The Rosebud Battlefield, located in Southeast Montana, offered an opportunity to
research an Indian Wars era battlefield that has not been the subject of systematic
archaeological investigations. The Rosebud has been largely overlooked in the historical
record due to the events that happened along the Little Bighorn River eight days later.
This project was initiated in 2009 with the purpose of fulfilling goals laid out by the
Montana Preservation Alliance: 1) survey beyond the park boundary; 2) create a usable
document for archaeological overview and assessment in order to guide future study; 3)
map and document historically significant areas pertaining to the battle both on state and
private land. Completing these goals as part of this thesis research provided opportunities
to use archaeology to understand aspects of the battle and to integrate historical and
archaeological evidence to closely analyze topics such as Royalls positions and to
compare the firearms analysis of the Rosebud with the firearms analysis of the Little
Bighorn. Some of the major emphasis of this thesis is the role of the Crow and Shoshone
warriors, the tactic used by Crook during the battle, and accounts of how the battle
unfolded. The archaeological evidence also uncovered unknown fighting positions not
reported in the historical record. In addition, two cartridge cases were located which link
warriors from the Rosebud to the Little Bighorn fight. Although far from being a
complete, archaeological examination of the 11,000 acre Rosebud Battlefield, this thesis
is intended to help researchers and land managers interpret the battle more thoroughly.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MONTANA/oai:etd.lib.umt.edu:etd-05282013-121217 |
| Date | 11 June 2013 |
| Creators | Milter, Thomas Andrew |
| Contributors | Kelly Dixon PhD, Christopher Merritt PhD, Kenneth Lockridge |
| Publisher | The University of Montana |
| Source Sets | University of Montana Missoula |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.umt.edu/theses/available/etd-05282013-121217/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Montana or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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