Two Moon Vault and supposed storehouse of lost Custer treasure (Constructed by W.P. Moncure)

Does the Lost Custer Treasure Really Exist?

Thanks to all of you who watched me on last week’s America Unearthed episode, “Custer’s Blood Treasure.” Recently, I’ve seen a few questions bouncing around about the exact nature of the lost Custer treasure. Some people have even doubted its existence all together. So, I thought I’d add in some details from four primary sources as well as some reporting by Kathryn Wright, who originally broke the Custer treasure story back in 1957. Perhaps this will shed a little light on the exact nature of the Custer treasure as well as how the story originated.

Where did the Custer Treasure Come From?

Two Moon Vault and supposed storehouse of lost Custer treasure (Constructed by W.P. Moncure)

Two Moon Vault and supposed storehouse of lost Custer treasure map (Constructed by W.P. Moncure)

The lost Custer treasure consists of about four months back pay given to the Seventh Cavalry more than a month prior to Custer’s last stand. Contrary to popular opinion, it wasn’t stored in a pay wagon and taken to the battlefield but rather, was carried into battle by the individual soldiers themselves. After the fighting was over, the Indians stripped the dead soldiers of their belongings, including their various monies. This hoard of harvested pay and other trinkets, in total, makes up the lost Custer treasure.

So, the first question we must answer is whether or not there is evidence that Custer’s men were paid prior to the Battle of the Little Bighorn. And fortunately, there is. On June 22, 1923, Sergeant John M. Ryan, who was with Major Reno during the battle, published a first-person narrative entitled, “The Narrative of John M. Ryan” in the Hardin, Montana-based Tribune. In it, he states that the Seventh Cavalry marched out of Fort Abraham Lincoln on May 17, 1876. Upon arriving at the Big Heart River, they camped for two days. Around that point, probably on the evening of May 17 itself, “the paymaster joined us under an escort of infantry, and enlivened the boys’ hearts with about four months pay.” Ryan goes on to state that, “if (the paymaster) had paid at the fort some of the troopers would undoubtedly have deserted.”

Was the Lost Custer Treasure really worth $25,000?

So, we know the men went into battle carrying a substantial amount of back pay. But how much money were they really carrying?

Ryan adds no further details about the evening. But according to Private Peter Thompson, “the blood sucking sutler (arrived) with his vile whiskey, rotten tobacco, and high priced notions. It was plain to be seen that he would reap a rich harvest on this expedition.” So, we know the sutler (who went by the name of John Smith) took at least some of the pay given to Custer’s men, including the payment of old debts, when he left the next morning.

So, how much was left? As far as I’m aware, the sole account on this score belongs to Sergeant Daniel Kanipe, who was also with Major Reno during the battle. On April 27, 1924, Kanipe wrote a first-person narrative entitled, “The Story of Sergeant Kanipe, One of Custer’s Messengers” for the Greensboro, NC-based Daily Record. In it, he states what he saw after the battle had concluded: “In all this pile of men, not a one had a stitch of clothes on. The Indians had taken it all. They must have gotten about $25,000 in money off of them, too, for we had just been paid at Powder river camp before we left on the campaign and there had been nothing to spend a cent for.”

So, that’s the origin of the “$25,000” figure that is bandied about amongst treasure hunters. Admittedly, it’s highly undependable since it’s based on one soldiers’ estimate of how much money his fellow troops collectively carried into battle fifty years after the fact. How does that $25,000 hold up under a little bit of scrutiny?

We know 268 U.S. troops (including scouts) were killed at the battle. In order to match Ryan’s $25,000 figure, each deceased soldier would’ve had to be carrying about $92 apiece, which breaks down to an average monthly pay of about $23 (this assumes none of the deceased had spent money with the sutler). It also excludes the value of any personal objects or additional monies carried by the troops into battle.

According to Private Charles Windolph’s book, I Fought with Custer, he was paid $13 per month in those days. Of course, that reference is from 1947, a full 71 years after the fact. But it matches up with what privates were paid at the beginning of the Civil War so it’s probably pretty accurate. Officers, of course, made much more money than privates. For example, a Lieutenant Colonel (General Custer’s official title) would’ve pulled in $181/month at the beginning of the Civil War. So, at first glance, an average monthly pay of $23 per deceased soldier seems reasonable to me. And if that’s the case, the treasure could very well have been worth $25,000 in total.

Was the Lost Custer Treasure just Currency? Or did it include Gold & Silver Coins?

