The Battle of Little Bighorn, which raged on the rolling plains of Eastern Montana on June 25-26, 1876, is one of the most analyzed battles in American military history. In this engagement, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, commanding the 7th Cavalry, clashed with the combined forces of Sioux, Lakota, and Cheyenne fighters. It’s a story of miscalculation, cross-cultural confrontation, and firepower—a story in which the Springfield Model 1873 “Trapdoor” rifle comes not only as a standard-issue gun but also as a battlefield technological mistake.
During the Indian Wars, the “Trapdoor” rifle was the leading edge of fire innovation. Succeeding the muzzle-loading rifles of the Civil War, the Springfield Armory of Massachusetts began to manufacture a succession of breech-loading rifles, the pinnacle of which was the 1873 model, which used a .45-70 cartridge. This cartridge fired a 405 grain bullet with a whopping muzzle velocity of 1,350 feet per second—a lot of power that could possibly change the outcome of any hand-to-hand combat situation.
But inherent design shortcomings and the ammunition selected would conspire to test the effectiveness of the rifle. Its single-shot operation, necessitating manual loading for every cartridge, was a major disadvantage. This weakness was compounded by the copper cartridges of the rifle, which were susceptible to heat expansion with each round of firing, jamming and time-consuming to rectify a deadly drawback in the midst of combat’s chaotic heat.
Troops at Little Bighorn would attest to the rifle’s strength and precision, with Brigadier General John Gibbon going as far as to state the M1873 was “first rate.” However, despite all it had to offer, the “Trapdoor” did not fare so well when matched against the repeating rifles of the Sioux and Cheyenne. The Springfield could be shot accurately out to 300 yards at roughly 12 to 15 shots per minute. But that is paltry compared to the Winchester and other lever-action repeating rifles’ rapid-fire shooting rate of the tribal warriors during the battle, says Charlie Steele, a seasoned gun dealer, reminiscing about the ill-fated day at Little Bighorn.
It wasn’t only the rate of fire that slowed the Springfield. The rifle’s susceptibility to jamming from the copper cartridges’ expansion due to heat left large numbers of soldiers during the crucial times of the battle unarmed, trying to clear their rifles by any means necessary. This grim disadvantage was emphasized by Trooper William C. Slaper of Company M, 7th Cavalry, who told of the arduous process of clearing jammed rifles and then delivering them to other soldiers on the firing line.
