Day 3 Custer's Last Stand

Today was our Battle of Little Bighorn Total Immersion Day. The timing of our vacation centered on being at the Little Bighorn National Monument for the 135th anniversary of the battle on Saturday, June 25. We figured we'd better arrive early so we pulled into the monument at 8:00 a.m. There weren't many people there at that time and we wondered a bit what was going on. Not to worry, by 8:30 people were streaming into the battlefield. The Little Bighorn College offers guided tours through the battlefield and onto the Crow Reservation to the site of the Reno-Benteen battle. The guides are college students who do a very nice job.

Back at the Visitor's Center, we walked up to Last Stand Hill where Custer and his men made their final stand and where they died. The hillside is topped by a large marble pillar placed which marks the final resting place of the enlisted men who fell during the battle. On the hillside and throughout the battlefield are white markers denoting where soldiers fell. Most of them don't have names inscribed. Those that do are officers, scouts, civilians or enlisted men who did something extraordinary during the battle. Following the battle the survivors in the Reno-Benteen company quickly buried the dead in shallow graves. Around 1881, the bodies were exhumed and buried in a common grave at the top of Last Stand Hill and the marble cenotaph was erected. ( I may be a little off on my dates.)

In 1996, an Indian Memorial was commissioned and erected on the back side of Last Stand Hill. According to Enos Poor Bear, a Lakhota elder, the monument is not only to pay tribute to the Indian warriors who died at Little Big Horn but to promote power through unity of all races. Recently, red markers have been placed around the battlefield to mark where warriors fell.

The battlefield is also home to a Veterans cemetery and has graves of soldiers from all wars throughout the years. There is a red marble monument commemorating the death of soldiers and scouts of the second cavalry during the so-called Indian Wars. On the monument it mentions the hostile Indians in the narrative. Down at the base of the monument is a little marker that explains and apologizes for the use of the word "hostile". That really kind of offended me. Why does the NPS have to apologize for something written over a hundred years ago. It smacks of revisionist history to me.

We ate lunch at a picnic table at the Bighorn County Historical Museum. It is a beautiful place with about 50 restored buildings brought in from around the county. For those of you from Wichita, it is kind of a mini Cowtown only much nicer. Flowers were in bloom and they had beautiful red peonies, columbine of all colors and gorgeous roses.

We had purchased tickets for the Battle Reenactment and they were being held at the Hardin Chamber of Commerce. So, we went to pick up our tickets and walked down main street of this little town where they were having a "craft show." The craft show was a few tables with all kinds of kitchy crafts. Not much to write home about but it was a slice of western small town culture.

When we picked up our tickets, the little lady told us to be at the reenactment site at 4:00 to get a good seat and enjoy the vendors. So, we did. We were just about the first ones there. We did get good seats at the top of bleachers that are as steep as the Orpheum balcony. Since I hate steps and heights, it took a few minutes for me to be comfortable and to lose the feeling that I was going to fly off into the air. Well, I'm glad we got there early (tongue firmly planted in my cheek) because we sat for an hour and a half before the program began. It was supposed to start at 5:00 but they delayed the start to 5:30 to give folks a chance to get there and get settled. Small town life I guess.

The reenactment was interesting and fairly well done. It was told from the Indian perspective and was more a background of what led up to the battle rather than a true reenactment of the battle.

I won't go into all the history or give you a lengthy narrative of the battlefield. Basically, Custer was outnumbered, unfamiliar with the terrain and ignorant of the fighting tactics of the Plains Indians. He has been lauded as a hero and dismissed as a insufferable egotist who brought on his own death and the death of the 250 men under him due to his ignorance. The interpretation is up to historians or to you.

What did stand out to me is that there is a real effort to tell the story from the Indian perspective. Actually, to me, it is overdone. There didn't seem to be a balance between the Indian perspective and the predominant viewpoint of the federal government at that point in history. I think they've gone too far in their effort to be politically correct and have ignored the historical perceptions of that time in history.

Sunday we travel on to Glacier National Park. Another 400 mile drive and then we get to settle in for a few days.

More later.