Imagine that has disappeared. I am sure it is more representative of the true story today. I'm sure glad that all the Indian tribes also have a Memorial for there part in protecting themselves and also their families who were left behind to carry on their way of life.
I visited the old monument in August of with my family. I was 11 years old. Back then Custer was widely known as an American hero who had fallen bravely in battle. I was indeed interested in the center's diaoramas and explanations, and I remember leaving with the belief that Custer was the hero at the center of this monument to our nation's history. I was too young to critically evaluate the information given, and I can't honestly say if it the displays were biased or not.
Later that year, my father came home from work with a copy of a document he had found that was written by a soldier who had surveyed the aftermath of the battle, and it described something entirely different than what I had learned about the event. The author of that article said he had withheld actual details of what he found and did not publish this information out of deference to Custer's wife, until after she died.
This is my first recollection of figuring out that the history we are taught, is not necessarily the history that actually happens. I'm happy to know that these new additions to the monument give us a better picture of what that period of American history was really all about.
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By Bob Janiskee - December 7th, This is how the Friends of the Little Bighorn Battlefield organization describes the remarkable sculpture and its setting: The Indian Memorial will surprise you. It is peaceful in this place, within this circle……. Visiting the Parks. Add new comment. Comments Submitted by admin on June 10, - pm. Also enjoyed the wonderful wild flowers. Submitted by russell-webster on July 29, - pm. Looking forward to seeing the "Big Sky Country.
Submitted by Linda K. Submitted by Oscar A Gutierrez on December 28, - am. Submitted by David Erickson on July 28, - am. Add comment You must have JavaScript enabled to use this form. Your name. Leave this field blank. After the battle, the bodies of the fallen Lakota and Cheyenne warriors were removed by tribal members and set to rest in teepees and tree scaffolds across the Little Bighorn Valley. In the years after the construction of the Seventh Cavalry memorial, several requests were made by families of fallen Indian warriors to place markers at the locations where their loved ones died on the battlefield, but these requests went unfulfilled for nearly years.
In the late s, the first stone markers, made of red speckled granite instead of white marble, were placed to remember fallen Indian warriors.
The law also called for the construction of an Indian Memorial. In , the government held a national competition.
Two Philadelphia landscape architects, John R. Collins and Alison J. Towers, won the competition with their landform-based design. The new memorial shares an axial relationship with the Cavalry Monument, but in many ways it is a counterpoint to the older structure.
While the Cavalry obelisk juts from the hilltop, the Indian Memorial folds into the landscape. An immersive stone circle, engraved with text and imagery, memorializes both the battle and the nomadic traditions of the tribes involved. Construction on the memorial began in and it was dedicated on June 25, Today, Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument is a space that communicates a narrative of remembrance across time and cultures.
The visitor center, completed in the early s, provides interpretive programming, and multiple monuments situated in the landscape represent a breadth of meaning and experience available at the site. Brust, James S. Pohanka, and Sandy Barnard. Norman: University of Oklahoma, How could a group of "uncivilized" Indians have wiped out a modern military force, killing even a decorated Civil War hero?
Now, as I stood on Last Stand Hill, history seemed to have come full circle. Another 27 Lakota horsemen, these led by descendants of Crazy Horse, the most revered of the Sioux warriors at the battle, had ridden miles in two weeks from their South Dakota reservation. They had followed the same route as their ancestors, and were now praying for their dead killed at the battle at an impressive new Indian memorial, just 50 yards northwest of Last Stand Hill.
Dedicated in , the memorial is a circular earth-and-stonework balustrade, with a weeping wall, interpretive panels and an elegant sculpture of Spirit Warriors—spirits of the Indian soldiers that were protecting the village that day.
Until recently, the Great Sioux Nation Victory Ride—let alone the crowds of Native Americans participating in the anniversary festivities—would have been hard to imagine here. Indians "used to believe they weren't really welcome," said Tim McCleary, 42, a historian formerly at the battlefield who now teaches at Little Bighorn College.
All the interpretation was from the U. Today, for Indians and whites alike, the June anniversary has become a three-day extravaganza of religious services, academic symposia and general whooping it up. There is not one but two reenactments of the battle, held by rival groups. After the Sioux had ridden off, John Doerner, the park's official historian, told me that there are still visitors who believe Custer was an American martyr who died to tame the Indians as well as Custerphobes who consider him a war criminal.
But the arguments over the site no longer carry the same venom they did in the s, when the American Indian Movement disrupted memorial services here by carrying a flag upside down across the battlefield, singing "Custer Died for Your Sins.
Back in , the first U. Army reports of the site sanitized the grisly fate of Custer's men. James H. Bradley arrived two days after the battle to help identify the slain officers and bury the dead. Not wishing to further upset the families of the fallen, he described for the Helena Herald an almost pastoral scene where few soldiers had been scalped and Custer's body was "that of a man who had fallen asleep and enjoyed peaceful dreams.
Edward S. Godfrey, privately admitted that the reality was "a sickening, ghastly horror. Many had had their genitals severed, some say in retaliation for the genital mutilation of Indian men and women by soldiers in previous battles. The burial party was not only sickened by the carnage but feared further attacks. With only a handful of shovels, the men hastily threw dirt over the dead, dug a shallow grave for Custer and beat a hasty retreat.
A year would pass before a second detail would come to remove the bodies of 11 officers and 2 civilians and send them to Eastern graveyards. Indians had removed their dead shortly after the battle. By now, as Lt. John G. Bourke noted, "pieces of clothing, soldiers' hats, cavalry coats, boots with the leather legs cut off, but with the human feet and bones still sticking in them, strewed the hill.
After misidentifying one skeleton as Custer's—a blouse upon which the remains were lying identified it as belonging to a corporal—the party chose another. Michael Caddle, recalled in a letter to a historian; but another eyewitness remembered the commanding officer muttering: "Nail the box up; it is alright as long as the people think so. The first actual sightseers at Little Bighorn were Indians. In the winter of , Wooden Leg, a Cheyenne warrior and a veteran of the battle, led a nine-man hunting party to the desolate spot.
Acting as tour guide, he and the group rode through hills still strewn with unexpended gun cartridges, spears, arrows and the bleached bones of cavalrymen. Two years later, 25 recently surrendered Sioux and Cheyenne veterans provided a battlefield tour for Col. Nelson A. Miles, commander of Fort Keogh, in Montana, and a personal friend of the Custer family, who sought "the attainment of the Indian narrative of the engagement. Early in the afternoon of June 25, Custer sent one of his three battalions, led by Maj.
Marcus Reno, to attack the Indian encampment from the south. Repulsed, Reno retreated across Little Bighorn River to the bluffs beyond to be joined by a second battalion led by Capt. Frederick Benteen.
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