We are thinking now of the reddest chapter in the Indian wars of the
Western plains. Out amid the dirge of landscape, framed within the valley
of the Little Big Horn, where that historic river winds its tortuous way
through the sagebrush and cactus of Montana, a weather-beaten cross stands
on a lonely hillside, surrounded by a cluster of white marble slabs, and
all marking the final resting-place of the heroes of the Seventh United
States Cavalry, who perished to a man, “in battle formation,” with their
intrepid leader, Gen. George A. Custer. “Custer’s Last Battle,” as
chroniclers of Indian wars have designated that grim tragedy, has been
written about, speculated upon, and discussed more than any other single
engagement between white troops and Indians. Volumes have already been
written and spoken on all sides—the controversy still goes on. The brave
dead sleep on; they are bivouacked on Fame’s eternal camping ground.
Civilization has irrigated the valley and swept on to Western frontiers,
but as though to forever write laurels for the brow of Custer—called the
Murat of the American army—the white stones and the decaying crucifix of
wood are surrounded by barren bluffs and a landscape so forbidding that it
is a midnight of desolation. It seems to be preserved by the God of
Battles as an inditement on the landscape never to be erased by any human
court—lonely, solemn, desolate, bereaved of any summer flower, written all
over with the purple shadows of an endless Miserere. Thirty-six years
have run through the hourglass since these dreary hills and the flowing
river listened to the furious speech of rifles and the warwhoop of
desperate redmen. The snows have piled high the parchment of winter—a
shroud for the deathless dead—whiter than the white slabs. Summer has
succeeded summer, and all the June days since that day of terrific
annihilation have poured their white suns upon these white milestones of
the nation’s destiny—the only requiem, the winds of winter, and in summer
the liquid notes of the meadow lark. In all the argument and controversy
that has shifted the various factors of the fight over the checkerboard of
contention, the voice of the Indian has hitherto been hopelessly silent.
It is historically significant, therefore, that the Indian now speaks, and
the story of Custer’s Last Battle, now told for the first time by all four
of his scouts, and leaders of the Sioux and Cheyennes, should mark an
epoch in the history of this grim battle. The Indians who tell this story
were all of them members of the last Great Indian Council, and they
visited the Custer Field a little over two miles from the camp of the
chiefs, traversed every step of the ensanguined ground and verified their
positions, recalling the tragic scenes of June 26, 1876. It matters much
in reading their story to remember that all of Ouster’s command were
killed—every lip was sealed in death and the silence is forever unbroken.
The Indian survivors are all old men: Goes-Ahead and Hairy Moccasin are
each on the verge of the grave, fatally stricken by disease; Chief Two
Moons, leader of the hostile Cheyennes, is a blind old man;
Runs-the-Enemy, a Sioux chief, totters with age. In a near tomorrow they
too will sink into silence.
[The Custer Battlefield]