Remembering Greasy Grass
17/01/15 05:21
There is a scene in the 1998 Movie “The Horse Whisperer” where the mother of a severely traumatized daughter stops at the Little Bighorn Battlefield as she travels with her daughter’s injured horse to Montana in search of healing for the horse and for her daughter. They arrive late and there are iron gates locked tightly keeping her out of the battlefield. It was one of many moments in that movie where I had to snicker. The gates shown in the scene, as well as the tall spruce trees, are at the cemetery of my home town - nearly 150 miles away from the battlefield. It didn’t take me long to recognize the gates, though I had never before seen them closed. In my town in the days when I was growing up, before the Interstate Highway was built, the cemetery was at the end of 4th street, an easy bike ride from my home. In fact, we used to ride horses in the field next to the cemetery road where now there is a museum.
There are other scenes in that movie that a local notices. For example, while the front of the Lazy J Motel is as the motel has appeared for decades, there is no horse corral behind the motel for the guests. There is no horse corral at all there. Those scenes were filmed at the fairgrounds. At the end of the movie when the woman leaves the ranch of the horse whisperer she is driving on the West Boulder Road and she is driving the wrong direction. In the direction she is heading in the shot there is nothing but a dead end. If she wants to get back East, she’ll have to turn around and that won’t be an easy job pulling a horse trailer on that road.
Movies are only one way of telling stories, and the stories we tell aren’t always completely true. I’ve know that for a long time. The funeral scaffold scene in the 1970 film “Little Big Man” was filmed from a very low angle so that you can’t see the house that is very close to what is pictured in the scene as a lonely hilltop looking toward the Prior Mountains. And, if you look closely, you can see an airplane on approach to Logan Field in Billings in the corner of one of the shots.
I’ve know stories of the Battle of the Little Bighorn for as long as I can remember. It was common to call it Custer’s Last Stand when I was younger and that was the name for the gas station and convenience store that have been at the bottom of the hill where Highway 212 now meets Interstate 90. When I was young we went there. I had heard of my friends hunting arrowheads and shell casings in the area, but we were under strict orders from our parents not to pick up anything. Even if we saw an arrowhead, we were to leave it where we saw it. Nothing was to be disturbed. The rolling hilltop and the slopes towards the creek where the cottonwoods grew were sacred ground. People had died there. The white obelisk at the top of the hill marked the burial place of some of the soldiers.
It is different if you visit the field today. The dirt path was graveled and a loop was added to the south to where Reno and Benteen and their men holed up after the unsuccessful attempt at attacking the encampment from the south. The road into the battlefield is now paved and there is a museum-visitor’s center. The evergreens have gotten tall and almost look like they were supposed to be on the hill that was once bare of trees. They have put white markers where the soldiers fell and red markers to show the places where Lakota and Cheyenne warriors died.
I don’t much like to visit the place. I’m no believer in ghosts or hauntings. It is just a place of so much death and it carries memories of a tragic part of our history. The cemetery at Wounded Knee feels much the same to me. But it is part of the history of the place where I live. It is about 250 miles from my home to the Little Big Horn Battlefield. Wounded Knee, between Porcupine and Pine Ridge, is about 90 miles in the opposite direction. You can cover the entire distance in a day without much trouble. Of course, it took the Lakota a longer time and they followed a different route than the modern highways. The agency Lakota went south of the Black Hills and then cut north between the Black Hills and the Big Horns to get to the large encampment where Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and the other leaders gathered in the early summer of 1876. They called the area the Greasy Grass.
I have been thinking of those places lately because I received Joseph Marshall’s novel “The Long Knives are Crying” as a Christmas gift. It is a compelling read, even for one who doesn’t enjoy battle stories. Marshall is an excellent storyteller and I have enjoyed his other works, both fiction and nonfiction very much. As a native Lakota speaker he is one of the best contemporary interpreters of Lakota culture currently alive.
It is important, I believe, to hear and read the stories told from the indigenous perspective. Marshall tells the stories well.
I am glad that the official name of the battlefield has been renamed from its one-time monicker: “The Custer Battlefield.” There are still several things named after Custer in our area, including the town in the hills where he led an expedition to explore the hills.
The battle was never about Custer, though he made some incredibly poor decisions leading up to the decisive victory for Crazy Horse, Gall and others inspired by the vision of Sitting Bull. He barely merits a mention in Marshall’s telling of the story. The battle never was about him.
