Big Sky

Day 40

Wednesday  October 20, 2010

Montana

Two words – Big Sky!  It fits.  It just seems we’re riding on top of the world.  Big feather clouds sweep from the horizon clear across the sky.  Fields are neatly cropped with fences, but no farmhouses to give a hint of who owns or works this land.  About mid-day, rather abruptly, we enter into a wooded section of the highway.  Farmland gives way to big pine trees that begin to come into view.  Lines of cottonwood glow golden in the sun.  No reds from the east coast, but big clusters of sunlit gold.

We began the day at a state park walking along a Badlands trail.  This is an area where dinosaurs roamed.  It is harsh and dry.  The trail takes you into a small section where you can see and feel the sandy surface of the muddy deposits that formed this land.  Because the deposits include hard and soft material the erosion is uneven.  Softer soil is worn away by wind and water leaving small capstones on the tops of pillars.  The trail is narrow and loose gravel lends itself to unstable footing.  In spots I freeze up afraid to go on, but Jack’s encouraging and comes back to give me a hand. 

We leave and travel on to the site of Custer’s Last Stand.- a badland in a totally different way.  It’s quite a long ways away and we arrive with 90 minutes so try and experience it all.  Smaller than Gettysburg it feels the same.  This war, also known as the Battle of Little Bighorn lasted two days in 1876.  June 25 & 26.  Many lives were lost in battle.  We drive the five mile loop trail and read some of the signs or read from the brochure about how the battle was fought.  Each side advancing and retreating until, in the end, the Indians win the battle.  Custer is not only defeated.  He and his unit of men are dead along with his brother, two nephews and a brother-in-law. 

The Lakota, Sioux and Cheyenne won the battle but in the end they lost the war.  Ultimately, the Plains Indians knew that they either had to fight until they are all were dead or surrender their nomadic lifestyle and culture to the reservation.  But even then, they were not safe.  Once gold was found on their reservation fortune seekers came looking for gold.  With no regard for the treaty they entered the reservation and took what they wanted.  The government tried to buy that land from the Indians, but they refused.  Further battles and many more deaths followed. 

Gravestones mark the place where soldiers fell during the two days of battle.  When the fighting ended the Indians took their dead and left the battlefield.  Many spears were left behind. Looking across the grassy field now it’s hard to imagine this blood soaked land.  Running through the center of this land is the Little Bighorn River.  Today bright yellow cottonwoods line the river and the scene looks so peaceful that it’s hard to imagine the fighting, the dust, the smoke and the gunfire.  The dust and smoke were so thick that rifles were tossed aside and hand guns were used.  Indians fought knowing that their lives and their culture were threatened.  It's an interesting, but sad day.

Both sides suffered great losses.  Over 259 of Custer’s men died.  Oral records count the number of killed Indians to be between 50 and 300.  Surviving soldiers buried the dead and marked their graves.  Many of the dead were known by name as they were officers.  Others were only known only by the rank on their uniforms.  All the graves were marked by scratching names or rank on broken spears and then driving the stake into the ground where the soldier was buried.  Later, marble headstones replaced the stakes.  In some places a lone headstone stands on a hill.  In other places small clusters of two or three or four markers show where men died.  And still other sites have many headstones – the sites of the strongest conflict.  Red stone markers show the places where Indians fell.  Because fallen Indians were carried away from the battlefield, the headstones are placed in locations that have been identified through oral records.

A few days ago we saw a map of the United States before Europeans came.  Every square inch bore a tribal name.  We know the story of what happened.  There seems no way to undo it all.  But in the days following Custer’s battle it wasn’t just a war that was lost.  It was a culture, a lifestyle, a nation of people that were forever changed.