Garryowen Montana

On our way out of Billings we learned that in 1962, a local businessman Dave Drum, had a ranch on the Yellowstone River. Seeing all the folk passing through town on their way to Seattle for the World’s Fair he decided to set up Billings Campground, providing site, restrooms, hot showers and a small store. It was so successful that in 1963, he and some business friends set up Kampgrounds of America and began selling franchises. In just 6 years they had 262 KOA campgrounds around the US.

We headed to Garryowen Montana to visit the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, on the edge of town. We learned that the town was named this because General George Armstrong Custer played the traditional Irish folksong Garryowen when marching his troops into battle.

We always marvel at how we stumble on stuff that connects threads, or how things are connected in the places we visit. In the late 1860’s, crews of the Central Pacific Railroad made camp at Pompey’s Pillar as a central supply point in their construction of the transcontinental railroad. To protect them from attacks from hostile native nations, General Custer was assigned to use the 7^th cavalry to protect them. Many of those same men would lose their lives some half dozen years later, along with Custer himself, on June 25, 1876.

Gold had been discovered in the Black Hills, and in 1874, an expedition lead by Custer confirmed it was there. Euro-Americans flocked to the Black Hills due to the lack of jobs in hopes of feeding their families. The problem was that the Black Hills were, by an 1868 treaty, clearly native lands. Though US Grant tried several times to purchase the Black Hills from the native nations, they refused to give up their ancestral lands. So, orders went out from Congress and the President to force native folk into the established reservations and off of the gold rich Black Hills.

Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull refused to leave ancestral lands. In June 1876, they and upwards of 8,000 of their people camped on the Little Bighorn River outside Garryowen, despite Army directives to vacate these lands. Tecumseh Sherman and Philip Sheridan were charged with fixing the “Indian problem” and devised a plan to send three units of a thousand or so soldiers to the area, one from the West, one from the East and one from the South. Before the other units could arrive, Custer’s 7^th Cavalry with maybe 500 men descended on the river.

Arrogant because of all his outnumbered victories in the Civil War, Custer decided to attack. He split his forces in three led by him, Marcus Reno and Frederick Benteen, to attack from different vantages. Benteen never made his attack likely because he did not agree with Custer on the strategy. Reno did, but because the Cheyenne and Lakota had upwards of 2,000 angry warriors, they were severely outnumbered and repelled. When Custer led his attack, none of his other forces are where he expected them to be, resulting in the complete annihilation of he and his entire unit.

Headstones now rest where each of those killed in the battle had fallen. The white headstones are US Calvary casualties, the red headstones are native casualties. There are no headstones for the horses – apparently as it became clear to Custer’s men that they would not be leaving this place, many put a bullet in their horses’ heads knowing they would not be needing them further, and used their fallen bodies as their last defensive protection. A massive horse grave has been discovered by archeologists.

We visited a museum in Garryowen that is worth a visit. Out front of the museum is one of three tombs for the unknown soldier in the US, this one is a member of the ranks of Marcus Reno at the battle of Little Bighorn.

On June 25, 1926, surviving members of the native nations and the US Calvary met in Garryowen to “bury the hatchet” along with an unidentified soldier from the battle. General Edward Settle Godfrey of the 7^th Cavalry and Chief White Bull, known as White Man Runs Him, met and shook hands at the historic celebration.

The museum had many really cool artifacts from the battle. One that amazed me were the actual native decorated leather gloves that General Custer had worn in battle that day. Kept hidden by a warrior from the battle in order to make sure they didn’t end up in the hands of the US Government, they were eventually donated to the non-profit organization that runs this museum. It’s chilling to think about the chain of ownership of these gloves, and what they have witnessed.

The nicknames for the native warriors fascinates me. They both mock the white man, yet decry the plight the natives faced under the thumb of Euro-Americans. One of the few native casualties at Little Bighorn was a Cheyenne battle chief known as Lame White Man. His name was amazingly prophetic as it related to the events of June 25, 1876.

While many of the native Americans of the time were photographed, especially by David F. Barry, one of the most famous photographers of the early West, Lame White Man was not. In this rare photo take sometime between 1871 and 1873, Wild Hog Cheyenne is on the left, and Lame White Man is on the right.

We had a fascinating visit, even if it did not make us proud to be Euro-Americans.

Talk to you soon!