The Rosebud Battlefield in southern Montana is now par with Wounded Knee, the Alamo and Mount Vernon in terms of National Historic Landmark status.

This week, a celebration on the 134th anniversary of the historic battle there between an alliance of Oglala Sioux and Cheyenne against the U.S. Army, marked that status. Lorna Thackeray of the Billings Gazette writes about it here.

The drum group Last Bear played and sang at the celebration for the Rosebud Battlefield. (Bob Zellar/Billings Gazette)

Estimates of the Sioux and Cheyenne force ranged between 1,000 and 1,500 warriors. The battle raged through six hours with soldiers and Indians advancing and retreating over the battlefield.

The Cheyenne call the battle site Kase’eetsevo’ – Where the Girl Saved Her Brother. The name comes from the actions of Buffalo Calf Trail Woman, who rescued her brother, Chief Comes In Sight, when his horse was shot out from under him.

By 2:30 that afternoon, with no clear victory for either side, the battle wound down. Crook lost 10 men and 21 more were wounded. The Sioux lost about 25 warriors and one Cheyenne was killed. Crazy Horse estimated the wounded at 63.

The major result was that [Gen. George] Crook withdrew his column to Wyoming, spoiling the government’s plan for a three-pronged assault.

A week later, and about 30 miles away, the same alliance of Sioux and Cheyenne were camped along the Little Bighorn River when Lt. Col. George Custer ordered an attack.

As William Walks Along, a member of the Northern Cheyenne’s Rosebud and Wolf Mountain National Historic Landmark Committee, told the people at this week’s ceremony, “events like this anchor me to the Earth.”

Thackeray recounts his comments that such sits have to be preserved so future generations will know their history.

“It is our duty,” Walks Along said.

We’ve blogged earlier, here, about the new book on the Little Bighorn Battle, Nathaniel Philbrick’s “The Last Stand,” which takes a look at that day through the eyes of both Sitting bull and Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.

The New York Times takes a look at Philbrick’s work, here, along with another book, this one about Quanah Parker of the Comanche.

The Times terms S.C. Gwynne’s book on Parker, “Empire of the Summer Moon,” transcendent:

Born the son of an Indian warrior and his white wife (who had been captured at the age of 9 during a raid on a Texas ranch), Parker grew up to become the last and greatest chief of the Comanche, the tribe that ruled the Great Plains for most of the 19th century. That’s his one-sentence biography. The deeper, richer story that unfolds in “Empire of the Summer Moon” is nothing short of a revelation. Gwynne, a former editor at Time and Texas Monthly, doesn’t merely retell the story of Parker’s life. He pulls his readers through an American frontier roiling with extreme violence, political intrigue, bravery, anguish, corruption, love, knives, rifles and arrows. Lots and lots of arrows. This book will leave dust and blood on your jeans.

Reviewer Bruce Barcott terms the Comanche a Native American superpower, and quotes Gwynne: “They held sway over some 20 different tribes who had been either conquered, driven off or reduced to vassal status,” Gwynne writes. “Such imperial dominance was no accident of geography. It was the product of over 150 years of deliberate, sustained combat against a series of enemies over a singular piece of land that contained the country’s largest buffalo herds.”

Parker’s own transformation mirrored that of his people:

Quanah Parker’s second act was, if anything, more remarkable than his first. Resigned to reservation life, he transformed himself from a death-dealing warrior to a prosperous cattleman and a hard-bargaining politician who earned the respect and friendship of Teddy Roosevelt.”

Barcott calls “Empire of the Summer Moon” “a forceful argument about the place of Native American tribes in geopolitical history.”

Sounds like a book worth reading.

Gwen Florio

Today’s Rapid City Journal has this piece by Jim Kent of Hot Springs, S.D. Here it is in full:

The only thing worse than poor communication is no communication. That’s what happened on the Pine Ridge Reservation this weekend at Wounded Knee – where, perhaps, the greatest miscommunication and, unquestionably, one of the greatest tragedies in American history occurred.

As Saturday’s noon hour approached, so did three Colorado Army National Guard Black Hawk helicopters. Their destination – Wounded Knee.

Most local residents had heard about their arrival via the moccasin trail – which now includes the Internet and social networking sites like Facebook. Due to the history behind the massacre, as well as the military occupation of the area by federal forces in 1973, the Wounded Knee community was livid.

I fully understand the seriousness of the history involved. Twenty-five years ago, I sent a medal I’d received in the Marine Corps to the White House in protest of the Medals of Honor awarded to the 7th Cavalry after the massacre.

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A new historic board game based on colonial times in New England is rankling tribes who feel it perpetuates stereotypes of Native Americans as savages.

“From what I’ve seen right now: totally inappropriate, highly offensive, nowhere near ready to be in production,” said Annawon Weeden, a member of the Mashpee Wampanoags in Massachusetts, tells Eric Tucker of the Associated Press, here.

“It’s just a way to have fun reliving a tragedy.”

The game, “King Philip’s War,” refers to the deadly struggle between colonists and tribes in the 17th century.

Tucker reports that it’s been developed by a company partly owned by former major league pitcher Curt Schilling. Tucker writes:

But Schilling, who won World Series with the Arizona Diamondbacks and Boston Red Sox, said historical events should not be whitewashed for fear of offending someone. King Philip’s War helped forge early American identity, even if it “clearly exposed the horrible side of humans in some cases,” he said.

