Every Custer battalion weapon became Indian property. This did not account for cases removed by a cleaning rod or other objects nor for jammed rifles cleared away from the immediate battle area and outside the very limited archaeological survey area. A jam required manual extraction with a knife blade or similar tool, and could render the carbine version of the weapon, which had no cleaning rod to remove stuck cases, useless in combat except as a club.Īfter the annihilation of Lieutenant-Colonel George Armstrong Custer's battalion (armed with the carbine and carbine load ammunition) at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876, investigations first suggested that jamming of their carbines may have played a factor, although archaeological excavations in 1983 discovered evidence that only 3.4 percent of the cases recovered showed any indication of being pried from jammed weapons. This sometimes jammed the rifle by preventing extraction of the fired cartridge case.
Another issue was the copper held in leather carriers created a green film that would effectively weld the case into the breech of the carbine when fired. The rifle was originally issued with a copper cartridge case and used in the American West during the second half of the 19th century, but the soldiers soon discovered that the copper expanded excessively in the breech upon firing.
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