The cable channel National Geographic has a series called "Drain the Oceans". They just aired a really good episode about the Wild West. They had a story about unearthing a sunken river steamboat on the Missouri river. It was amazing how much and what kind of cargo they were hauling. Also, most, if not all, of the passengers survived. One was an energetic young lady who would end of owning and running a thousand acre ranch at the age of 50. Sounds like a character out of a LL novel.
Also had a story about archaeological work done on Custer's Last Stand. Using bullets and bullet casings found at the scene of the battle, they could determine who had what guns and the strategy of the two sides. The Indians appeared to be armed to a large degree with Winchester repeating rifles while the soldiers had single shot carbines. It was a pretty one-sided battle and not just because of the numbers of combatants on each side.
#2. "RE: DRAIN THE OCEAN" In response to Reply # 1
Good question. Last year, all of the shows used technology to create CGI's to show what would be seen if certain areas of the ocean could be drained away to reveal what was really on the bottom in order to show what happened in historical events like the sinking of the Titanic, famous naval battles and other catastrophes.
In the above, the story about the riverboat used CGI to drain the Missouri River to tell the tale about the sunken riverboat. How was the boat constructed? How was the boat sunk? What kind of goods were being shipped to meet the demands of the western movement?
The story about The Little Bighorn indicates to me that they decided to expand their show options beyond the oceans by using the same or similar technology to explore other historical events. They used technology to explore the battlefield to look at the differences between what has been entered about the battle into the pubic record versus the oral tradition of the Indian tribes present at the battle. What they found was that there were significant differences that were substantiated by aartifacts found by the researchers.
