Last Stand Hill, Little Bighorn Battlefield Memorial, Hardin, Montana

Little Bighorn Valley from Last Stand Hill, Little Bighorn Battlefield Memorial, Hardin, Montana. The markers represent the spots where individual soldiers fell.

Memorial Marker, Custer National Cemetery, Hardin, Montana

As a child, I was steeped in the righteousness of Manifest Destiny. I learned that George Custer and the men of the 7th Calvary were heroes, opening the western territory to development, defending the settlers, and bringing civilization and Christianity to the Indians. What could possibly be wrong with that? Dee Brown's book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, helped me understand Indian Policy for the land and resource grab it was. The genocide our ancestors committed against our Native peoples was the ultimate ending for anyone who stood in the way of this progress. The Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho families - men, women, and children - gathered at Little Big Horn creek were all thought to be hostile by the US government, and the general population, because they refused to sign a "new" treaty ceding the Black Hills to the whites and would not re-locate onto reservations. On June 25, 1876, Custer and his 7th Calvary troopers attacked what was thought to be the largest native encampment anyone had ever seen, 8,000 people with over 2,000 warriors. The Indians, of course, won that battle, but soon lost the war and their centuries-old way of life.

The Little Big Horn Battlefield Monument has long honored and mythologized the fallen soldiers, their bold, dashing commander, and even their horses. Monuments, plaques, the cemetery, individual markers where the soldiers died began to be erected immediately after the battle. It all speaks to the soldier's heroism and the sanctity of their cause. In the last twenty-five years, the Monument has become more inclusive of Native American points-of-view and begun to relate the legitimacy of the Native defense of their homeland and their way of life. A few markers representing the spots where individual warriors fell during the fighting have been added recently. And in 1991, the US government authorized an Indian Memorial at the sight and commissioned a sculpture by Native artist, Colleen Cutschall. Inside the visitor center, a film gives a generally fair assessment of the time period, the battle itself, and the aftermath.

As I was leaving the film, I overheard a middle-aged white woman remark, "I don't understand why they would want to live like that anyway."

Grave Marker for 7th Calvary Horse Cemetery, Little Big Horn National Monument, Hardin, Montana

This Crow Indian man was a scout for the 7th Cavalry. It is easy to ask, "How could he fight for the white man against other Indians?" Even his English name speaks to the tone of his relationship. Yet, from the point of view of the Crow people, the Europeans had already won the war, and the west, and it was better to assimilate than fight a losing battle. Also, the Crow and the Sioux had been arch enemies for centuries. Joining the US Army not only assured the Crow better treatment from the whites, but also offered the opportunity to kill their traditional nemesis.

Grave Marker, Custer National Cemetery, Hardin, Montana

Memorial Marker for Lakota Warrior, Little Bighorn Battlefield Memorial, Hardin, Montana

Indian Memorial themed Peace Through Unity, Little Bighorn Battlefield Memorial, Hardin, Montana — Indian Memorial themed *Peace Through Unity,* Little Bighorn Battlefield Memorial, Hardin, Montana

What to say about this place? Anything I say is quite easy and almost trite from the safety of 140 years and the security of my mountain land that was once part of the Cherokee nation before the Trail of Tears fixed that. I'm skeptical. But many brave men on both sides died here. I try to put myself in the place of one of the many recent European immigrants who fought and died on this hill, perhaps one of the Italians who arrived thirty-five years earlier than my grandfather. What was that man thinking as he faced thousands of determined, angry, and very hostile Indians defending their families and land? I wonder if he understood in his heart why he was going to die that day? Why in that place, far away from his home, fighting a people he knew nothing about, was he going to die a very violent death? Did he see he was just a very small piece in a much larger cultural struggle? I wonder if he saw the irony in all of it, but especially in his journey? Arriving from the Old Country as one of the oppressed, only to go to work for the oppressor in the New World, and this is what it got him.

If nothing else, as the soldiers were being overwhelmed, I'm sure he was saying, Oh Shit! I should have stayed home.

I've wanted to take a northern route across the country for a number of years, through parts of the upper midwest, fly-over country. The thought of miles and miles of corn and wheat, deserted two-lane roads, and harsh, unyielding, angular light appealed. It wasn't total isolation I wanted, but rather, a certain removal from my world - a world I sometimes think I know too well.

