Something for the weekend: Gary Owen (1808). The battle song of the 7th Cavalry. It was first published in 1808, but it was being sung and jigged to by Irish troops far back into the 18th Century.
Bonus:
One Hundred and Fifty Years Since the Battle of the Little Big Horn
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
The venture was doomed from the start. The troop put their confidence in a vainglorious narcissist of abject cruelty (Washita), intensely unqualified, bottom of the class at West Point with Presidential delusions of grandeur. It could end no other way.
Considering the backstory of white greed and bad faith and gross treaty-breaking, it was one of the few times the good guys won.
The Indians were many things but “good guys” when it came to war they were not. Most tribes conducted war, especially with other tribes, with a savagery that would have elicited applause from the Mongol hordes. Making treaties, as if they were peer nations, with tribes that hadn’t reached the Iron Age was complete folly since the chiefs who signed the treaties lacked the authority to bind their tribes. Rapid assimilation into American culture was the best they could hope for. The most successful tribes recognized this. A lesson my Cherokee ancestors took to heart, over coming even the Trail of Tears, to endure as the largest tribe in our time.
One of the most interesting accounts of this slice of US history I have ever read.