Talk:Wagon Box Fight

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50-150 indinas killed?!?... No, only 6 (six), 5 Lakota and 1 Cheyenne. I'm sorry. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.26.11.29  (talk • contribs)  10:28, November 23, 2009
 * All the reliable sources we have quote 120 casualties from Powell's official report. Thats not to say that Powell was right (in fact, he was most likely wrong), but we don't have any sources that state otherwise.  Find some and we can add them in. CosmicPenguin (<smalltalk• WP:WYOHelp! ) 02:00, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * If the reports of six dead and six wounded Indians were accurate, as Hyde believed them to be, he said they inflicted more damage to the protected and well-armed defenders at the camp and the corral because they killed a total of six soldiers and four civilians. This does not make any sense ... 95.90.184.157 (talk) 00:45, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

G.B. Grinnell gives an account of two participating Cheyenne warriors, giving a number of ~400 warriors and 3 dead (Sioux and Cheyenne combined). A reprint can be found in "Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 1865-1890: The long war for the Northern Plains" by Peter Cozzens, accessible via google books. Though it's quite normal in recorded history that "official" casualty estimates for the enemy side are to high by a wide margin (see e.g. Battle of Britain), it's really astonishing that in regard of the indian wars the numbers of indian casualties given by the "white" side are sometimes orders of magnitude higher than the numbers given by the "red" side (and these high numbers then tend to end up as the "public" versions of history). I find it rather illuminating that the reciprocal is not nearly the case. A nice commentary regarding the veracity of indian accounts can be found in the foreword to G.B. Grinnells Fighting Cheyennes. It boils down to "If you can get a plains indian to trust you enough to tell you his version of what happened, and if you are able to get around the culture/language barrier, than you can assume that it will be as accurate as an eyewitness account can be." (78.42.137.120 (talk) 09:53, 1 December 2009 (UTC))

It is universally understood that the one group best qualified to state who went into a fight, did what in the fight, was wounded, killed or came back unscathed is the group these people belong to. In the heat of battle you mostly don't have time to make a reliable assessment of how many enemies get killed or wounded - unless you happen to wipe out the entire enemy force, are in control of the battlefield afterwards and have the time for a body count. That's not what we're talking about in 99% of the fights in the Indian wars, certainly not here. Numerous Indian sources, gleaned from participants, agree that six warriors got killed and six wounded, and that the Indians didn't view this fight as a defeat at all. We reakly have to get a semblance of balance into these discussions. I will make an effort when I have time. Lookoo (talk) 09:07, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Have a look on the dicussion here https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/wagon-box-fight-1867 ... this sounds more realistic. 95.90.184.157 (talk) 00:35, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
 * No way the hundreds of Lakota and Cheyenne left off fighting 26 whites after only 6 killed. And the howitzer must have killed someone too.  I think with the length and character of the attacks, there must have been at least 120 killed and wounded.  Maybe a lot more.
 * I'm not certain of "over 1,000"; but only six killed is a ridiculous fantasy that makes the Lakota look like cowards. Which they obviously were not.  I simply don't trust these allegedly "Lakota accounts" of this battle.  It's just out of character for both the Lakota and Cheyenne.
 * From the wyohistory link above, "But there are accounts of people who later talked about the battle with Red Cloud. They said the chief told them that the count was much higher. Gen. Grenville M. Dodge interviewed Red Cloud in 1885, and he told him more than 1,100 Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapahos were killed or wounded at the fight. A Sioux medicine man, whose name was not recorded, visited the post of Col. Richard I. Dodge at North Platte in the fall of 1867. He told the colonel that the total of dead and injured was 1,137, and that figure was widely reported the same year as the battle." 47.187.211.200 (talk) 18:52, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Obviously, whether said by Red Cloud or not, an estimate of Sioux casualties of 1,000 is ridiculous. Plains Indians were casualty shy. They avoided casualties by not attacking an enemy head-on and they withdrew to fight another day if the objective looked too costly.  That is by way of saying that 6 dead and 6 wounded among the Sioux is plausible.Smallchief (talk) 20:01, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Ambrose Quote
Can someone actually confirm the quote attributed to Stephen Ambrose that occurs at the end of this article?

"This was the last large charge Crazy Horse ever led against whites occupying a strong defensive position. He had learned that Indians with bows and arrows could not overwhelm whites armed with breech-loaders inside a fortification."

I am disturbed by the inclusion of "white" in there, since not all settlers, soldiers, and civilians were "white."

CopaDave (talk) 17:51, 31 October 2016 (UTC)


 * It's attributed to a book. Perhaps the data you want is in the bibliography?
 * And perhaps Crazy Horse or whomever supplied that data just grouped all non-Lakota as "whites"? 47.187.211.200 (talk) 18:56, 20 May 2023 (UTC)