The Guidon

Each company of United States cavalry had (and still has) a fork-tailed flag called a guidon. The US cavalry guidons had three designs on them; the first from 1834 to 1862, the second from 1862 to 1885, and the third from 1885 until now.

https://flagspot.net/flags/us%5Ecav.html

All three historic guidon designs, and many imaginary ones, have been seen in various cavalry and Indians movies, usually the wrong design for the fictional date of the movies.

I have an idea for a story about the Great Sioux war of 1876-77, set "halfway between real history and the wild west of the imagination".

One of the wild west aspects of the story would be considerable exaggeration, for example in the number of hostile Sioux and Cheyenne and the number of soldiers involved. So if even a single company from a regiment took part in the real Great Sioux War, I will have the entire regiment participate in the fictional one. Thus each column will consist of one or more entire regiments.

In real life when the Seventh Cavalry rode out as part of the Dakota Column in May 1876 it was the first time that all twelve companies of a regular army cavalry regiment were in the field together since the Civil War of 1861-1865. But I can simply change that by adding companies to each regiment in the field to bring it up to a full regiment.

Except for the Second US Cavalry. In real history four companies of the second Cavalry were stationed in western Montana in the department of Dakota and were part of General Gibbon's Montana Column in the Great Sioux War, while the regimental headquarters and the the other eight companies of the Second Cavalry were stationed in Wyoming in the Department of the Platte. Thus five of the companies of the Second Cavalry were in the Battle of the Rosebud on 17 June 1876 while four were with the Montana Column and three were at various fort sin Wyoming.

Since my policy is to make my story as consistent as possible with as many cavalry and Indians movies as possible, I decided that during my story of the Great Sioux War the Second US Cavalry would be stationed farther south, to agree with She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950), where some of the cavalrymen wear caps with the number 2 over crossed saber insignia.

I decided that the entire Twelfth Cavalry would be part of the Montana Column and the entire Twentieth Cavalry would be part of General Crook's command from Wyoming. In real history congress created the Twelfth Cavalry in 1901 and I haven't found any record of a Twentieth US cavalry though there were some higher numbered regiments.

And what does that have to do with Chief Crazy Horse? Watching an online trailer for Chief Crazy Horse, I saw that two scenes included a guidon with "20" in the upper part and "A" in the lower part, the guidon of Company A of the Twentieth US Cavalry. By an amusing coincidence Chief Crazy horse also puts the 20th Cavalry in General Crook's command.

Added 06-24-2019 After watching Chief Crazy Horse a few more times I think the guidon had "US" in the upper part. A "US" seen backwards on the back side of a flag can be mistaken for a "20" when the flag is flapping.