White Lives Matter

About in the middle of Montana (this is the only way I know how to direct, the state is so vast and at times seemed abandoned by people and peopled by cows and sky) is the site of the Battle of Little Big Horn.

The Sioux Indians are a conglomerate made up of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota tribes of the Pacific Northwest. They had already been relegated to small slice of lands in the Black Hills of South Dakota by 1875. Robbed of their original native land and their dignity, some, under pressure from the federal government-fresh off a war win after the “War of Northern Aggression”- conceded and languished on the bespoken acreage. The problem was at this point “manifest destiny” had spread westward like a plague, not only to the Native People, but also to their sacred food and cultural source, the bison. These majestic animals were being hunted to almost extinction. The Sioux Indians relied on these animals for food, hides, household good, and wampum, so on.

Sitting Bull, a wise shaman, medicine man and Indian Chief would not be cuckolded. His distrust and contempt for the pioneer population impeding on his native land inspired him, and his faithful warrior, Crazy Horse, as well as others, to move west of the reservations to land labeled, “unceded territory” at the time (Montana, parts of Wyoming). The Sioux set up camp, and life there, as the Bison that they relied on so heavily was abundant. They lived peacefully in unceded territory, until…..

In the early 1870’s General Custer and other prospectors learned of gold in the Black Hills, which sat square in the middle of Indian Territory. The federal government, which allotted the land to the Indian tribe, attempted to buy it back from them.

The Indians refused.
That’s when the shit hit the fan.

The term, “Indian Giver” is derived from this situation. The government giveth, and then snatched the fuck away in a series of massacres the history books now refer to as The Great Sioux War.

How great it was, I imagine, would depend on whom you asked.

The Battle of Little Big Horn was the first battle of this war, which started as an ambush upon a peaceful Sioux camp.

Sitting Bull’s defiance and perceived “disrespect” to the American Government was slowly eating away at the bucolic picture of perfect pioneer life the General Grant tried desperately to paint on the overpopulated urban areas of the New America of the 1870’s. New York and San Francisco’s population was booming and the adventuresome spirit of exploration had caught hold of so many immigrants who began seeing the Native land dwellers as an alien force that was keeping American progress stagnant. No doubt they had President Grant to thank for this ideal- a Military man at heart, and quite the spin doctor- he took Thomas Jefferson’s vision of Manifest Destiny and ran with it like an obedient tight end. The pioneers began encroaching on Sioux land, began digging up terrain and violating the earth that the Sioux view as “Mother” in their creation stories.

Like Columbus in the West Indies, who landed in Some Jamaican man’s backyard and claimed his house in the name of Spain (discovery and exploration-yay), the pioneers snatched land from the Native owners and began gutting the sacred Black Hills of all its minerals and riches-at least they tried to at first. A lot of the Native warriors were straight not having any of it.

As retaliation, Grant sent 3 factions into Unceded Territory to try to cut the “problem” off at its inception- Sitting Bull was the chief that most of the warrior got their “ok’s” from, and Grant thought that if he could make an example out of the man who so vocally called the White Men thieves and scum, then he would secure his legacy as the president who truly opened the Pacific Northwest for this people.

To do this, he employed the famous General George Armstrong Custer, a man who loved poetry and was zealously devoted to his wife, to lead the 7^th infantry, motley crew made up of immigrants and politicians, to annihilate the “Indian problem”.

The plan was this- Major Marcus Reno would take a small group of men to charge into the camp situation along the Big Horn River. Gen Custer would follow with 2 more battalions of men, flanking the camp at both sides, and attacking when the warriors were occupied trying to hold off Major Reno.

That was the plan; it didn’t quite go down that way.

The site of the battle sits high on a slight sloping excerpt of land. Green and still, silent. Sad. You have to pay $11 to get in and the money doesn’t go to the Natives of the reservation but the park system. Oh well.

Immediately upon entering the visitor’s center I am hit with depictions of Grant and Sitting Bull, fixed opposite each other, staring out at the visitors, almost asking them to choose a side before they enter.

“You are a fool to make yourselves slaves to a piece of fat bacon, some hard-tack, and a little sugar and coffee,”- Sitting Bull’s words.

“To Christianize and civilize the Indian and train him in the art of peace,”- Grant’s words.

Both statements etched on the exhibit entrance like mottos lauded at an election.

Foes. Unequal in the matters of Artillery, and of heart.

The entrance reminded me of the protest photos of Ferguson, and the tumult I longed to be a part of when I entered Missouri.

Custer’s plan to curb the Indian insurgence came to fruition in the misty morning minutes of June 25^th.  Only the curbing didn’t belong to the great army of the new Union.

They, actually, got their asses handed to them by the mighty Sioux warriors who took up arms and chased them down to the lowest ravine of the Little Big Horn River, and picked them off ants coming out of a molehill.

It was a poetic site. Sitting Bull’s grandson recalled his patriarch telling him a story of a Union soldier shooting his horse n the head to provide a barricade, because he knew he was going to die.

Imagine, trying to make a barricade out of a dead horse in order to buy yourself precious moments of time that really just staved off the inevitability of death that lurked all around you, in the misty morning of a perfect Montana June afternoon.

