Apache,  I find your research and the efforts involved fascinating.   Even if one is not attracted to the model in particular, it provides a tutorial about how to research and follow up leads to find the obscured history of some of our rifles.  I hope to see more at another time.  Way to persist!  Tim.

This historical  Winchester 1866 traces an important thread quite possibly from the 7th Cavalry  and the Little Big Horn  fight through to the Wounded Knee confrontation in 1890. The historical accounts available now indicate that there was bad blood between the Oglala, Miniconjou and other sub tribes of the Sioux nation and the 7th Cavalry-US Army. Suffice it to say that Theodore Roosevelt , knowing the facts-held up the promotion of Col.Forsyth for some time. This 1866 carbine provides a significant link between the 7th Cavalry, the Native  American Sioux, and the history of the American West.

As a retired Army officer, the full account of the 1890 conflict at Wounded Knee does not sit well. It becomes in the final analysis a prolonged action of retribution against unarmed women and children, with only a handful of mostly unarmed male tribal members. This Winchester carbine is singularly unique in that it  could well have been one of the few surviving artifacts of both  the Little Big Horn  and Wounded Knee conflicts.

Ho-ka-hey  Apache!

HRM

Khe Sanh  71-72  5th Special Forces Gp -MACVSOG