From Edgar Leoni's _Nostradamus and His Prophecies_.

C7 Q28The captain will lead a great herdOn the mountain closer to the enemySurrounded by fire he will cut such a pathAll escaped except thirty put on the spit

This whole quatrain is about Major Marcus Reno's attack on the Greasy Grass Indian encampment from the south and the following Weir Point sorties during the Battle of the Little Bighorn.  

Before I proceed I will give an overview of the battle.

On July 25th, 1876, at about 12:00 noontime, Custer divided his SeventhCavalry into three attack prongs before attacking the Indian camp.  Onebattalion under Fredrick Benteen was sent west on a scouting mission.Another battalion under Marcus Reno was ordered to attack the Indiancamp from the south while Custer and his battalion moved up to attackthe Indian camp from the north.

It was 3:00 when Reno arrived at the south end of the Indian camp andprepared for an attack. Reno dismounted his men, formed a skirmish lineand fired a few volleys before an overwhelming Indian force charged theoutnumbered battalion, forcing him to hastily fall back and form asecond skirmish line by a bend of the Little Bighorn.  Here Reno heldout for a little while longer until overwhelming Indian pressure forcedhim to withdraw from his second position and retreat onto a nearby bluffoverlooking the valley.

Meanwhile Benteen decided that his scouting mission was useless. Heheaded up north to link up with the rest of the unit where he though hewas needed more.  He was not aware of Custer's plans of attacking theIndian camp in a double pincer attack.  Nor was he aware that Custer'splans had gone entirely wrong.

He rode north following the sound of gunfire until he reached Reno'sbesieged men on the bluff a little after 4:00.  Reno was in state ofpanic and Benteen took over command.  Both men really didn't know whereCuster was except that he was somewhere up north and probably in serioustrouble.  Both commanders were reluctant to come to the aid of Custer.

According the "The Soldiers", pg. 216, part of Time-Lifes's _Great West_series:

"Finally a junior officer, Captian Thomas Weir, who admired Custer asBenteen decidedly did not, set off down stream without authority. Heand his company reached a high point -known afterward as Weir Point-from which he could look down on both the Indian encampment and thefield to which Custer had gone.  By this time the heavy fighting haddied down.  Weir could see no sign of Custer's men, but he did seeclouds of dust and warriors milling about in the distance.  Meanwhilethe remainder of the command moved forward in the direction of Weir

Point.  On reaching the vantage point Beteen, for the first time, beganto realize the enormity of the situation.  Across the river he said hesaw at least 1800 lodges."

"The Indians saw the soldiers on Weir Point and moved against them,gliding up the slopes and around the troops on both sides.  Clearly thesituation was untenable, and the men retreated back to their position onthe bluff.  More men were lost in the movement and still another soldierwas left to the Sioux."

The fighting on the bluff is described in Richard H. Dillion's _NorthAmerican Indian Wars_ as follows (pg.212):

"They easily chased them back to their bluff.  The troopers fought wellto save their lives but, even in rifle pits, they suffered 18 moredeaths and had 43 wounded.  Enemy fire did not slacken untilnightfall, when the besieged soldiers watched a wild scalp dance belowthem, illuminated by the glow of camp fires.  In the darkness theofficer and 16 men trapped in the cottonwoods (during Reno's twoprevious valley skirmishes) slipped safely through Reno's lines."

"With the first light of dawn, the siege was tightened.  Benteen andReno had to throw back two assaults.  Bravely Benteen led a few counterattacks to keep the Sioux and Cheyenne at a respectable distance."

"...Reno and Benteen as yet did not realize that Custer's force had beendestroyed to the last man of the original 215.  The Army buried thedead, took 52 wounded in wagons, and fell back to fort Abraham Lincoln.Reno's casualties were 47 killed and 53 wounded.  Estimates of Indianlosses ran all the way from 30 to 300."

With this all being said, I will now begin my interpretation of thequatrain.  The first two lines describe Captain Weir's sortie to WeirPoint in his effort to reach Custer.  Line three probably describes theretreat from Weir Point back to the bluff in the face of renewed Indianassaults after they had finished destroying Custer's force.

The final line is not as obvious.  "All escaped except thirty" may notsimply mean just surviving the battle, but rather to the number ofcasualties who were left unrestrained during the hasty retreats from theLittle Bighorn Valley and Weir's Point.  It was always desirable toretrieve all casualties when fighting on the Plains because Indianwarriors usually mutilated bodies left behind ("put on the spit").

If we accept Dillion's casualty figures as accurate, then we can deducethat Reno must have left behind 29 men -many of whom were probablywounded who were unable to mount their horses- in the valley during histwo skirmishes (47 dead - 18 dead = 29 dead). But who was the thirtiethman to be left behind to the Indians?

It is not certain if the casualty figures Dillion gives us after theretreat from Wier Point, 18 dead and 47 wounded, are the casualtyfigures for just the bluff siege or if they are the casualties from boththe Weir Point sortie *and* the bluff siege. If the later case is true,

then the 30th man to be left behind to the Indians was probably the manleft behind during the retreat from Weir Point.

Skeptics eager to debunk my theory can best do so by looking at officialUS Army accounts of the battle which provide accurate casualty lists andask the following question: How many dead and wounded were leftunrestrained during the two valley skirmishes and the Weir Point sortie?

So called Nostradamus experts who seek to debunk my theory ontranslation grounds are merely taking advantage of other people'signorance of the subject so they can conveniently bend word meaningsinto making the quatrain mean something entirely different, using the"I am the translation expert and this is a corrupted transcription"excuse as their pretext.

Finally, are there any people here who are familiar with Indianprophecy -or better yet, who claim to have prophetic insights of theirown?  If so, we (alt.prophecies.nostradamus) need some alternativevoices from all the egotism, religiously biased messianic gibberish, andplain silliness one finds in abundance over here. We (or at least I)would be interested in hearing what you have to say.

Brian Ghilliotti

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