Page 14 THE VILLADOM TIMES II • January 30, 2013 Little Bighorn were so mutilated that identification was a serious problem. Could Finckle and Finkel have been the same person? Not if you want the Little Bighorn to be an American Thermopylae, a battle of peerless heroes standing boot to boot as they were slaughtered by sadistic savages. If you are up to honest factual analysis, the idea that two German-speaking six-footers with the same name, the same hair and eye color, and the same handwriting were the same guy is pretty obvious. We are then offered a touching digital painting of an officer and some troopers in full uniform and a description of the battle with another outright fake: “Also the real Sgt. Augustus Finckle of Company C was of different height and age than the poser Frank Finkel.” August -- not Augustus -- Finckle was measured as 6 feet 1/2 inch by an Army doctor when he enlisted. Frank Finkel, who claimed to have been at the Little Bighorn, was described as six feet tall by his second wife and by neighbors. In civilian photographs, Finkel looks six feet tall and he looks to be in his sixties in 1921. Had he been born in 1844, he would have been 77 when the photograph was taken. Had he been Frank Hall, he would have been five-foot-seven and 82 years old. Check out the photograph by the steps in Wikipedia and see what you think. The contributor follows with the information that “Custer and the 209 men with him were all killed.” Wiki dumped this because everybody who knows the battle knows there was never a satisfactory body count. Custer led 209 men into the battle, but the count was 197 dead soldiers according to the burial details. Two corpses were found miles from the Army lines. They ran for it and did not make it. Indians reported that others tried to surrender -- not a good idea. One body was reported 25 miles from the battlefield and a dead horse -- possibly Finckle’s, definitely a C Company sorrel -- was found 70 miles away. The idea that everybody died in lockstep is history for Flag Day orators. Wiki thought so. They dumped it based on the evidence. Another dump: “There were hundreds of survivors found the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the little Bighorn. C Troop alone had over 20 survivors.” Yes, but these were C Company men on detached duty or sick leave, not in the encirclement. C Company provided every plausible fugitive except one, Sergeant James Butler of L Company who first ran for it, got caught, and then fought to the death with stubborn courage -- once he knew he was doomed anyway. Corporal John Foley of C Company was also pursued in flight and shot himself in the head far outside the perimeter. These are documented facts accepted by every scholar. They did not turn up in the Finkel Attack story. They do not turn up in Wikipedia either, but neither do the “hundreds” of survivors and “20” C Company men who were never encircled because they were somewhere else. Curious, too, is that if there were 20 survivors, only one dubious informant told an officer he had seen Finckle’s body while the man who tried to find Finckle’s body, a Medal of Honor winner and future first sergeant, couldn’t find it. The Finkel Attack contributor’s entry was qualified by Wiki: “Those who disagree with Finkel’s claim argue that the United States Army knows the fate of all the people who have been suggested as possible false names for Finkel.” Note the term “argue.” Nobody ever found out what happened to Frank Hall after he went over the hill a year before the Little Bighorn, but since he was five foot seven and could not speak German, he was clearly not the six-foot “Prussian” August Finckle -- though Wikipedia did not mention that Finckle and Finkel shared the same height, hair color, eye color, and signature. What did Wikipedia save? Wiki listed and partly quoted the account by the Lakota warrior Rain-In-TheFace: “One Long Sword escaped though. His pony ran off with him and went past our lodges. They told me about it in Chicago and I saw the man there. I remembered hearing the squaws talk about it after the fight.” Wiki listed that entire article in the references so readers can look it up themselves. Wiki also provided access to online facsimiles of documents from the Columbia County Courthouse in Dayton, Washington, and an article I wrote for Wild West Magazine that confirm large parts of the Finckle-to-Finkel handwriting trail. Wiki offers an independent and favorable account by Ken Robertson from the Tri-City Herald of 1983, which I never saw before I wrote the book. Robertson spoke to Finkel’s relatives and people who knew him and reported his general size and the fact that he had a solid reputation for honesty and was not showoff or a drunken windbag like most of the bogus “Custer survivors.” Wiki listed other sites that take a yeah-but-maybe attitude but never looked at the handwriting, height, or language skills, and one that did not. The objective reader who goes over the surviving two-page Wikipedia story of Frank Finkel’s purported escape has a chance to make up his or her own mind without being buried by the categorical four-page flag-waving rhetoric of denial and misrepresentation of fact. Why is this important? Somebody at Wikipedia is actually doing his or her job. The ability to bury any idea that challenges the status quo or