Battle of Little Bighorn

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Arriving in Hardin, Montana we camped at the first full campground we've been in all summer. In fact we shared sites because everyone was coming in for the reenactment of Custer's Last Stand. We made new friends of Bob and Sandy. Bob, like Tom, is a history buff so we spent the weekend together touring.
The re-enactment of the Battle of Little Bighorn, aka "Custer's Last Stand," was where we hoped to find out the truth about Lt.Col.George Armstrong Custer. Was he a screw-up? Were the Indians just savages showing no mercy? We thought the performance would take place at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Park. It did not. The National Park has been left basically unspoiled from that time, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Many of the 135th anniversary reenacters were descendants of the Crow Indians who now reside on the reservation. The Crow Indians were Custer's Scouts. Joe Medicine Crow, now over 90 years old, is the Indian historian whose story the reenactment is based on.

What we learned was that the Lakota and Cheyenne Indians wanted peace but the government allowed whites seeking gold to tresspass through their land, also killing buffalo for fur and trade. Col. Custer did not have his gatling guns in this battle because the horses pulling them fell lame and lagged behind. Custer could not wait. Gen Crook (Ft.Crook, Arizona near Thousand Trails in Cottonwood) had battled Indians the week before and decided his men were too worn out to join Col Custer as planned. So he went fishing!

The battle was brutal. In a desperate last stand, Custer's men killed their horses and made an embankment out of them for protection.

The Indians remembered the year before, when military (not Custer as reported by some historians) ambushed an Indian encampment, killing some women and children in their frenzy.

The Indians version of this story reports there were no winners on this day, but brave warriors on both sides of the battle.

After seeing this we spent the next day at the National Park. Asa Stops (name shortened from Stopstoseepretty) was our tour bus guide. A Crow college student who is the great-great grandson of "Curly" who was one of Custer's Scouts. Both Native American and military from the battle are burried here. An archealogical dig later found the horses bones. The bones were excavated and buried with their own burial marker. A clash of cultures can clearly be felt from the souls resting in this sacred place.

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