So, we’ve established the lost Custer treasure existed. And we’ve also established that it’s value in 1876 dollars could’ve been around $25,000. But what form of currency did it take? Was it paper currency? Or were there gold and/or silver coins as well?

Ms. Kathryn Wright is the reporter who first investigated the story of the lost Custer treasure. She sought out an answer to the currency question in her original article, Indian Trader’s Cache, which was published in the Winter 1957 issue of Montana: The Magazine of Western History. Here’s what she had to say on the subject: “Not all of it was in currency. Army regulations covering 1876, which were checked for me by Raymond P. Flynn, archivist at Washington, D.C. at the request of Chief of Air Staff General Nathan F. Twining, show that the troopers were paid in gold, silver, and U.S. treasury or bank notes.”

David Meyer’s Analysis

Well, that’s all for now. I hope this clears up some of the many questions regarding this interesting treasure-based side note to one of history’s most infamous battles. Unfortunately, as is often the case when dealing with treasure stories, the details are murky and open to many questions. This is especially true since various primary sources crafted their reports decades after the Battle of the Little Bighorn had ended. Regardless, it seems likely the Seventh Cavalry carried a fairly substantial amount of pay into battle on June 25, 1876. Although the exact amount is in question, it very well may have matched Ryan’s estimate of $25,000. And that pay was probably in numerous forms, including gold, silver, and currency.

The bigger question is what happened to the hoard after the battle. And that brings us to the mysterious envelope which W.P. Moncure had once stored inside the Two Moon vault (pictured above). In her article, Wright reported seeing a couple of sentences typed on the envelope about its contents, including this one: “Hiding place and location of money and trinkets taken from dead soldiers on Custer battlefield.” Assuming the envelope still exists, it may be the only known reference to the final whereabouts of the lost Custer treasure.

 

David Meyer’s Wild West Coverage

David Meyer at "Custer's Last Stand"

Custer’s Blood Treasure (America Unearthed)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

David Meyer at "Custer's Last Stand"

David Meyer at “Custer’s Last Stand”

Date: 12/03/2014

Bestselling author David Meyer makes television debut on Custer’s Blood Treasure

David Meyer teams up with the #1 hit show America Unearthed for Custer’s Blood Treasure.

On Saturday, December 6, 2014 at 9pm EST, bestselling action/adventure author David Meyer will team up with world-renowned forensic geologist Scott Wolter in the world premiere of Custer’s Blood Treasure, the latest episode of H2’s #1 hit original series, America Unearthed. David Meyer is an adventurer and creator of the Cy Reed Adventure series. In Custer’s Blood Treasure, he helps Wolter unravel the mystery behind a legendary treasure dating back to one of America’s most infamous events, Custer’s Last Stand at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

David Meyer is the international bestselling author of the Cy Reed Adventure series. Praised for relentless pacing and thrilling, twisty plots, his books—Chaos, Ice Storm, and Torrent—have taken readers on unforgettable journeys into ancient ruins, secret bases, and lost worlds.

Official Website: http://www.DavidMeyerBooks.com

Follow David Meyer on Social Media:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/GuerrillaExplorer

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/DavidMeyer_

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David Meyer’s Wild West Coverage

The Lost Treasure of General Custer?

Update: On Saturday, December 6, 2014, I will be teaming up with forensic geologist Scott Wolter in the world premiere of Custer’s Blood Treasure, the latest episode of H2’s #1 hit original series, America Unearthed. You can read more about it here.

On June 25, 1876, General George Custer led the U.S. Army’s Seventh Cavalry Regiment against a large Indian army. He and his forces were wiped out in what became known as Custer’s Last Stand. In the process, he left behind a valuable treasure which remains lost to this day.

The Lost Treasure of General Custer?

The 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie guaranteed possession of the Black Hills, a region stretching from North Dakota to Montana, to the Lakota Indians. In 1874, General Custer was sent on a scouting mission to the area. He returned a month later, reporting gold “from the grassroots down.” This touched off a gold rush. Initially, the U.S. Army tried to honor the treaty by evicting the many prospectors. But eventually, it gave up.

In 1876, the Lakota joined forces with the Cheyenne and Sioux. Led by Gall, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse, they revolted. General Custer, along with 650 men, was dispatched to end the uprising. When he arrived at Little Bighorn River, he distributed four months of back pay to his men, some $25,000 in gold coins and paper currency.