popular prejudice with an avalanche of fake facts has always been key to crooked politicians and “scientists” who sell bogus cures, dismiss global warming, or deny cigarette smoking is linked to cancer. Wikipedia did the right thing with fact-checking and references to a wide range of sources. Perhaps Wikipedia can help save America. Hard as it is to believe, some people do not like me or approve of me. I was confronted with this fact when someone successfully filed a four-page biography of Frank Finkel on Wikipedia. Finkel was the lone survivor of Custer’s Last Stand, whose narrow escape I documented in my previous book, “Custer Survivor.” Since Wikipedia has replaced encyclopedias for the vast majority of Americans, I thought my doom was certain. Then something happened that cynics and schoolteachers claim never happens. Somebody at Wikipedia checked the four-page submission for facts and relevancy. The Wikipedia scholars threw out the lies, junk, and irrelevancies, and Finkel escaped again. The status of historical truth in America is now much safer than it once was. Wikipedia did the right thing. Wikipedia takes some tough hits because the online news available through other computer news links is so zany. Who really needs to hear celebrity gossip about celebrities nobody has ever heard of if they read books and prefer PBS to cable? Who really needs all those teasers that promise a rare treat and then offer disappointment when you read the story? Gifted as I am with the instinct for self-preservation that enables most second-string predators survive long enough to breed, I made a copy of the original story. I can now compare the defunct portions of the original invidious story with the portions that survive to argue a strong case for Finkel. Wikipedia dumped: “This man claimed to have enlisted in the 7th Cavalry in late October of 1874 using the name Frank Hall and was assigned to Company C. By coincidence, George August Finckle, born in Berlin, Germany in 1844, had already enlisted in the 7th Cavalry in Chicago, on 27 January 1872 and had been assigned to Company C. That man was promoted to the rank of sergeant and was killed at Little Bighorn where his body was identified by three men, one whom later won the Medal of Honor. Part of the Little Bighorn today is called Finley-Finckle Ridge where these Company C sergeants were found dead with some of their company.” Wikipedia dumped this for good reason. The signature of (George) August Finckle does not include the name George. The “Prussian” August Finckle signed in American handwriting, not Prussian script, which is illegible to most Anglo-Saxons. Finckle and Finkel just happened to be almost exactly the same height, and they were both more than two inches over the height limit for the cavalry, which renders them distinctive. Finckle and Finkel both had pale eyes and dark hair and they were both fluent in German. The original contributor failed to mention that Charles Windolph, Finckle’s best friend, searched the battlefield for his body and could not find it. The man who first said he saw it was dismissed as a fabricator in his old age by Colonel W.A. Graham, a leading expert, and his facts elsewhere do not check out. The officer who heard him say it, Edward Godfrey, was from a different company and probably took his word for it. Most of the dead at the Can Wikipedia save our country? Letters to the Editor Dear Editor: I have a concern about the ordinance regarding “potentially dangerous dogs” that the Ridgewood Village Council is considering for passage at the Feb. 13 meeting. My concern is the ordinance is reactive instead of proactive. A dog is not deemed dangerous until that dog has caused harm to a person or to another dog. And what are the reasons a dog would be considered dangerous? Dog owners need to be educated regarding dog behavior and what it means. Classes are available in dog body language and how to socialize a dog properly so the pet greets other dogs and people appropriately. I took a class given by Kathy Santo in Ramsey; her program was educational and informative. I propose that the village arrange for such a class to be one of the requirements for obtaining a dog license each year. Charging a $700 fee to owners of dangerous dogs does nothing to change that dangerous behavior. Education is the key. Owners are the first line of defense in preventing aggressive behavior. Owners of dogs with aggression issues often think their dogs are friendly. However, once a history on the dog is taken it becomes evident that the dog has been showing aggressive tendencies all along but the family did not know how to read the signs. Once the family becomes fluent in “dog” they are able to, at the very least, prevent future problematic behavior from occurring. Another concern is the criteria for declaring a dog dangerous. Is the dog who is greeted by a child brandishing a cookie deemed dangerous when the dog tries to take the cookie “being offered” and accidentally gets the child’s Concerned about ordinance hand in its mouth? What about the dog that defends himself from a child who is getting in the dog’s face, and has given lots of warning signs before finally defending himself with a bite? In my opinion, these examples are not the fault of the dog but of the uneducated parent or dog owner. Diane Seymour Ridgewood