Eating Crow 2

                  ‘The easiest way to eat crow is while it's still warm.’


Our wagon headed south, off the main Interstate that had cemented the Atlantic to the Pacific, onto the road that had fused the interloper to the indigenous. A lone combine stirred the yellow dust of Bauxauwashee. Welcome to Crow Country. They had been his scouts.  Fireworks. No Services. We took the offramp. Exit 510 Casino Little Bighorn……
It became an overpass. I would have wondered what would be out here in the middle of nowhere, that would require an overpass, but I already knew. We pulled into a big parking lot, full of license plates from all over America. Just because you’re following a well marked trail doesn’t mean that whoever made it knew where they were going.
“This wasn’t just a battle over whether the land was made for buffalo or of gold.” I said. This was the final war over the meaning of life. Either we belong to the land, or the land belongs to us, constituent or commodity, existential or exploitative.
“Just a point on our path of pilgrimage.” Robyn said. Authenticity and redemption come from living the authentic life, by living in Nature, and by facing death with dignity and courage.
“Remember when Richard asked me what that had to do with the American West” I asked.
“You said it was The Sacred Land.” She said. “The gold rush towards truth.”
“On the shelves beside Hemingway’s work desk were two books on General Custer’s fall at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.” I said. “One more book than on any other topic. The two men whose paths crossed here were the ultimate symbols of the ultimate clash of cultures.”
“More than Red Cloud and Fetterman?” Robyn asked.
“More.” I said. The first was named Jumping Badger, at his birth on the Yellowstone River, in 1831. God made me an Indian. If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man, he would have made me so in the first place. Eight years later, on the other side of the germs, guns and steel, a Michigan blacksmith of German descent, had a son.
With his first youthful courage, in a battle between his Lakota and the Crow, Jumping Badger was given one of his father’s names, Tȟatȟaŋka Iyotȟaŋka. Sitting Bull.
In 1858, the blacksmith’s son was admitted to West Point. Over the next three years he came close to expulsion as many times, due to excessive demerits, many from the pranks he pulled on his fellow cadets. Gonorrhoea had sterilized his reproductive potential, but not his charm. Even the officer who graduated last in his class could do well in the Civil War that had just begun. He burst onto his first calvary brigade command, the Battle of Bull Run, distinguishing himself with an aggressive, fearless willingness to lead attacks, at great personal risk. What some claimed as foolhardy or reckless, and he called ‘luck’ was actually a battle style of meticulous planning- scouting the battlefield, gauging the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses, ascertaining the best line of attack, and then satisfied, and only then satisfied, launching his surprise ‘Custer Dash with a Michigan yell.’ He rose quickly, to brigadier general at the age of 23, the ‘Boy General’ darling of the press, in his polished cavalry boots, tight olive corduroy trousers, black velveteen hussar jacket with silver piping on the sleeves, a sailor shirt with silver stars on his collar, and a red cravat. His blond German hair, generously sprinkled with cinnamon-scented oil, bounced in long ringlets, under a wide-brimmed slouch hat. His showy style alienated some of his men; others began to wear red neckerchiefs.
On July 3, 1863, Custer led a mounted charge of the 1st Michigan Cavalry, breaking the back of Jeb Stuart’s Confederate assault at Gettysburg.
‘I challenge the annals of warfare to produce a more brilliant or successful charge of cavalry,’ He wrote, despite his loss of 257 men, the most of any Union brigade. He was present at General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House. The table upon which it was signed was given as a gift to his wife by General Sheridan, who included a note praising Custer's gallantry. The following year, Sitting Bull defended a village against two brigades of over two thousand soldiers. In an attack he led against a wagon train near Marmath, North Dakota, a bullet that had entered his left hip, left the small of his back. In my early days, I was eager to learn and to do things, and therefore I learned quickly.
After the Civil War, in 1865, Sheridan sent Custer to lead the  Military Division of the Southwest on an arduous eighteen day march in August, from Louisiana to Texas, so hot they could have boiled beans with their tears. The five regiments of veteran Western Theater cavalrymen were waiting to be mustered out of Federal Service, but found themselves instead under the vain discipline of an Eastern dandy. Several planned to ambush Custer, but he was warned the night before.
Although the depletion of buffalo herds was driving more and more tribes into the agencies, Sitting Bull had refused to sign Red Cloud’s Treaty of Fort Laramie, and continued to lead hit-and-run guerrilla attacks against forts along the upper Missouri. Look at me, see if I am poor, or my people either. The whites may get me at last, as you say, but I will have good times till then. You are fools to make yourselves slaves to a piece of fat bacon, some hard-tack, and a little sugar and coffee.
Custer was mustered out of the volunteer service, denied the opportunity for ten thousand dollars in gold as adjuvant general of the Mexican army, and toured instead with President Andrew Johnson’s  ‘Swing Around the Circle’ train journey as head of the Soldiers and Sailors Union, in support of his reconstruction policies towards the South.
When the new U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment was formed at Fort Riley, Kansas, to prosecute the Indian Wars, Custer was appointed Lieutenant colonel. Beyond his familiar red cravat, every conceited component of his costume converted to buckskin. His troopers nicknamed him ‘Iron Butt and ‘Hard Ass,’ for his saddle stamina and strict discipline, and ‘Ringlets’ for his vanity. After taking part in an expedition against the Cheyenne in 1867, he was courtmartialed for abandoning his post to see his wife. Maj. Gen. Sheridan, allowed him to return to duty, before the term of his year’s suspension had expired.