On June 25, 1876, Custer led his men into battle against the combined Indian army. They were severely outnumbered and Custer’s poor leadership led to an eventual slaughter. Here’s where the story gets a bit odd. Supposedly, the Indians stripped the dead and stole their gold coins and paper money. They placed it in a saddle bag and buried it in a secret location. A Cheyenne chieftain named Two Moons later told the story to a white Indian trader named W.P. Moncure. Two Moons also drew him a map to the lost treasure.

The Lost Treasure Gets Lost Again

In 1936, Moncure reburied the body of Two Moons in a stone and mortar mausoleum. Twenty years later, a reporter named Kathryn Wright investigated the mausoleum. She discovered a hidden vault under a bronze plaque. She persuaded the Cheyenne to open it for her.

“Inside the vault were remembrances of Two Moons. These included a portrait of Two Moons, stone tools, arrowheads, sacred Indian relics, and a rifle belonging to one of the troopers of the Seventh Cavalry. There was also a large manila envelope.” ~ Dick Mullins, The Daily Inter Lake, July 1, 1957

A message about the lost treasure was typed on the envelope. Part of it read, “Hiding place and location of money and trinkets taken from dead soldiers on Custer Battlefield.” The last part of the envelope said it was to be opened on June 25, 1986. This would be 110 years after Custer’s Last Stand and 50 years after the reburial.

In 1957, Kathryn Wright published her story in Montana magazine and received permission to open the envelope. However, someone had already beaten her to it, breaking open the vault and stealing the sealed envelope and other artifacts. The lost treasure of General Custer has never been found. It’s possible it was dug up years ago by whoever stole the envelope. But its also possible no one ever found it. For all we know, Custer’s lost treasure is still out there somewhere, waiting to be dug up.

 

Guerrilla Explorer’s Wild West Coverage

Did Ancient Americans Hunt Mammoths?

In 1915, construction workers made a startling discovery in Vero Beach, Florida. Did ancient Americans live alongside mammoths? Did they hunt these and other giant extinct creatures from the Pleistocene epoch?

When did Ancient Americans reach the Americas?

According to the International Union of Geological Sciences, the Pleistocene epoch started 2,588,000 years ago and ended 11,700 years ago. Many animals of that age, such as mammoths, mastodons, and giant ground sloths, were larger than their modern relatives.

In 1913, workers unearthed some vertebrate fossils in Vero Beach while building a drainage canal. Recognizing them as from the Pleistocene epoch, Dr. E.H. Sellards asked the workers to keep a lookout for more remains. In 1915, the workers struck a veritable gold mine. They found at least five separate skeletons as well as numerous stone tools.

A major controversy soon erupted. The discoveries seemed to indicate that modern man had inhabited the Americas prior to 10,000 BC, which conflicted with prevailing opinion. Roughly half the scientists who examined the remains took this stance. The other half thought the skeletons came from a later era and were merely buried in the same layer of soil as the Pleistocene animals. Since dating techniques didn’t exist at the time, it was impossible to prove one way or the other. Eventually, the skeptics won the debate.

Did Ancient Americans Hunt Mammoths?

In 2009, archaeologists discovered a strange carving on a piece of bone in Vero Beach. The bone appeared to depict a mammoth or a mastodon. While the bone could not be dated, the accuracy of the drawing along with the mineralization of the bone itself led scholars to rethink the possibility of people living in the Americas during the Pleistocene epoch.

“There was considerable skepticism expressed about the authenticity of the incising on the bone until it was examined exhaustively by archaeologists, paleontologists, forensic anthropologists, materials science engineers and artists.” ~ Barbara Purdy, University of Florida

Now, a team of researchers led by Bruce MacFadden and Barbara Purdy have reexamined some of the old Vero Beach bones. Using rare earth element analysis, they’ve gathered significant evidence that people co-existed with large extinct animals such as mammoths in the Americas about 13,000 years ago.

“The uptake of rare earth elements is time-dependent, so an old fossil is going to have very different concentrations of rare earth elements than bones from a more recent human burial. We found the human remains have statistically the same concentrations of rare earth elements as the fossils.” ~ Bruce MacFadden, Florida Museum Vertebrate Paleontology Curator

It should be noted this isn’t a sure thing. Rare earth element analysis is less precise than radiocarbon dating. Still, the evidence is hard to ignore. In all likelihood, people roamed the Americas as early as 13,000 years ago, side by side with mammoths and other animals that today only live in our imagination.

The Presidential Death Curse?

In 1811, General William Henry Harrison fought Tecumseh’s Confederacy to a draw at the Battle of Tippecanoe, thus putting an end to the Native American military movement. According to legend, Tecumseh responded by setting a curse upon Harrison and the office of the President of the United States. What was this mysterious Curse of Tecumseh?

