While I was in Montana briefly to visit the Glacier Park area, I consider this part of the trip entirely separate. Montana is a big state, and the southeastern part of Montana is very different from the northwestern part of Montana. The northwest is mountainous with massive lakes, the southeast is hills of long grass and grain, the relative flatlands.
My first encounter with this side of Montana was the Little Bighorn Battlefield, a national monument located within the Crow Reservation, east of Billings. It isn't something I would go out of my way to visit, but once I knew it was on the way to Billings, I decided to drop by. I made no effort to find out when it was open and figured I would roll in and roll out within 30 minutes or so. I did not expect it to make an impression.
Why so apathetic? Ambivalence. If I ever thought of the battle, which was rarely, my first thought was always a mean, hard, hateful, "Good." U.S. Cavalry unit loses to Native American tribes? Good. Enlisted men were poor and undernourished? Good. Custer made foolhardy tactical decisions and paid with his life? Good. All U.S. Cavalry under Custer's command died? Good. They were driven to the last hill, slaughtered, and mutilated? Good, good, GOOD. Assessing all of American history from 1492 to present, you'll excuse me if I have zero empathy for the conquerors. There is no comparing one individual's suffering to the humiliation and decimation of an entire race of people.
But that's what history did up until relatively modern times. It was a tragic tale of the brave General Custer and his valiant men who perished under the sneaking, backstabbing savagery of injuns. Reinforced, memorialized, and mythologized. Another backwards, whites-only glorification of the Great Pioneers of America.
So I'm already mad rolling up on this damn hill. Because while Custer's defeat was GOOD, everything before and after it was BAD stacked on BAD, deep fried in BAD. If you think the Lakota, Arapaho, and Cheyenne didn't pay for their impudence, you're out of your goddamned mind.
And that's the ambivalence. It only made things worse and solidified hatred across the races. And in the grand scope of things, what's one battle, anyway?
The national monument is a weird place. One of the first things you see upon driving up to the parking lot is a fenced in area full of rows and rows of white headstones. Without context you might assume that this is where the U.S. Army combatants of the Battle of Little Bighorn were buried, but they are actually near the top, under one large monument in a mass grave. Apparently the U.S. government allowed non-associated veterans to be buried in this area (Custer National Cemetery) up until the 1970s (x). Perhaps some of the men interred in the Custer cemetery wanted to be buried there because they had ancestors who died in the Battle of Little Bighorn. Or perhaps they thought of this land as a patriotic, historic place to be buried.
After briefly speaking with the rangers in the visitors center, I walked outside to the path up to the spot of the infamous "Custer's last stand." As I walked past the unrelated soldiers' headstones, I tried to read some of them but could not make them out. The headstones are exactly like other headstones that are scattered around the memorial site that are meant to show where different U.S. army soldiers fell during the Battle of Little Bighorn, yet another confusing part of the experience.
I reached the top of the hill and read the placards and memorial stone. After the battle, the whole unit was hastily buried there, right near where Custer died, but within the next few years the officers' bodies were removed and relocated to cemeteries around the country (Custer's remains are buried at West Point) (x). But under this marker, the infantrymen still lie. Throwaway men. I may have felt a little something reading the names, but it was tempered by the emotional manipulation going on nearby. The park's service takes great pains to explain how many infantrymen were poor immigrants, Germans and Irish, who barely knew English and had few options. Okay. Still on an errand to oppress native peoples, but okay.
Down the hill and not so far away is the Indian Memorial, which was added to the park in 1997. It should be mentioned at this point that I'd left my camera behind in the car, so did not take any close up pictures of either memorial. I didn't do this on purpose, but I'm kind of glad it turned out that way. The pictures I got later driving up the road are sufficient for me. If you want to see what the memorial looks like, a Google search leads the way.
It's a beautiful memorial, set inside the hill, in a circle, that tells of the battle and losses from each of the participating tribes (Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho). It ends in a unifying message of peace.
It's a nice sentiment...eventually I'm sure everyone will be so far removed from this terrible history that we will all agree. With the offenses at Standing Rock happening right now, it's kind of hard to imagine that future. For now, for me, "Nice sentiment, still mad."
As I made my way out of the park, swinging up the hill and back down to take the photos I've shared here, I felt stormy and weird. It's strange to consider history when you standing on top of it, a result of said ugliness. If that idiot hadn't knocked into the Bahamas in search of India, probably none of us would be here. You know how the Butterfly Effect works. Step on a butterfly, we all descended from alligators; step on Native Americans, I am writing this entry in Fargo, North Dakota and most of the peoples who lived on this land for thousands of years are relegated to reservations.
In other words, you can't turn back time and probably wouldn't anyway. But it sure would be nice if everyone agreed that what happened was genocide and there is pretty much no amount of reparations that will ever really make up for it. Plenty of modern Euroamericans still believe the mythology of Western Civilization up to and including bald faced, take-no-prisoners manifest destiny. We're a long way from making anything even remotely "right."
And perhaps the national monument will change as the decades pass, as well. After all, the inclusion of the Indian memorial took 120 years. Who knows how we'll feel a hundred years from now?
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