At the time of
the massacre of Custer and the 7th Frank Grouard read smoke signals
in the sky and reported a battle was going on and the Indians were winning.
General Crook had
sent Lt. F. W. Sibley and twenty-five men to locate the Indians. Frank Grouard
and Big Bat Puerrier led the troopers. Sibley, recently out of West Point, was
told by Crook to do whatever Grouard
said, but Sibley still would not believe a group of Indians could win a battle
against the army.
So did Smoke
Signals really convey messages or was it something Hollywood made up?
Maybe more Hollywood
than fact. But if you can see much smoke from an Indian campfire it would
indicate they were not worried about anyone seeing it-therefore all is well. I
have books in my personal library that explain how to build a smoke signal box
to send real, American Indian smoke signals. I think this may be more modern
day Boy Scouts than Indians. Smoke may have been used as a predetermined signal,
such as, If you see smoke keep away or come on in, but I doubt any tribes had
any real Morse code of smoke signals.
This means when
Grouard saw the big smoke he knew the Indians were celebrating, a guess, maybe,
but an educated and correct one by a truly great scout.
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