Little Bighorn 1876 in 20mm (part 3) - The Sioux/Cheyenne foot warriors and some extras

 

The Indian camp close to the Little Bighorn river was so big - one of the biggest in Plains Indian history- that many warriors were most probably far from the horses at the begginning of the battle and thus went after the 7th Cavalry on foot. 

This group is made of Airfix re-scaled copies and Atlantic already painted for decades with some new Revell and Airfix re-scaled copies (white primed). My old style of block painting is not upgraded here to the shade painting I now use due to the old figures presence in big numbers. In fact in the warrior stands (10 stands with 6 figures each) only 19 figures are new with 41 old ones already painted. 

The mix of brands assures that the stands become quite "irregular". The Plains Indians had no formal military group training but hunting the bison (and later the white man) gave them an individual ability in warfare that helped group cohesion. 

Excluding three Atlantic figures all others are Hong Kong re-scaled Airfix copies from the original 1/32. In good time they did it as the original Indians in HO scale from Airfix were showing its age and the re-scaled figures didn´t loose much from the extraordinary 1/32 original figures. 

These smoke- makers Atlantic figures are not working for the communications enterprises of those days as may be thought but instead they are burning the dried grass in order to provoke smoke that will scare the US cavalry horses (that will flee with most of the ammunition ...) and will allow for small groups of Indians to aproach the cavalrymen unnoticed. 

These cheap casualty markers are simple figures with broken weapons or parts of the body. The trick for them to become reasonably dead is to mount them in big blobs of glue from a hot glue gun. This will adapt the body parts to the terrain for extra realism. 

With some blood added they make the part. The grass can be carefully applied disguising broken feet or limbs. 

Finally some horses were added to the collection and these will be markers for disrupted or retreating groups of mounted warriors. 

Next: The mounted 7th US Cavalry.