Belle Caused Custer's Last Stand

In "The Little Big Horn" I pointed out that it was historically improbable that General George, stationed in the Southwest, would try to get to the Little Big Horn before Custer did.

A number of internet sources say that the town of Yerkey's Hole "is" in New Mexico, fictionally speaking.

The good news is that it is possible for a place in New Mexico to be directly south of the Little Big Horn River, which would make the distance just a straight north-south line and as short as possible.

The bad news is that the Little Big Horn River extends from about 45 degrees North to about 45 degrees and 40 minutes North, while New Mexico extends from 31 degrees 20 minutes North to 37 degrees North.

So even if Yerkey's Hole is directly south of the Little Big Horn and not a hundred miles east or west of it, the distance between the town and the nearby fort and the Little Big Horn would be about 550 to 950 miles as the crow flies. And it would be much more as the trail winds!

The real columns in the Great Sioux War started in May from points only about 300 miles from the Little Big Horn, and it took them nearly a month to find and battle the hostiles on June 17 and June 25 to 26. So how could General George hope to reach the Little Big Horn before Custer if George started from two or three times as far away?

Actually I just thought of a way that it might have been plausible in real life. If General George was stationed in northern New Mexico he might have been "only" two or three hundred miles away from the nearest railroad, which had just reached Pueblo, Colorado in March 1876.

So General George could have marched to the nearest railroad station in Colorado, and then taken a thousand mile detour which would turn out to be a shortcut, taking the railroad east to get a northward connection to the Union Pacific Railroad which would taken them west to a station almost due south of the Little Big Horn. From There General George could march his men hundreds of miles north toward the little Big Horn and glory - glory of one kind or another.

If General George marched north from the line of the Union Pacific railroad at about the time that most of General Crook's troops did, and if his command was undetected by General Crook's command or by the hostiles, they could reach the Little Big Horn before General Custer did and General George could hog all the glory of victory or heroic defeat and not share it with anyone.

But if General Crook's scouts detected General George's command it would be all over for his Custer-like glory hunting. If Crook had seniority he would take command of General George's column and unite them with his column and march north to seek the Sioux. Hundreds of Crook's best fighting men had left his command temporarily and would not be back for weeks. Until they returned Crook would not risk seeking out the hostiles with the mere nine hundred cavalrymen he had left, since a much larger force had been just been barely adequate to hold off the Sioux and Cheyenne at the Rosebud on June 17. General George's men would be welcome reinforcement.

And if General George had seniority and refused to unite with Crook, Crook would simply march his own command close to general George's men, knowing that General George would desperately need Crook's aid if he found the hostiles.

Or perhaps General George planned to take his men by railroad and riverboat to the spot on the the Missouri River closest to the Little Big Horn and march due west toward the Little Big Horn, hoping to avoid any entanglement with General Terry's forces.

Or General George might have rented riverboats to take his men up the Yellowstone River close to the mouth of the Big Horn River leaving just a short march to the Little Big Horn.

So it would have been theoretically possible for General George to try to race General Custer to the Little Big Horn, in real life and thus I guess even more so in the movies. Especially if somehow General George was the only commander who knew that the Sioux were on the Little Big Horn ahead of time. And thus when Belle tried to keep General George's men at Yerkey's HoOle by faking an Indian uprising she was not only endangering the lives of those local Indians, she may also have doomed Custer''s men to death and perhaps saved the lives of General George's men.

So in Dirty Dingus Magee it looks like Belle was responsible for Custer's Last Stand.