Teribus, I think maybe you're not paying close attention--I believe I said above that nobody credits the figure of 20,000. If you would like to see a detailed analysis of the probable size of the village, try the first chapter of Lakota Noon by Greg Michno. He examines a whole lot of different estimates, plus the number of tipis that would fit in X number of acres, etc, complete with grids. He has come up with about 3,000 all together, about 1,000 of whom would be warriors. If you would like to find out how Plains Indians dealt with killing and preserving buffalo, there are a lot of good anthropological studies that go into that in some detail. It is, after all, how they made their living, and they were good at it. They were gathered at the Little Bighorn for the summer buffalo hunt, and one reason people tend to think that the village was larger than it really was is that a portion of it had already started to move on when Reno attacked. When Gibbon and Terry came up on the 27th, they saw the marks where the village had been, but they also saw the marks from the part that had moved away a bit, so it looked like the village had stretched for about 4 miles. Michno says more like a mile and a half.

Nitpicking guest--actually, I'm having fun. If you're not, you don't have to monitor this thread. Of course, this is what I do for fun on the other forum, and if you guys think this isn't appropriate for Mudcat, we can always take it to lbha. Or not. I mean, isn't this why it's divided into Music and B.S.? And this is definitely the finest, purest B.S.

Shambles--did Errol Flynn ever play Jack the Ripper? Of course, he could have learned proper slashing style from the Lakota--very similar! Maybe Jack spent his younger days living on the Plains!