My friends joke that I have enough Cavalry Carbines to form my own cavalry company. X Company?


I have two other 7th Cavalry carbines; one from Wounded Knee and The Bloody Pocket at Drexel Mission, and another from Private Charles Anderson, 7th Cavalry, C Company under Tom Custer.


Then I have a fake Cavalry Carbine. I'll bet it would fool most collectors. Why did I buy it? The antique firearms in my collection are artifacts of history. I can hold my latest carbine in my hands and feel that it was once held by some young trooper, scared, and fighting for his life. I can hold a Colt revolver that was carried by a Union Army officer from Illinois at the siege of Atlanta. I'm afraid to shoot them and others in my collection in case something happens to them. The fake carbine is not an artifact of history and has limited value, neither historic nor monetary. I can shoot the fake and not worry about it.



I also have a stone club that was gifted to my family from a family friend, Jake Herman, from Pine Ridge. It is Oglala Lakota, mid-1870s, and it was in a family for generations and reportedly used to crush the skulls of the dead 7th Cavalry troopers after the battle.