I went to the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument today, an hour's drive southeast of Billings.
The landscape between Billings and the battlefield was outrageously barren and beautiful. More cows than people. So different from New Jersey, where I live, the most densely populated state in the union. The sky was big, really big. I saw a Jacob’s Ladder, from sun to earth, that spread 180 degrees through the sky and shone for an hour.
I intended to trod the battlefield as sacred ground. After I parked in the lot and got out of the car, I saw a sandy-haired Euro-American man trodding among soldiers’ graves, shouting into a cell phone and using expletives. Some people have absolutely zero sense of the sacred. I can’t get far enough away from them.
In the Park Service’s museum, I bought a copy of Dee Brown’s “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.” I think that was the best possible place to buy a copy, other than Wounded Knee, South Dakota itself. When I finish Undaunted Courage (nearly done), I'll start this seminal book. Being perverse, I refused to read it when it went galactic and everybody talked about it in 1970. I've always resisted what the crowd was doing, which means reading great books 40 years after they were first published.
The battlefield was windswept and simple. White markers had been placed where U.S. soldiers fell; brown markers for Indian chiefs. It was a solemn and beautiful place, a stark reminder of what happens when cultures clash.
The monument at the top of the hill marks where Custer was buried for a while. Then his body was taken to West Point, New York. The monument has the names of the officers, soldiers, and Indian and civilian scouts that were killed inscribed on it.
The black marker is where Custer's body was found. The white markers are for other U.S. soldiers.
This is a marker for an Indian warrior.
The Indians were protecting their wives and children and their way of life. They were just as much patriots as Custer’s doomed men, who had attacked the Indian encampment full of women and children.
“What would you do if your home was attacked?” Sitting Bull, the Lakota Sioux leader who was at the village, asked in 1881. “You would stand up like a brave man and defend it.”
Sitting Bull said, “I have seen nothing the white man has that is as good as the right to move in the open country and live in our own fashion.
“You are fools to make yourselves slaves to a piece of fat bacon, some hard-tack, and a little sugar and coffee,” Sitting Bull also said.
I hope that this wisdom is seminal within me, to lead a different kind of life.
In 1991, President George H.W. Bush signed a bill to create an Indian memorial to honor the Native American participants and to change the name of Custer Battlefield National Monument to Little Bighorn National Monument. It commemorates the five tribes who fought here: Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho; and the Crow and Arikari who served as U.S. Army scouts. It's called "The Spirit Warriors," and it's by Oglala Lakota artist Colleen Cutschall.
My friend Bill said I could post this comment for him:
ReplyDeleteSo off to see the Custer Battlefield N.M., i am so jealous. Nothing much to see, really, from what i understand from reports of others that have visited....but the story is fabulous and the characters have taken on mythic status.
Reno may have been a little drunk when he charged the village, and just imagine his terror as his aide's head was blown off as they conferred on the battlefield....before the hell-bent retreat...! I can't help but think of the mighty knights of King Arthur in Monty Python's Holy Grail epic, running away screaming " RUN AWAY !! RUN AWAY!!
if you do indeed do some trodding, and happen upon what might be a spent bullet lying upon the ground, pick it up nonchalantly, slip it into your pocket and keep it as a found treasure....this action is of course illegal and not recommended but what a piece of history to claim..!
It would be very unlikely to find any metal detritus on the battlefield, the battlefield was swept by metal-detectors after a large prairie fire and all of the found, spent ordnance was plotted by archaeologists to establish fields of fire and types of firearms employed by the combatants. What amazed everyone was the superior firepower of the indian horde...
The most amazing scene confronted Terry and his relief column two days after the massacre...they approached a hillside littered with carcasses and thought that what they saw were dead buffalo in the grasses...these were the carcasses and corpses of Custer and his men and their horses...all of the bodies were stripped of all clothing (and mutilated) and the indians employed their scavengings in a bizarre masquerade....
As the Indian encampment broke camp to depart, Reno and Benteen observed from their hill, where they had found refuge, a perfect troop of well outfitted cavalry, including guidons (signal flags), riding in front of their position...at first they thought that they were being saved by oncoming reinforcements...of course it was a great joke performed by the indians...!!!
Bill, I watched the National Park Service video (twice, in order to capture a Sitting Bull quote) and NONE of what you described was mentioned.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry you can't be here to walk over the battleground (not allowed, and the sign says watch out for rattlers!) and describe what REALLY happened.
hmmmm...a bit of revisionist history? i wonder on whose part?
ReplyDeletegreat pics. love the pics!