Of course we know that in the end, the overwhelming numbers of soldiers finally forced all of the Lakota to the reservation system. Crazy Horse died at Fort Robinson where he went to the Red Cloud agency in hopes of negotiating a reservation northwest of the hills, near the Bighorn mountains. He was stabbed by a soldier’s lance. They say that Little Big Man was holding his hands behind his back when he was stabbed.
It is a tragic story in the history of this place and the surrounding countryside. By the time I was born, the battlefield was near the place where the Crow and Cheyenne reservations met each other.
The battle, however, was never about Custer. It is a much bigger story.
There are other scenes in that movie that a local notices. For example, while the front of the Lazy J Motel is as the motel has appeared for decades, there is no horse corral behind the motel for the guests. There is no horse corral at all there. Those scenes were filmed at the fairgrounds. At the end of the movie when the woman leaves the ranch of the horse whisperer she is driving on the West Boulder Road and she is driving the wrong direction. In the direction she is heading in the shot there is nothing but a dead end. If she wants to get back East, she’ll have to turn around and that won’t be an easy job pulling a horse trailer on that road.
Movies are only one way of telling stories, and the stories we tell aren’t always completely true. I’ve know that for a long time. The funeral scaffold scene in the 1970 film “Little Big Man” was filmed from a very low angle so that you can’t see the house that is very close to what is pictured in the scene as a lonely hilltop looking toward the Prior Mountains. And, if you look closely, you can see an airplane on approach to Logan Field in Billings in the corner of one of the shots.
I’ve know stories of the Battle of the Little Bighorn for as long as I can remember. It was common to call it Custer’s Last Stand when I was younger and that was the name for the gas station and convenience store that have been at the bottom of the hill where Highway 212 now meets Interstate 90. When I was young we went there. I had heard of my friends hunting arrowheads and shell casings in the area, but we were under strict orders from our parents not to pick up anything. Even if we saw an arrowhead, we were to leave it where we saw it. Nothing was to be disturbed. The rolling hilltop and the slopes towards the creek where the cottonwoods grew were sacred ground. People had died there. The white obelisk at the top of the hill marked the burial place of some of the soldiers.
It is different if you visit the field today. The dirt path was graveled and a loop was added to the south to where Reno and Benteen and their men holed up after the unsuccessful attempt at attacking the encampment from the south. The road into the battlefield is now paved and there is a museum-visitor’s center. The evergreens have gotten tall and almost look like they were supposed to be on the hill that was once bare of trees. They have put white markers where the soldiers fell and red markers to show the places where Lakota and Cheyenne warriors died.
I don’t much like to visit the place. I’m no believer in ghosts or hauntings. It is just a place of so much death and it carries memories of a tragic part of our history. The cemetery at Wounded Knee feels much the same to me. But it is part of the history of the place where I live. It is about 250 miles from my home to the Little Big Horn Battlefield. Wounded Knee, between Porcupine and Pine Ridge, is about 90 miles in the opposite direction. You can cover the entire distance in a day without much trouble. Of course, it took the Lakota a longer time and they followed a different route than the modern highways. The agency Lakota went south of the Black Hills and then cut north between the Black Hills and the Big Horns to get to the large encampment where Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and the other leaders gathered in the early summer of 1876. They called the area the Greasy Grass.
I have been thinking of those places lately because I received Joseph Marshall’s novel “The Long Knives are Crying” as a Christmas gift. It is a compelling read, even for one who doesn’t enjoy battle stories. Marshall is an excellent storyteller and I have enjoyed his other works, both fiction and nonfiction very much. As a native Lakota speaker he is one of the best contemporary interpreters of Lakota culture currently alive.
It is important, I believe, to hear and read the stories told from the indigenous perspective. Marshall tells the stories well.
I am glad that the official name of the battlefield has been renamed from its one-time monicker: “The Custer Battlefield.” There are still several things named after Custer in our area, including the town in the hills where he led an expedition to explore the hills.
The battle was never about Custer, though he made some incredibly poor decisions leading up to the decisive victory for Crazy Horse, Gall and others inspired by the vision of Sitting Bull. He barely merits a mention in Marshall’s telling of the story. The battle never was about him.
Of course we know that in the end, the overwhelming numbers of soldiers finally forced all of the Lakota to the reservation system. Crazy Horse died at Fort Robinson where he went to the Red Cloud agency in hopes of negotiating a reservation northwest of the hills, near the Bighorn mountains. He was stabbed by a soldier’s lance. They say that Little Big Man was holding his hands behind his back when he was stabbed.
It is a tragic story in the history of this place and the surrounding countryside. By the time I was born, the battlefield was near the place where the Crow and Cheyenne reservations met each other.
The battle, however, was never about Custer. It is a much bigger story.