Reconciling Little Bighorn

By Peter Harriman  
Argus Leader  (6/26/01)

LITTLE BIGHORN BATTLEFIELD, Mont. -- A line of vehicles parked by the roadside and bearing license plates from Virginia to Oregon stretched nearly a mile from Interstate 90 up to the Little Bighorn Battlefield Monday.

On the 125th anniversary of the most celebrated conflict between Indians and whites in this country, hundreds of representatives of both races sprawled on the lawn of the visitors' center here. Then they made the hike of several hundred yards up to the white marble monument where approximately 210 members of George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry command were wiped out, and to the site of the proposed memorial to Cheyenne and Lakota victims located nearby.

"This place and what happened here is only now beginning to be understood," said former Rep. Pat Williams, a Montana Republican who used the occasion to call for creation of an Indian-white reconciliation center, to be based at the battlefield.

On a day given over to commemoration of this battle and reflection on what it meant to Indian-white relations, the most fitting memorial now may be the diversity in the crowd that attended.

Participating tribes were all given time on the program, and the Northern Cheyennes opened their portion of the ceremony with a parade up from the battlefield memorial entrance to the site of the proposed Indian memorial.

There, they held a ceremonial victory dance before returning to the lawn below the visitors' center where Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., and Williams were among their speakers.

Nighthorse Campbell, a Cheyenne tribal member with many Montana relatives, sponsored legislation in 1991 that resulted in the Indian memorial being authorized and the site being renamed the Little Bighorn Battlefield from the Custer Battlefield.

Since then, he said Monday, he has observed the evolution of this battle in the national consciousness to the point where all its participants are honored.

Twenty-five years ago, he said, when he attended the centennial celebration, military helicopters flew overhead, Indians at the ceremony were forced to travel as a group and to park their cars in a block "and when we came back, our cars were being searched and our licenses recorded.

"There has been a great deal of change," he said.

Williams, who led the effort in the House to authorize the Indian memorial and change the battlefield name and currently is on the University of Montana faculty, heralded what he hopes will be the next step in that understanding. He said this year members of the Cheyenne tribe approached him with a suggestion that an institute of Indian-white reconciliation be established at the Little Bighorn Battlefield "to help remove the barriers of misunderstanding between our people."

More than a century after the battle "the scars are not healing on their own," he said.

"We need to do better."

Nighthorse Campbell said while Congress can pass laws affecting how this site is interpreted, it cannot pass laws "to make people tolerant, to make them love their neighbors, to make them realize the strength of this country is its diversity.

"Those laws come from the Creator. We have to pass them down to our children."

Williams referred to the recollections of Charles Windahl, a soldier with Maj. Marcus Reno's command who survived Reno's attack on the Indian encampments along the Little Bighorn River and the ensuing two-day siege when that charge was beaten back by the Cheyenne and Lakota, who then overwhelmed Custer. Windahl, Williams said, wrote of watching night fall and listening to the wild cries of the Indians' victory celebration.

"But he was wrong," Williams said. What Windall heard "were songs of death and mourning" for the Indian victims.

"Like so many before and after Lindahl, there is a terrible misunderstanding about the people native to this land."

It has been abetted, he said, by films, "fictional paintings, and one-sided novels."

At the time of the battle and in its aftermath, there have been "broken promises, inattention, lack of respect, and, yes, outright bigotry and racism.

"Let us pledge this site to become a genuine place of reconciliation among the races," he said.

Establishing an institute of reconciliation, "will be a very difficult task, but not as difficult as what people faced on these hills 125 years ago."

Lindall's misinterpretation of what he heard after Custer was anihilated has characterized the historical perspective of the Battle of the Little Bighorn and this nation's image of its Indians for most of the past 125 years, Williams said.

"His misunderstanding can end with us. Let us begin."