Wednesday, July 10, Day 79
This is a day we had planned for. I don't know how many of you know that John and I have been involved in a commemoration of the Battle of the Little Bighorn since the 100th anniversary of the battle July 25, 1976. It started when we were living in Washington DC and John belonged to an Army Reserve Unit which took an interest in the Seventh Cavalry and Custer. There were several parties over the course of our time in DC, each one on or near July 25. One year, we even got a letter from a distant relative of Custer's saying to his knowledge, we were the only ones having such a gathering. That gathering languished over the years, but has been resurrected for the last three.
The Battlefield, known for a long time as Custer's Last Stand, is now called Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and is run by the National Park Service. The change reflects an interest in including information about the Indians who fought there. After all, they won!
We expected to spend a couple of hours here. Instead, we spent the entire day, with a thought, at least for me, that I would like to come back the next day. But such is our interest, and not everybody is so inclined.
The first thing you see upon entering the visitors center is this headdress memorializing Lori Piestewa, the first Native American Woman killed in Combat. She died in the same Iraqi battle where Shoshana Johnson and Jessica Lynch were taken captive.
Behind that memorial is this large painting showing the battle.
The terrain isn't much to look at. It is filled with valleys, ridges and washes carved by the tributaries to the Bighorn River, which is down below. But all of that was critical to how the battle was fought.
The technique is controversial - between those advocating for this to be an undisturbed memorial to the fallen and those who advocate for more knowledge about the battle.
On the hills are markers where soldiers were presumed to have fallen. But our tour guide says that
these two markers were probably for the same person. There would have been two soldiers digging the trench to provide for burial, each one forming a mound of dirt on either side of the hole. Later surveyors of the site mistook this to be two graves instead of one. This conjecture is among the many changes to the original recounting of the battle that have taken place over the years.
This is the memorial erected to the soldiers of the 7th Cavalry. After the battle, the bodies of the officers were taken elsewhere for burial and the soldier's remains stayed here. Custer's is buried at West Point. It is sad to learn how young a lot of these soldiers were, and how many of them were immigrants (42% were foreign born) They had never seen an Indian and didn't know what they were fighting for.
Custer and Sitting Bull. Crazy Horse was here too.
The original park was dedicated in 1881 and there is a national cemetery here, with 5,000 graves for soldiers who served in wars from Custer's time through the Vietnam War.
This is part of the new Indian Memorial that was selected in 1997. It was, and remains very controversial, particularly among military personnel and even some Indian tribes. It sits down a knoll, much like the Vietnam Memorial in DC and can easily be overlooked. It is called "Peace Through Unity."
There were many accounts of the battle given by the Indians, most of which were discounted at the time. There were also accounts from soldiers in the other regiments besides Custer's who were in the area and fought at different sights. Custer and the 7th Cavalry lost all 262 men, and there were about 100 Indian men, women and children who also died.
There were a number of different tribes represented at the battlefield. They had an Indian village down by the river . The Indians were also fighting other tribes like the Crow, who had taken their buffalo hunting grounds and they were all pushing for the remaining land. Custer had several Indian scouts who were from tribes that had lost their lands. They were hopeful that if Custer won, they could regain them.
This is called the spirit gate, with it's opening facing the Custer Memorial. It is meant to provide a passage way between the spirits of the soldiers and the Indian ceremonial area. Although the Indians supposedly gathered all their dead and buried them elsewhere, there is a grave site within the battlefield area that is kept secret for the Indians. When I asked about it, it's existence was denied! These areas are closed off for Indian ceremonies.
Right after the battle, soldiers came back and dug shallow graves for all those soldiers killed.
Within a short period of time, the remains were exposed to the elements due to wind, rain, and animals.
The officers remains were taken away and the soldiers reburied as best they could, given that the bones were now scattered. Also among the bones were those of many horses. The soldiers had shot their own horses to use as barricades. So the horse and soldier bones were commingled and as they protruded from the ground, it was an alarming sight. Eventually, all of the horse bones were gathered and put into a mass grave. Periodically, the archaeologists are still finding human and horse remains on the battlefield.
This is in the valley of the Little Bighorn River. The houses encompass the area of the Indian encampment While estimates vary widely, there were between 8 and 10,000 Indians here from various tribes, all being threatened with removal to reservations even though the US government had given them this land. What changed was discovery of gold in the Black Hills. People flocked to the area since there was a depression occurring and they were desperate. Guess who had verified there was gold? Custer! And then the Army was charged with protecting the gold seekers from the Indians.
On the hills above is the sight of the Custer battle. It covered about five miles of ridge line, down to the river and in the ravines behind the hills.
We are headed toward a local campground after a hot, exhausting day at the Battlefield. We are steeped in what we have learned. Besides Lincoln and the Civil War, more books have been written about the Battle of the Little Bighorn than any other American battle. We did our part by buying four books which will become our primary reading materials for awhile.
The sign to our campground. What else would it be called?
This is where the various Indian Tribes - Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapahoe had gathered for their annual spring Sun Dance festivals and hunting. An estimated 15,000 horses were milling around here and could be seen by Custer's Scouts as a huge white cloud. They still underestimated how many Indians there were. The Indians had scouts out all over and knew they were coming, so they were prepared for them.
It's after 5 o'clock and the temperature gauge in the camper is 101, outside 111!
Up on the hill above our campground is a huge American Flag. We are still within the area of the battleground. This land is owned by the Crow Nation, with parts of the battlefield being on Crow land.
It is such a quiet but hot evening. The time of year isn't too far from that during which the battle took place. It is easy to imagine all the dead and dying soldiers, Indians and horses laying in this area in the hot summer evening. Other regiments pinned down by the Indians after the Custer Battle had to endure the heat with no water for another two days. It's a very reflective and thoughtful setting.
I would hope that our flag stands for progress in our dealings with the Indian tribes. While they won this battle, they lost the war, because they were indeed rounded up and forced onto reservations. The
Battle of the Little Bighorn represented a turning point in the Great Plains Indian Wars. The government doubled down on their efforts and within six months, all Indians were on reservations.
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