I head south from Sioux Falls and then west on Highway 18. It's what I want. I drive ten miles an hour below the speed limit. Just looking. Barely stopping to make any photographs. No music. Just looking. Breathing. For a brief moment, surrounded by corn and nothing else as far as I can see, I think ah, corn syrup. The Missouri River and onto the Rosebud Sioux Reservation. I stop at the Crossroads Inn in Martin for the night. There's still light left in the day, but the Crossroads is the only place within an hour in any direction and I don't want to be driving after dark. I check in, and go out, to Merrimon, Nebraska, on a mission to find the Sand Bar. Cedric is concerned it has closed since we can find no mention of it online. But it's there where he said it should be. I go in and order a Coke, which garners looks from the two guys at the bar watching a football game on the tv. The bar is dark and decorated with all things western - rodeo stuff, animal heads, posters. No one is talking, certainly not to me, so I finish my Coke and leave. There is nothing subtle about the light as I drive back to the motel. The unbroken horizon offers no respite. Welder's goggles, maybe. The next morning I have breakfast at the local VFW hall in Martin. They welcome everyone and $7 bought a good meal of eggs, sausage, biscuits, potatoes and coffee.

Across the road from the Sand Bar, Merriman, Nebraska

As I drive to Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation, I'm reminded of a time forty-five years ago. I had been granted Conscientious Objector status to the draft and needed to do two years of alternative service. I was working as a counselor in a halfway house for boys in Maryland at the time and through work I met a Pastor in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, who operated a similar facility on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He thought it might be a good fit for my service requirment. I drove out in February of 1971. I didn't take the job or stay long. It was desolate and bitter cold, the wind strong and unrelenting. One of the poorest communities in the country. I knew I wouldn't have lasted very long in that environment.

That was also a time of growing unrest among many Native American tribes that saw the rise of the American Indian Movement (AIM). The unrest culminated in the takeover of the township of Wounded Knee on the Lakota Sioux Reservation at Pine Ridge by AIM leaders and traditionalists among the Lakota. It lasted seventy-one days and finally ended when government officials shut off power to the town in February, as well as, phone and all traffic in and out of the town. They starved them out.

Wikipedia - Wounded Knee Incident

Wounded Knee was chosen by AIM leaders as the site for their protest because of its symbolic value as the site of one darkest spots on our altogether murderous collective history with Native peoples. OnDecember 29, 1890, fourteen years after the Battle of the Little Big Horn, the US Seventh Calvary massacred over 250 Lakota men, women, and children who were being moved to the reservation. It is widely considered to represent the end of the centuries-old Indian Wars.

Wikipedia - Wounded Knee Massacre

Amazon - Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

Victims Memorial, Wounded Knee Cemetery, South Dakota

Vietnam Veteran, Wounded Knee Cemetery, South Dakota

To visit Wounded Knee today is to understand that our mistreatment and disregard of Native Americans continues unabated. It remains a very poor place with few opportunities for work. Trailers are spread out on the valley floor, just next to the massacre site. In the two hours I was there, I was approached by a dozen different people selling dreamcatchers and sweetgrass, all of them approaching me with the same handwritten note explaining their need. My dreamcatcher still hangs in my car.

It's important to be here. Why? Do I even know? Penance. Guilt. Honor. Recognition. Understanding. At the cemetery you feel the power of this sacred place. Walking among the graves is a walk through history and personal tragedy, one most Americans choose to forget, if they know of it at all. It's a clear, warm day, the wind is picking up, blowing dust and sagebrush over the prairie - no sign of an impending blizzard like the one that hit Wounded Knee the day after the 1890 massacre, freezing all the bodies hard in place.

Native American Community Center, Martin, South Dakota

The mural speaks to a desire for unity and peace. And Native Americans have long been among the most patriotic of Americans, serving courageously, and in great numbers, in all of our nation's conflicts. I struggle to understand these hopes and heroic acts in the context of my own refusal to serve in the military for reasons of conscience. How could you have faith in, and fight for, the government that stripped you of your way of life, stole your land, and continues to oppress you? I don't know how one does that, but I think the answer may lie somewhere in Cedric's word, surrender. Not the "giving up" kind of surrender, but rather, surrender as acceptance or resignation.

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