On November 27, 1868, Custer led the 7th Calvary in an assault on Black Kettle’s encampment. The Battle of Washita River was a massacre. He killed 103 warriors, an indeterminate number of women and children, and most of the 875 Indian ponies. The remaining Southern Cheyenne went onto an assigned reservation.
Three years later, Sitting Bull ‘most vigorously’ attacked survey parties mapping a proposed railway route through Hunkpapa Lakota lands. The ‘Panic of 1873’ halted construction, and forced the Northern Pacific's backers into bankruptcy. In August, near the Tongue River, Custer and the 7th Cavalry clashed for the first time with the Lakota. One man on each side was killed.
Tensions increased considerably in 1874, when Custer’s discovery and announcement at French Creek triggered the Black Hills Gold Rush. The US government was increasingly pressured to open the Lakota lands to mining and settlement. Towns like Deadwood, notorious for their lawlessness, appeared overnight. The Lakota delegation that met with President Grant in Washington in 1875, including Red Cloud, attempted to persuade him to honour the existing treaties, and stem the flow of miners into their dominion. Grant offered them $25,000 and resettlement onto reservations. Spotted Tail told him to pound sand. When I was here before, the President gave me my country, and I put my stake down in a good place, and there I want to stay.... You speak of another country, but it is not my country; it does not concern me, and I want nothing to do with it. I was not born there.... If it is such a good country, you ought to send the white men now in our country there and let us alone.
In November, the Interior Department of the Grant government set a deadline of January 31, 1876 for all Lakota and Arapaho wintering in the ‘unceded territory’ outside the Great Sioux Reservation, to report to their designated reservations or be considered ‘hostile.’ They suspected that not all would comply, and knew full well the one man who wouldn’t.
Instead, Sitting Bull created the Sun Dance ‘unity camp’ alliance between the Lakota and the Northern Cheyenne, Hunkpapa, Oglala, Sans Arc, and Minneconjou and a large number of ‘Agency Indians’ who had slipped away to join them. He sent scouts to the reservations to recruit new warriors, and generously shared his resources. His reputation for ‘strong medicine’ developed as he evaded the Americans. Over the course of the first half of 1876, Sitting Bull's Ash Creek camp expanded into the largest gathering of Plains Indians ever recorded. Natives joined him for safety in numbers, to discuss what to do about the whites. By the time he had moved to the banks of the Little Bighorn River, he had created an extensive village 3 miles long, containing more than ten thousand people. He put in your heart certain wishes and plans; in my heart, he put other different desires.
On February 1, 1876, the US Army began to track down their ‘hostiles.’ Six weeks later, Captain Reynolds attacked Wooden Leg’s Northern Cheyenne, who fled to Sitting Bull for safety. Custer was supposed to have led the corresponding expedition against the Sioux two days earlier, but was stuck in Washington, subpoenaed to testify against President Grant’s brother Orville, among others, who had been involved in Secretary of War Belknap’s kickback scandal, supplying troops with defective weapons and hostile Indians with superior ones. It didn’t endear him to President Grant. Custer was accused of perjury and disparagement of brother officers, and vilified in the press. Grant gave orders to appoint another officer to command the operation against the Sioux. General Sherman asked Grant to meet with Custer. Grant refused. Custer took a train to Chicago. Sherman ordered General Sheridan to intercept him. Sheridan, together with Sherman and General Terry wrote to Grant accepting Custer’s ‘guilt’ and promise of future restraint, and presented the advantages of Custer’s leadership of the expedition. Grant became apprehensive above being blamed if the ‘Sioux campaign’ failed for ignoring the recommendations of his senior army officers, and gave the green light for Custer to take command. Grant had nothing to lose. Custer had everything to prove.
On May 17, 1876, the 7th Cavalry departed westward from Fort Abraham Lincoln in the Dakota Territory, together with the 17th U.S. Infantry, the 20th Infantry Gatling gun detachment, and teamsters driving 150 wagons and pack mules. He arrived at the mouth of the Powder River, with the rest of Brig. Gen. Alfred Terry's column, twelve days later, to await the arrival of the twenty companies of Brig. Gen. George Crook's column coming north from Fort Fetterman in the Wyoming Territory, and the steamboat Far West, loaded with 200 tons of supplies. At Fort Snelling, Custer had said that he would ‘cut loose’ from Terry the first chance he got.
During a Sun Dance on the Rosebud Creek on June 5, 1876, Sitting Bull had a vision of soldiers falling into his camp like grasshoppers from the sky. Twelve days later, Crook’s column limped back from the Battle of the Rosebud, to wait for reinforcements.
A week before the clash of civilizations, Sitting bull fasted, sacrificed over a hundred pieces of flesh from his arms, and had his most intense revelation. The Great Spirit has given our enemies to us. We are to destroy them. We do not know who they are. They may be soldiers.
On June 22, Terry ordered Custer and his 7th Calvary of 31 officers and 566 enlisted men to begin a pursuit along the Rosebud, with the option to ‘depart from orders upon seeing sufficient reason.’ Two evenings later, his scouts arrived at the Crow’s Nest, a viewpoint fourteen miles east of the Little Bighorn River. The earth has received the embrace of the sun and we shall see the results of that love.