"Custer Loses Again"
Crow Agency, Montana
Hundreds of headstones mark the graves of the U.S. Seventh Calvary [sic]
soldiers who fought at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Nearby, a large
monument honors General Custer, who died on this spot in 1876.
One hundred fifteen years after the battle, a small sign placed by the
American Indian Movement reminds visitors that Custer's army fell here at
the hands of fierce Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, and commemorates the
Native American fatalaties.
Native Americans have been struggling for years to change the name of the
Custer Battlefield National Cemetery to the Little Bighorn Battlefield
National Park, and to establish an official memorial honoring the Sioux and
Cheyenne who died here. This year, Congress finally voted to acknowledge
the Native American part in the battle.
After considerable lobbying by the American Indian Movement, two bills
which will change the name of the park and establish a memorial to the
Sioux and Cheyenne finally passed in Congress. Public hearings this fall
will determine when the changes take effect.
Custer enthusiasts bitterly resist the changes. "Veterans that are buried
in the Custer Battlefield National Cemetery have been buried there at the
request of their families," says James Rogers, a member of the Custer
Battlefield and Museum Association, explaining why he opposes renaming the
park. "Their request should be honored." "A monument to Custer is analo-
gous to having a monument to Adolph Eichmann in the middle of downtown Tel
Aviv," says Bill Means, a member of the American Indian Movement. "They've
created this myth of Custer as a kind of compassionate human being."
One point Custer loyalists and Native American activists agree on is that
the proposed location of the new memorial--near the U.S. cavalry cemetery--
is a bad idea.
"It would be a dishonor and even sacrilegious to put an Indian memorial in
the invaders' graveyard, because these people were defending their land,"
says Native American activist Richard Williams.
When archaeologists finished excavating Little Bighorn in 1879, the War
Department turned it into a national cemetery celebrating Custer's defeated
army. The dispute over the site's historical use began in 1925, when a
Northern Cheyenne woman wrote to the U.S. Secretary of War, requesting a
memorial for her father who had died in the battle. Her letter was never
answered. The American Indian Movement took up her request again on June
25, 1976, the one-hundredth anniversary of the battle. The National Park
Service ignored the activists' petitions. AIM responded by putting up the
small plaque at the edge of the battlefield.
This year, the fight to reclaim Little Bighorn became a rallying point for
Native Americans around the country. Barbara Hooher, the Custer Battle-
field's first Native American park superintendent, says she received more
than 500 letters before the bills passed from individuals supporting the
new memorial and the name change. On June 25, the American Indian Movement
held a march at the battlefield to dramatize the point.
"This is an issue of true history and racism," says Means. "It is also an
issue of reconciliation between Indians and non-Indians."
--Karen Lynch
(Karen Lynch is a free-lance writer in Window Rock, Arizona.)
--
Gary S. Trujillo gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us
Somerville, Massachusetts {wjh12,bu.edu,spdcc,ima,cdp}!gnosys!gst