Little Bighorn National Battlefield

We'd all heard of the legendary General Custer who lost his life in a battle with the Indians.

Today, we found out a lot more about this part of American History and how it is shaped according to which side the storyteller is on.

As usual, Dave gave us the necessary background information - this time about the Indian Wars.

We drove through the plains, now the reservation of the Crow Indians and arrived at the battlefield. After a visit of the museum that depicted the history along a timeline, we walked up the hill of General Custer's Last Stand. Along the slope, white headstones indicate where soldiers fell. On the top, a large monument with all the names of the Army victims, was erected and General Custer himself was buried at West Point. According to archaeological research of the site, it seems that a lot of bullets were fired from the slope but not on top of the hill. This may suggest that the men had given up struggling or were really taken by surprise.

On a painting in the museum at Cody, I saw General Custer in Buffalo Bill outfit standing straight in the middle of dying soldiers, being attacked from all sides by savage Indians. He is depicted as a great hero. Yet, one might question his tactics. He was in charge of 600 men, split them up in 3 groups and took one group to round up the Indians at Little Bighorn. What he hadn't expected or completely underestimated was the huge number of Lakota, Sheyenne, the Blackfoot and others who had gathered and fought united against him. Custer was killed and all his men with him.

Now, you can feel sorry for this great military character, but you should at least also consider the other side of the story.

The Battle of the Little Bighorn was but the latest encounter of a centuries-long conflict between the Europeans and the Native Americans. In this particular case, the Indians had been sent to reservations, where the soil was too arid to grow anything, where all the animals had been killed by trappers. The Indian people were starving. Some of them decided to "break out" of the reservations. This was considered as a severe crime and the army was sent after them to capture and kill them. Custer was on one of these expeditions when he got surrounded at Little Bighorn.

On the other side of the hill, a monument was erected to commemorate the dead on the Indian side. This only happened in 2002, more than a hundred years after the battle.
It is a circular wall with several openings, meant to invite the spirits in of the soldiers who fell on the other side. A beautiful cast iron monument of Indians on Horses stand on top. Behind it the miles and miles of plains.