The Curse of Tecumseh (aka The Curse of Tippecanoe or the Presidential Death Curse)?

The Curse of Tecumseh (also known as the Curse of Tippecanoe) is shrouded in mystery, its exact origin having been lost to time. Perhaps the most popular version of the story is that Tecumseh sent an oral message to General Harrison via released prisoners, stating that, “Harrison will not win this year to be the great chief. But he may win next year. If he does … he will not finish his term. He will die in office.” When informed that no President had ever died in office (the United States was only on its fourth President at the time), Tecumseh supposedly said:

“Harrison will die, I tell you. And when he dies you will remember the deaths of my people. You think that I have lost my powers: I who caused the sun to darken and red men to give up firewater. But I tell you Harrison will die. And after him, every great chief chosen every twenty years thereafter will die. And when each one dies, let everyone remember the death of our people.” ~ Tecumseh, 1811

Another version of the legend is that the Curse of Tecumseh was actually uttered by Tecumseh’s brother Tenskwatawa. Tenskwatawa was known as the Shawnee Prophet, in part for correctly predicting a solar eclipse in 1806. That prophecy humiliated General Harrison, who’d staked his reputation with other Native American leaders on Tenskwatawa being a fraud. Supposedly, Tenskwatawa uttered the Curse of Tecumseh in 1836, just months before his passing.

There is also a third version of the story. In this telling, Tecumseh realized that he would die at the 1813 Battle of Thames. Before he left to meet his fate, he gave away his things and stated one final prophecy to his brother:

“Brother, be of good cheer. Before one winter shall pass, the chance will yet come to build our nation and drive the Americans from our land. If this should fail, then a curse shall be upon the great chief of the Americans, if they shall ever pick Harrison to lead them.

His days in power shall be cut short. And for every twenty winters following, the days in power of the great chief which they shall select shall be cut short. Our people shall not be the instrument to shorten their time. Either the Great Spirit shall shorten their days or their own people shall shoot them.

This is not all. Each contest to select their great chief shall be marked by sharp divisions within their nation. Within seven winters of each contest, there shall be a war among their people, either within their nation or with other nations, I know not which. Our people shall prosper only if they can avoid these wars.” ~ Tecumseh, 1813

The Curse of Tecumseh…120 Years Later

Three decades later, William Henry Harrison won the 1840 U.S. Presidential election. One month later, he was dead, a victim of pneumonia. The Curse of Tecumseh had begun. And for the next 120 years, every U.S. President elected at the end of a 20-year cycle (and during a year ending in “0”) died tragically while still in office.

  • 1840: William Henry Harrison, Pneumonia (1841)
  • 1860: Abraham Lincoln, Assassination (1865)
  • 1880: James Garfield, Assassination (1881)
  • 1900: William McKinley, Assassination (1901)
  • 1920: Warren Harding, Heart Attack, Stroke, Possible Assassination (1923)
  • 1940: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Cerebral Hemorrhage (1945)
  • 1960: John F. Kennedy, Assassination (1963)

In the 1980 U.S. Presidential election, Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter. 69 days later, on March 31, 1981, John Hinckley Jr. shot and wounded him, puncturing his lung. But unlike his predecessors, Reagan survived the attempt and lived out two full terms in office. Twenty years later, George Bush defeated Al Gore in the 2000 U.S. Presidential election. In 2005, he survived an assassination attempt of his own when Vladimir Arutyunian’s hand grenades failed to detonate.

Guerrilla Explorer’s Analysis

The Curse of Tecumseh is a modern-day example of dating mining and numerology. For centuries, people have attempted to create models linking up number sequences with real world events. But while such models look promising when backtesting old data, they tend to fall apart when subjected to new information.

In 1980, the Library of Congress supposedly researched the Curse of Tecumseh story and concluded that “although the story has been well-known for years, there are no documented sources and no published mentions of it.” (On a side note, I was unable to find any confirmation of this study so take it with a grain of salt).

In the unlikely event that the Curse of Tecumseh was something tangible, it appears that it was lifted with President Reagan’s term of office. But some observers believe differently. They claim that the Curse of Tecumseh encompasses both death as well as mere assassination attempts. Thus, they think that future presidents could very well suffer from the curse, either with deaths or near-death experiences.

So, has the Curse of Tecumseh been extinguished? Or will more lives feel its wrath?

Only time will tell.