Little Bighorn 1876 in 20mm (part 1) - first batch of Sioux/Cheyenne mounted warriors

This is another project kept inside boxes for decades. Since childhood Errol Flynn and more recently Gary Cole, Rodney Grant  (Rosanna Arquette also, even if with too much clothes on) made me wish to replicate in miniature the events of the war of 1876 and surrounding events. Reading on the Plains Wars is fascinating and simultaneously sad, firstly on its own as it speaks of a culture´s destruction and secondly brings to mind the old idea that some feel entitled to a promised land just because it comes on an book. Funnily enough is also the atempt to portray the Indians as nations of savages that were always fighting with each other and thus the white people were more than entitled to do the same with them and steal their lands. What they forget is that the Europeans were doing the same in a scale never seen before and also dying constantly for independence. Also forgotten many times is that the internal Indian wars (Crow Vs Sioux, for instance) were provoked by the shrinkage of Indian lands by the white man´s expansion to the West and the constant lack of treaty breaking due the finding of gold and simple greadiness. 

For this period you can find an enormous amount of information on the Web as the Americans tend to treasure every button found due to their short story. In order to see beautiful models of this war go to Matakishi's Tea House for instance. 

This group is made of old Atlantic Indians some painted decades ago and others just now taken from the storage boxes. Also some GIANT copies were mixed in. The basing is according to Battles for Empire II set of rules by the great Chris Leach. 

This Giant figure copy is maybe older than me. More on this later for it to become more "HO". 

The Atlantic Sioux are very Hollywoodesque miniatures but in group they are lively and colorful as you tend to forget the wrong details like boots instead of moccasins. 

In this first group I used a group of GIANT figures but they had to go for a number of changes. The first three figures are clearly Mohawk due to the hair style and some extra long hair was lazily placed with the same hot glue that was gluing them to the bases. Not the best solution but passable. 

The second change is on the horse´s size as the one to the right had its legs cut in order to go along the smaller ones of Revell, Airfix and Atlantic. This simple change made me gain a few more dozen Indian horses which are not easily found in quantity in the other plastic brands with Plains Indians. 

The third change is to deal with the hollowness of GIANT horses by filling it with a hot glue gun. 

Next: More Little Big Horn or Bir Hakeim