Custer's Last Stand

August 24, 2006

The last two days have been very scenic and very exciting. Rising early in the morning, we cross the border from South Dakota into Montana to visit the Little Big Horn Battlefield. It is raining a bit and 67 degrees as we approach the battlefield.

From today's perspectives of military strategy, what little I know about it, what happened at Little Big Horn is preposterous. Three contingencies are sent to defeat an allied Indian war party comprised of Lakota and Cheyanne warriors. The rush for Gold in the Black Hills has rendered null and void a treaty between the US Government and the Indians, and the land they have been given has been invaded by those seeking gold in the hills. The Indians have left the reservation in defiance, led by their spiritual leader, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse, the great Indian Warrioer.

On the afternoon on June 25th, 1876, Custer and 210 of his men are surrounded and killed before reinforcements can arrive. It is here that these solidier are buried in a mass grave, small white tombstones dotting the hill where they fell. The spot is uniquely quiet and peaceful once we climb the hill to escape the tour buses.

Ironically, the allied Indian Troop efforts were for naught. Within two years all of the surviving Indians had gone back to the reservation, been killed, starved to death, or fled to Canada. The free nomadic life of the Great Plains Indians had vanished forever.