EVENTS PAY HOMAGE TO CUSTER'S LAST STAND : CEREMONIES MARK DAY CUSTER FELL.Byline: The News York Times Ever since George Armstrong Notable people named George Armstrong include:
The defeat of the Seventh Cavalry led the government to redouble re·dou·ble v. re·dou·bled, re·dou·bling, re·dou·bles v.tr. 1. To double. 2. To repeat. 3. Games To double the doubling bid of (an opponent) in bridge. v. its force, and within a few years the Indians' nomadic See nomadic computing. life was brutally ended. The battlefield itself became host to a monument that paid more honor to Custer than to the victors. Now the superintendent of the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument: see Little Bighorn, river; National Parks and Monuments (table). is a Mandan Hidatsa Indian who passionately wants to make it a more welcoming place for Indians. But he is finding that for many on both sides of the fight, the wounds of the battle continue to be tender. ``This represents the end of the way of life for the Indian people,'' superintendent Gerard Baker Gerard Baker (born April 11 1938 in New York) is a former American professional soccer player. Despite being American, Baker played his whole career in the United Kingdom, although he was capped by the US several times. said as he gestured toward the battlefield in the rolling hills Rolling hills are like a mountain chain, only a "hill chain" of hills that roll on and on continually. You will often find them in between plains and mountains, near major rivers, or randomly anywhere. The only places without rolling hills are deserts and flood plains. of southern Montana, which was crowded with tourists on a warm afternoon. ``When Indian people come here, they cry and they get mad for the loss of that way of life, that freedom. It's something we'll never get back. That's what this place is for.'' With that in mind, Baker is preparing to solicit designs for a monument to be built on Last Stand Hill to commemorate the deaths of the 50 or so Indians in the battle, which would be yards from a monument to Custer's slain soldiers. Baker has made big plans for Tuesday and Wednesday, the 120th anniversary of the fight. Whites and Indians from all the tribes in the battle - Cheyenne, Arapaho, Lakota, as well as the Arikira and Crow who fought on Custer's side - will go to the monument for prayers, a buffalo feast and a ceremony that is generating some outrage. The Mandan and Hidatsa were not involved. ``We're going to have an `Attack at Dawn' ceremony,'' Baker said. It will be held Tuesday, the anniversary of the day that Custer and his men were all killed in the first part of the two-day battle. Indians will ride horses to the boundary of the monument at daybreak, head for a mass grave A mass grave is a grave containing multiple, usually unidentified human corpses. There is no strict definition of the minimum number of bodies required to constitute a mass grave. where 200 troopers are buried, and ``count coup'' by using a stick to hit a stone obelisk obelisk (ŏb`əlĭsk), slender four-sided tapering monument, usually hewn of a single great piece of stone, terminating in a pointed or pyramidal top. that marks the grave. Counting coup Counting coup was a battle practice of Native Americans of the Great Plains. A nonviolent demonstration of bravery, it consisted of touching an enemy warrior, with the hand or with a coup stick, then running away unharmed. was a battle tradition in which warriors proved their skill and courage by striking an enemy with a special stick and returning safely to the tribe. ``I've told the tribes, this is your day,'' Baker said. He has invited members of the present Seventh Cavalry to attend a healing ceremony called Wipe Away the Tears at the 765-acre battlefield on the Crow Reservation, but Maj. Gen. Leon Laporte, who commands the First Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas, which includes the Seventh Cavalry, said through a spokeswoman that his schedule did not permit him to attend. Members of several groups that commemorate the cavalry, including the Custer Battlefield Historical and Museum Association, contend that Baker's program insults the troopers who died. ``Gerard has a crusade going, the Indianization of the battlefield,'' an editor of The Custer Little Bighorn Battlefield Advocate, Bob Wells, said. ``He's gone way overboard. It would be a serious mistake to plant the Indian Memorial anywhere near the memorial of the Seventh Calvary. The magnetism and dignity of that monument is that it occupies that hill.'' The Attack at Dawn also riles Wells of Malibu and his colleagues, who accuse Baker and other Indian leaders of double standards. ``What would people say if cavalry re-enactors went to Wounded Knee and touched the monument with sabers?'' Wells wrote in The Advocate. Baker, who said he had received three death threats in his three years of working at the battlefield, said that the interpretation at the monument had always been biased and that he was merely trying to make things ``more user-friendly for Indians.'' He is supported by Indians like Steve Brady, a Northern Cheyenne in Lame Deer and a consultant to the tribe on sacred sites. ``It's been a long time coming,'' Brady said, referring to changes in the battlefield museum that show what happened to the Indians after the battle. ``The Little Bighorn Battlefield is a sacred site because so many lives were lost there.'' Baker said he followed traditional ways. He pointed to a braid of sweet grass that he burns in his office for protection against negative influences. Along the Little Bighorn, on monument grounds, he has built a sweat lodge sweat lodge Hut or lodge used for ritual purification. Its use originated with Native Americans—for whom it remains a significant ceremony—but it is now common among other non-Indian groups who recognize its health as well as spiritual benefits. where he prays. ``If it weren't for the sweat lodge and the sacred objects,'' he said, ``I don't think I would survive this place. It's too controversial.'' CAPTION(S): 3 Photos PHOTO (1) American Indians in full costume await their c ue during a re-enactment ceremony of the Battle of Little Bighorn on Saturday in southern Montana. (2) Actors portraying members of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry ride onto the battlefield. New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times (3) Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument superintendent Gerard Baker finds wounds on both sides of the fight remain tender. Associated Press |
|
||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion