Was the civil war a bad war?

Answer 1

It helped with the north (good) by helping the US by putting and end to slavery. the bad part was it cost the lives of millions of US and CSA (Confederate States of America) all for freedom of colored people. The most bloody battle took place at Gettysburg

Custer was not killed by arrows. According to Lieutenant Godfrey, "He had been shot in the left temple and left breast. "There were no powder marks or signs of mutilation." This emphasis on the lack of powder burns and mutilation was meant to dispel rumors that Custer had committed suicide and had been horribly mangled by the Indians. We'll never know for sure, but it must be kept in mind that the Indians did not know whom they were fighting, and that any mutilation would have been a random thing. Most of the dead troopers, some 212, found with Custer, were mutilated, however, for Plains Indians believed that an enemy arrived in the spirit world in the same physical condition he left this one, and so the dismembering of the freshly killed implied a special vindictiveness.

Aside from scalping and the shooting of bullets and arrows into the bodies by the warriors themselves, most ritual mutilation was done by women who had lost family relatives in recent combat.

It should be remembered, however, that mutilation was also practiced by whites against the Indians, most notably at the Sand Creek Massacre (http://www.nps.gov/foda/Fort_Davis_WEB_PAGE/About_the_Fort/Sand_Creek.htm)

In one of the most sordid affairs between whites and American Indians, more than 200 Cheyennes, mainly women and children, lay dead following Col. John M. Chivington's destruction of Black Kettle's Southern Cheyenne village nestled along Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado, on November 29, 1864. The Chivington massacre included the mutilation of Indians, including severed genitals. Black Kettle's village had camped near Fort Lyon with the understanding that they were friendly, an American flag flew from the village.

The greatest mystery to me of Little Big Horn will always remain this: it was one of the few times the Sioux and Cheyenne, who had far more common heritage than different and certainly far more common concerns than different, ever entered together into a significant (if unintentional) military alliance, and you see the results. This was never attempted again. Why? (I know there's an answer, I'm just not familiar with it- my guess would be the inability of the Plains to sustain that large a group for very long.)

The Cheyenne and Sioux were of course culturally somewhat similar, as there tended to be a considerable cultural convergence among the purely nomadic groups of the Great Plains. However they were in different linguistic groups ( Algonquian vs. Siouan ). The Cheyenne were actually a bit closer to their perennial allies the Arapaho, who were also Algonquian speakers. Both the Cheyenne and Arapaho were split into Northern ( roughly along the North Platte ) and Southern ( roughly along the upper Arkansas ) tribal groups ( with a fair bit of intermingling ).

It was predominantly the Northern Cheyenne and Northern Arapaho that were involved in the wars with the Sioux and they appear to have been allied with them from ~1840. In addition to the Sioux Uprising of 1876-1877 ( where the Northern Cheyenne and a few Arapaho made up maybe ~1/6 of the Amerindian forces present ), they had also participated with the Sioux in the Bozeman Trail War of 1865-1868 ( something of a success ).

The Southern Cheyenne clashed with the U.S. army as early as 1857 and from at least 1864 ( with the outbreak of the Cheyenne-Arapaho War ) were involved in wars with the U.S. throughout the 1860's and into the 1870's ( they participated in Red River War of 1874-1875 and some may have straggled north afterwards to join the hostilities there ). They were always allied with the Southern Arapaho and frequently with the Kiowa and Comanche throughout those years.

So these alliances weren't rare - they just weren't enough and were at any rate sometimes confounded by the habit of different autonomous bands to negotiate separate peaces at various points. The biggest players were the various branches of the Dakota/Sioux and the Comanche, which were the two largest groups of nomadic Plains Indians. The smaller Cheyenne ( and somewhat smaller yet Arapaho ) tribes played slightly secondary, if still very significant roles in the fighting.

Answer 2

Define "bad". There are many different aspects the American Civil War - you need to be much more specific as to what you are concerned with.