“If everyone intent on keeping historical events stopped at content that might seem offensive, we’d lose sight of the horrific mistakes this nation, the world and the human race are capable of, and that would be a horrific thing,” Schilling said in an e-mail sent through his publicist.

The game was designed by John Poniske, a middle school social studies and English teacher at Antietam Academy in Hagerstown, Md., who said he came up with the idea after reading a military magazine article about the war.

The game involves scenarios such as ambushes, massacres or spying.

A Facebook group, Stop the Release of King Philip’s War, has more than 340 members and urges MultiManPublishing to halt production.

The war took place from 1675-76 and was named for Philip — also called Metacom. He was leader, or sachem, of the Wampanoag people. During the war from 1675-76, settlers were attacked, villages were burned and thousands of Native Americans died. King Philip was beheaded in 1676.

Gwen Florio

Thanks to Montana writer Mark Ratledge for this contribution:

A PowerPoint presentation put together by a Blackfeet Nation tribal member is bringing to light new descendants of survivors of the Baker Massacre, a chapter in the history of conflict between the U.S. Calvary and the Blackfeet Indians that took place 140 years ago on the Marias River a few miles southeast of the present town of Shelby, in north-central Montana.

Since 1987, faculty and students at Blackfeet Community College and Blackfeet tribal members have gathered near the Marias each Jan. 23 to commemorate the massacre and the survival of their relatives.

Two days before this years’ commemoration, Blackfeet Tribal member Bob Burns presented his PowerPoint at the college during a seminar about the massacre. His great- great-grandfather – Chief Heavy Runner – was killed during the massacre, and he is descended from Heavy Runner’s lone surviving wife.

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A big rap across the knuckles with a pica pole to Willamette Week, which earlier this month slapped this headline atop a story on a knee injury suffered by Portland Trail Blazers’ center Greg Oden.

Lest folks come back at us with that “too sensitive” baloney, let’s consider some other plays on words:

“Oklahoma City bombs in final game.” “Columbine shoots for victory.”

OK, those are pretty lame. And we can’t imagine anyone would do anything like that.

But maybe because the massacre of about 300 Lakota people, most of them unarmed women and children, at Wounded Knee in South Dakota was so long ago – 119 years ago today – there’s a sense that a joking reference to it can’t possibly be objectionable any more.

Wrong.

For starters, the grandchildren of some the victims of Wounded Knee are still alive today, and the memories remain raw among members of those tribes. More to the point, it’s just unacceptable. “Don’t get cute with death,” is one of those Journalism 101 things, right up there with “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.”

The headline is, of course, a play on Dee Brown’s classic book, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” which recounts that massacre and the countless other tragedies perpetrated upon Indian people whose lands were subsumed by the new United States. The book, written 40 years ago, has just been re-released. (See previous post, here.)

Maybe we should send a copy to Willamette Week?

Gwen Florio

This story in the Boston-area MetroWest Daily news demands retelling, for exactly the reason cited by David Tall Pine White, a member of the tribal council for the Chaubunagungamaug band of Nipmucks, who serves as its narrator.

White is afraid that no one knows the significance of this week’s anniversary, and unfortunately we had to count ourselves as part of that number. Here’s what happened at the end of the summer nearly 350 years ago, he tells the paper:

On Aug. 30, 1675, a few months into a bloody war, Massachusetts colonists ordered Native Americans to one of five plantations set up for indigenous people who had converted to Christianity, including what is now Natick.

Two months later, settlers ordered the people in the so-called praying towns – many from this area, starting in Natick – to be marched in chains to the coast and confined to Deer Island, now a national park, in Boston Harbor.

There, with little food or shelter, hundreds died, and others were sold or kidnapped as slaves.

White says that educating others about the past is a step toward righting historic wrongs.

“You can’t get justice unless enough people know,” he says.

Gwen Florio

“This ride is so much more than just a ride,” says Seymour Young of the annual trail ride that takes one week each year to tackle a stretch of the 1,350-mile route taken by Chief Joseph as he tried to find safety for his people.

This year, the ride stopped at the Big Hole Battlefield in southwestern Montana, where 140 people – both Indians and U.S. soldiers – died in 1877 when soldiers and civilian volunteers attacked a Nez Perce camp as people slept.

“It’s hard to really talk about it,” a tearful Bonnie Ewing, founder of the Chief Joseph Foundation, told Ravalli Republic reporter Will Moss (here).

Young Dog says he has “really mixed feelings” about the ride – “Mixed feelings means my feelings are really low ands really deep because of what they did to the Indian people. I get a big ol’ lump in my throat and I want to cry.” But on the other hand, says Young Dog, who drummed and sang through his tears as riders came into the battlefield, he and the other riders are survivors.

Gwen Florio

They came from California, Colorado, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C. – and Alberta, Canada, and even Switzerland – to south-central Montana yesterday to watch a re-enactment as educational as it was exciting. (Read about it here.)

The annual presentation is told from the perspective of the Indian people involved, and was written by Crow historian Joe Medicine Crow.

Among the participants was P.J. Pease of Hardin, Mont., who is Crow and Lakota. He says the role he plays of a Crow warrior – he’s done it for 13 of the event’s 20 years – carries forward to today: “That we will never stop fighting for our rights.”

Gwen Florio