Forums at The Military Horse

Calendar wrote:May 10

1868 A Remount arrives at Ft. Leavenworth from St. Louis, where it will be named Comanche. It received the U.S. brand upon its arrival, but it would be soon sold for $90.00 to an officer of the 7th Cavalry, Miles Keogh.

Comanche is repeatedly, if inaccurately, claimed to be the "sole survivor" of the Custer's command at the Little Big Horn, which ignores of course that many of the men in Custer's command served with Reno and Benteen that day, and only the men under his direct field command were killed in the battle. It further ignores that many 7th Cavalry horses were just carted off by the Sioux and Cheyenne who used them, with the presence of many 7th Cavalry horses being noted by the Northwest Mounted Police after the Sioux crossed into Canada. Inquires by the NWMP as to whether the U.S. Army wished for the NWMP to recover the horses were met with a negative reply, although at least one of the horses was purchased by a Mountie and owned privately.

I guess I should have known that officers could purchase Remounts directly from the Army, but I didn't. Interesting to know that.

Did this continue until the end of the horse cavalry era?

Does anyone know the usual price for a horse in those days? $90 seems like a lot, but I don't know much about the equine economics of the 1870s.

Kelton Oliver wrote:Does anyone know the usual price for a horse in those days? $90 seems like a lot, but I don't know much about the equine economics of the 1870s.

My Handy-Dandy Inflation Calculator puts $90 in 1870 to $1,600 in todays dollars.

I would have thought $10 for the horse , $40 for a good saddle ?

Video with sound.

Caption from criticalpast.com

"Horses being auctioned in Los Angeles, CA. Horses of US 2nd Cavalry Division gathered for the auction. A man rides a horse as people look on. A young boy buys a horse for 97 dollars."

http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675 ... ng-a-horse

ksadler wrote:Video with sound.

Caption from criticalpast.com

"Horses being auctioned in Los Angeles, CA. Horses of US 2nd Cavalry Division gathered for the auction. A man rides a horse as people look on. A young boy buys a horse for 97 dollars."

http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675 ... ng-a-horse

You can see white saddle pressure marks on the back of several of the horses.

ksadler wrote:Video with sound.

Caption from criticalpast.com

"Horses being auctioned in Los Angeles, CA. Horses of US 2nd Cavalry Division gathered for the auction. A man rides a horse as people look on. A young boy buys a horse for 97 dollars."

http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675 ... ng-a-horse

That's in 1944 however. Very interesting (particularly as the war was still on, and yet they were disposing of horses) but $97 in 1944 was worth quite a bit less than $90 in the late 19th Century. Surely the price didn't remain fixed for a very long period of time?

A horse named Comanche survived the Battle of Little Bighorn despite being shot seven times

This is an interesting article with some good photographs.

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/10/ ... en-times/