Here’s how Susan Olp’s story of the Billings Gazette begins:

The Battle of the Little Bighorn is known around the world.

On Friday afternoon, about 500 people from as far away as England came to the Real Bird Ranch, adjacent to the Little Bighorn Battle Monument, north of Garryowen, to see the battle for themselves. The Real Birds, members of the Crow Tribe, have put on the re-enactment for about 17 years.

Visitors sat in bleachers overlooking the Medicine Trail Coulee, near where Lt. Col. George Custer and the 7th Cavalry met decisive defeat on June 25, 1876. The brown Bighorn River drifted along lazily in the background.http://buffalopost.net/wp-admin/post-new.php

Authenticity is critical to the success of the re-enactment of the battle, said Ken Real Bird. Members of the cavalry wear uniforms and use firearms similar to the ones fired in the battle.

Those who portray the Cheyenne and Sioux warriors are only permitted to wear breechcloths and moccasins. Most paint themselves and their horses with symbols of red, white, yellow and black.

Between 70 and 80 people re-enact the roles of the soldiers, the warriors and tribal members. Friday’s presentatoin of the battle was choreographed by retired Lt. Col. Bobby Jolley, from Fort Lewis, Wash.

Steve Alexander, from Monroe, Mich., portrayed Custer. Frank Knows His Gun, a member of the Ogallala Sioux Tribe, portrayed Crazy Horse.

Want more? There’s a whole photo array, a schedule of events, and of course the rest of this most excellent story. Click here.

Gwen Florio

Tags: 7th Cavalry, Apsaalooke, Battle of the Little Bighorn, Bighorn River, buffalo post, Cheyenne Tribe, Crazy Horse, Crow Tribe, Garryowen, Gwen Florio, Little Bighorn Battle re-enactment, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, Medicine Traile Coulee, Native American history, Oglala Sioux Tribe, Real Bird Ranch

Here’s a good column from Jim Kent of the Rapid City, S.D., Journal about how summer is fraught with historic meaning in the West, especially for Native Americans. The National Days of Prayer to Protect Native American Sacred Places brings this to mind:

The first week of summer has different significance for different people. Among Native Americans, it’s a time of balance.

On the one hand, there’s the anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. It was the greatest victory by this country’s indigenous people over forces of the invading armies – and invading is precisely what they were.

I’ve always had sympathy for those European immigrants who, in search of any job they could get, found themselves wearing a U.S. Army uniform staring down hundreds of Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho. Bad move.

But the reality is that these warriors were merely fighting to protect their homelands, their women, children and way of life. And wouldn’t you if any of those anticipated invading armies we’ve been sending troops to keep in their foreign lands since 1946 ever made it to our shores?

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: 7th Cavalry, 9/11, Arapaho Tribe, Battle of the Little Bighorn, Bear Butte, buffalo post, Cheyenne Tribe, Devil's Tower, First Amendment, First Peoples, Gwen Florio, Harney Peak, Lakota, Mount Rushmore, National Days of Prayer to Protect Native American Sacred Places, Native American news, U.S. Army

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

Tags: Battle of the Little Bighorn, buffalo post, Comanche, Empire of the Summer Moon, Gwen Florio, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, Nathaniel Philbrick, Native American news, Quanah Parker, S.C. Gwynne, Sitting Bull, The Last Stand - Custer

Racial violence won’t be tolerated, Farmington officials tell Navajo group

The mayor and other city officials from Farmington, N.M., met with a Navajo human rights group last week to give them the message that racial violence won’t be tolerated in their town. The meeting follows an incident in which a developmentally delayed Navajo man was held by three other men who branded his arm with a swastika. The Navajo Times reports on the meeting here. Meanwhile, Farmington police are doing an internal investigation into how the incident initially was handled, KQRE reports (see video above). The first officer on the scene didn’t recognize that the man was disabled, and thought he was drunk, police say.

First Nations protest honorary degree to former Ontario premier
Former Ontario premier Mike Harris is scheduled to get an honorary doctorate of letters next month from Nipissing University. But that plan doesn’t well with aboriginal groups within Ontario, who recall the fatal shooting of a First Nations protester in 1995 at Ipperwash Provincial Park in southwestern Ontario, according to this Canadian Press story. Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief Patrick Madahbee says Ontario’s First Nations feel Harris doesn’t deserve it. The groups cite the “hostile” relationship between the provincial government under Harris at the time of the shooting.

Native American group denounces new Arizona ethnic studies law
Members of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association invited Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva to their Tucson convention to discuss a new law that effectively bans ethnic studies – including Native American studies – in Arizona public schools, KGUN 9 News reports here. Fifteen students recently were arrested during a protest against the law.

GOP gubernatorial candidates in South Dakota pledge tribal outreach
“Listen.” That’s the approach state government should take in working to heal old wounds and improve relations with Native American tribes in South Dakota, Republican candidates for governor told Rapid City (S.D.) Journal reporter Kevin Woster, here.

New book takes fresh approach to Little Bighorn Battle
Check out this review of Nathaniel Philbrick’s “The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Bighorn.” Lorna Thackeray of the Billings (Mont.) Gazette calls it “one of the most readable ever to emerge” from the hundreds of books on the subject.

Touring Native American veterans exhibit comes to Flathead Reservation
A Smithsonian exhibit honoring Native American veterans will be touring Montana for the next year, making stops at all of the seven Indian reservations within the state. It’s starting out at the Peoples Center on the Flathead Indian Reservation, the Char-Koosta News reports here.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Anishinabek Nation, Arizona ethnic studies law, Battle of the Little Bighorn, Farmington, hate crimes, Ipperwash Provincial Park, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, Mike Harris, Nathaniel Philbrick, Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, Native American politics, Navajo, Nipissing University, Sitting Bull, Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, South Dakota governor's race, swastika, The Last Stand - Custer, white supremacists

It’s one thing to know that the history books got so much wrong. It’s another to hear it directly from the source – and so soon after the event actually happened – and then to realize that so many books still got it wrong!

Just 18 months after the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Hunkpapa Sioux chief Sitting Bull told what happened that day to Martin Marty of Indiana, a Benedictine abbot who lived with the Sioux and spoke their language, the Missoulian’s Kim Briggeman reports here.

Martin followed Sitting Bull and his people to Canada after battle and stayed with them for eight days, and took down Sitting Bull’s story and then passed it along to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

As Briggeman writes:

The American accounts of the battle are all wrong, the Hunkpapa chief claims. The Indians had 11 days warning that the soldiers were coming. Lt. George Custer’s Seventh Cavalrymen were too tired to fight, the horses broken down by hard travel and no food. The soldiers “had been so long in the saddle that they were overcome by sleep,” Sitting Bull said.

There were not the massive numbers of Indians involved in the fight as most reports had it, but they still outnumbered Custer’s men six to one. The annihilation was over in a few minutes.

“Our powder was scarce, and we killed the soldiers with our war clubs,” the chief told Marty. “The soldiers … were killed so quick they did not have time to fight us.”

Sitting Bull said the Sioux did not recognize Custer in the fight, and they did not know him to call him “Long Hair.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: Battle of the Little Bighorn, Benedictine, buffalo post, Hunkpapa Sioux, Native American history, Native American news, Sitting Bull