Yes,Wyo,but mutilation was also a common practice among the Lakota,Cheyenne and other tribes on the Western Plains,and it was a practice that engendered fear,horror,and hate in the Troopers.This form of treatment of the enemy may not have been in essence particularly cruel,since the mutilation was performed upon the slain,but it represented a practice in essence barbarous and incomprehensible to the European mind.It was also a practice which resulted in a horror of being taken captive for the troopers,which resulted in many battlefield suicides,notable among the victims of the Fetterman Massacre,and probably common among the last desparate few in the Little Bighorn Battle.

As far as Custer's watching the massacre from a distance,no one has ever determined exactly how the battle transpired.The only living survivors were among the Cheyenne,Lakota,and some of the Crow scouts,and the accounts differ greatly.It's apparent that Custer's plan was based on hitting the Indian Camp before the Indians could scatter. He sent Reno in from the south as a diversionary tactic to draw the mounted warriors away from the village,while he rode with the greater mass of Cavalry behind the cover of the ridge to Medicine Tail Coulee,which had been described by the Crow scouts as the shallowest crossing available for a Cavalry attack. The charge failed,in part because of the high level of the Little Bighorn,but also because there was such a mass of warriors in the camp that they were pepared for Custer's approach.Several Indians testified that Custer was dropped from his horse by gunfire at the crossing,and was carried back up the coulee to Last Stand Hill.

Several Indian descriptions are quite interesting.One survivor reported that,at the height of the battle,the gunfire was so dense that "it sounded like the popping of threads in a pony blanket as it is torn in half." Another reported that the battle lasted "as long as it takes to eat a meal without hurrying."