit: No one liked the guy, and he didn't play favorites trying to get their like. He just hated being at Fort Apache, and had nothing but contempt for the Red Man he was called upon to fight. (Custer by contrast relished his duty; but the point in the movie is made clear Thursday wishes he was fighting the Plains Indians like Custer was, not the "digger Indians" as he calls the Apache. Also, Custer didn't drink, but could dance. Thursday is the reverse.
Okay, Thursday is a fictional character. But he's a useful model to study in overreaching command, much like Custer is in real life.
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Nick -
It was widely acknowledged at the time, and in the years since, that Thursday was meant to represent Custer to show what happens when power is wielded without wisdom.
Henry Fonda said basically the same thing. John Wayne said so as well.
Don't let some of these posters get you riled up.....
Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway. John Wayne
I've got to admit, Thursday's idiotic decisions and refusal to listen to any voice of reason around him kind of hurt the movie's effect on me. I love John Ford, John Wayne, and of course Henry Fonda, and as usual the film was brilliantly shot but Thursday charging into definite suicide seemed kinda ridiculous and made me a little mad, really.
shareTo me, that's the whole point of the movie, and yes, it ticks me off every time I watch it!!
Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway. John Wayne
Thursday is not that unrealistic, compared to some idiotic generals in real life. Custer, some would argue, was one of them.
sharebstar56
I've got to admit, Thursday's idiotic decisions and refusal to listen to any voice of reason around him kind of hurt the movie's effect on me. I love John Ford, John Wayne, and of course Henry Fonda, and as usual the film was brilliantly shot but Thursday charging into definite suicide seemed kinda ridiculous and made me a little mad, really.
Tactically at least, Thursday's closer to Fetterman than Custer.
"Some men will say we are traitors. Some will say we're patriots. Both will be wrong."