I imagined the sun was settling down against a pallet of deep indigo, the wind calm, just as it was on the evening I went up to the battlefield.

All along the battle lines lay markers, to commemorate the dead, and when they could, the exact places where the dead fell. The front of the battlefield looks like Arlington National Cemetery- the artless white stones that mark the lives and deaths of the Union solders- Solitary markers that stand above the gravestones-neat and uniform in perfect patterns that flair out into a square.

Down the trail there are the Indian Markers, these are of a darker stone, and more sparse and unaccompanied. Limber Bones and Closed Hand fell at the cusp of a lonely hill about 40 yards from the chest of the river. There weren’t too many Indian graves because they were victorious in this battle.

And this was the only one.

When I went into the back of the Visitor center, which doubles as a gift shop and museum, there was a filmstrip playing about the Great Sioux War.

I sat down next to an older man who looked way too tired to be out in the middle of nowhere like this, and his wife, who held his hand and stroked his arm as he fidgeted uncomfortably in the seat. He had a veteran’s hat on, and an obvious handicap from what I could not tell.

When the film begins, a giant map outlays the land of the United States and Indian Territory in the 1870’s. I watched in awe, even after the Civil war had ended, a war which vastly divided this country along what seemed an extended, protracted, unending line that solidified an emotional border of resentment and racism that to this day has yet to be crossed. But the country and the territories of this time were pretty equal. The Native Man existed in a land that took up most of the Pacific Northwest and the belly of this country, until the Sioux war.

The film continued, introducing us to sweet pale General Custer, the nation’s rock star. He was not the most decorated Civil War soldier, but for reasons unbeknownst to me, the most famous. The most loved, with his crystalline blue eyes and wavy boyish blonde hair, and his manly super mustache, he was poised and proper- a gentleman and a soldier-filled with the wholesome Anglo qualities that make up a hero. Ulysses Grant loved him. And when faced against the dark force of the brooding uncircumcised red savage, America chose its side and loved him too.

When he finally fell at the battle (it is rumored but not confirmed that Crazy Horse killed him in the fight) and word spread back to civilization, all white hell broke loose. The government dispatched infantry after infantry to hunt the Indian insurgents to the end of the continental earth. Cries of “kill the savages” entered as refrain to long sung soldier battle songs. Posters of dead Indians piled at the feet of the likeness of Custer popped up along both coasts. America wanted native blood for the white blood that was shed at Little Big Horn.

And they got it, adopting a ruthless campaign to cut down any Native camp they came across and attacking- slicing and shooting until the last child fell. Many times these camps were man less-the army slaughtered women, children, and the elderly.

I noticed the veteran next to me twist in his chair again. Was it the thought of killing unarmed civilians that didn’t sit well with him, or the thought of dead American soldiers that unnerved him?

According to the film, and much to the country’s delight, after being chased into Canada (after burying two sisters and his mother from an ambush by soldiers at their camp), Sitting Bull surrendered.

He and his supporters were taken into custody and forced to sign another treaty-why? I don’t know, it wasn’t like America would take heed to the treaty if their whim so suited them- that ceded all Sioux Black Hills land back to the United States.

Indian Giving.

Thanks Giving.

He was held as a prisoner at Fort Yates, Stadning Rock agency, which lay at the border of Montana and South Dakota, and there he languished on minimal provisions and almost no contact with family or tribe until he was shot in the head by an army officer for not mounting a horse fast enough. He died in poverty and disease in a prison on the reservation that he believed made a mockery of the sacred relationship that his people cultivated with his beloved land.

The last words he spoke were the mantra by which he lived and died-

“Don’t trust the White Man.”

When the film ended, I walked outside to tour the gravesites and the monument that was erected to the fallen, and to the Indians who were slaughtered thereafter.
The Indian monument lies separate from the war monument, like a segregated schoolhouse, far from the main battlefield.

I stood and took pictures against the backdrop of the falling sun, and saw the old soldier saluting the battlefield. I watched in amazement for a moment. It wasn’t until the sun caught his skin in such a way, that I realized this man was brown. Browner than I thought when I was sitting next to him, his tanned arm now exposed, positioned sharply at the side of his head, his wife at his other side, waiting with baited breath, to walk her love back up the trail after he pays his respects.

Respects to whom? A decimated population whose only crime was fighting back against a tyrannical government and psychotic army who took the head of their children as payback for the lives of white soldiers who signed up for battle?
Much like the Haitians, who pay reparations to France for killing 5 white people in the war for Black independence, the Red Man paid for the precious life of General Custer.

But who will pay them for their lost land, for their lost lives, for their lost souls?

After the war ended and the Indian “insurgence” was properly dealt with, prospectors and pioneers settle the land and hunted to buffalo at will, especially the population that grazed along Indian Reservation borders.

They did this at the behest of President Grover Cleveland, which I am sure was a final “fuck you” to the Godless savages who had dared spill White blood.

I got into my car and saw the veteran. He took his hat off before his wife helped him into their camper, his hair was thick and black, and his limp pronounced, but his face, his face seemed satisfied.

I drove away toward Flathead reservation and saw about 15 bison grazing peacefully in the distance.