‘Today I am celebrating the victory of our people’: Native Americans ring in the anniversary of the Battle of Little Bighorn

The battle, one of the most famous and symbolically charged events in American history, marked its anniversary Thursday. Allied tribes came together on that hot day near the banks of the Little Bighorn River in present-day Montana to hand the U.S. Army a rare defeat as they fought to preserve their way of life in the face of westward expansion. Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and more than 200 his troops were killed.

Reenactments will illustrate the battle. Horse riders from the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota and elsewhere are traveling hundreds of miles to the Crow Agency area in Montana to mark the occasion. Families are being encouraged to share their oral histories. At the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, horse races and traditional songs and dances are planned.

Gathering at the battlefield area in Montana means “we’re still here,” said William Good Bird, a traditional singer from the Spirit Lake Dakota Nation in North Dakota who woke up the camp where hundreds of people were gathered from numerous tribes with a song and drumming.

“Today I am celebrating the victory of our people, celebrating my life as a human being and my spot on this earth,” he said.

Native warriors overpowered divided U.S. Army forces

The discovery of gold in the Black Hills in what is now South Dakota by a Custer expedition just years earlier spurred a military campaign against Great Plains tribes that aimed to push them onto reservations, or what were known then as agencies, said historian Dakota Goodhouse.

There were bigger, longer battles and other Native victories between March 1876 and June 1877, but Goodhouse said only the Battle of Greasy Grass — named by Native Americans for the slick grass along the river — gained national recognition because the commanding officer was killed.

At the time, the Lakota were one of the largest and most powerful tribal nations, with strong leaders in Sitting Bull and warriors like Crazy Horse. Native warriors quickly overwhelmed Custer’s men as the U.S. forces were spread miles apart over the hilly area.

News of Custer’s defeat stunned Americans, who were celebrating their country’s centennial.

The federal government accelerated efforts to subdue resistance, bringing years of hardship and upheaval for Native Americans. Crazy Horse was killed in 1877, and starvation brought about the surrender of others in 1881.

Sitting Bull didn’t surrender as history books tell it, said Jon Eagle Sr., a former Standing Rock tribal historic preservation officer from the Hunkpapa band of the Oceti Sakowin.

“Our people say that he looked at his son Crow Foot and said, ‘My boy, if you live, you can never be a man in this world because you can never own a gun or a pony,’” Eagle said. “I think that he understood that things were going to change for his children, his grandchildren and those not yet born.”

Sitting Bull was killed with about a dozen other people when agency police attempted to arrest him in 1890.

Custer is remembered as a polarizing figure

Biographer T.J. Stiles described Custer as one of the most distinguished combat officers in the Army at the end of the Civil War. But he said the “Boy General” with his long hair and flamboyant battlefield wardrobe often bristled at the chain of command and did not take to the management side of leadership.

“Custer was someone who whenever he got into the frying pan, he immediately started looking for the fire,” he said.

In 1873, Custer was assigned to lead the Seventh Cavalry at Fort Abraham Lincoln, near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota. From there, he led military expeditions, including one that confirmed the gold in the Black Hills, a sacred place to the Lakota.

Seen in the U.S. as a tragic hero and memorialized for his military feats, Custer could also be considered progressive even as the federal government sought to displace Native Americans and stamp out Native languages through boarding schools, Goodhouse said. He learned to speak Arikara and Lakota and became fluent in sign language used by tribes in the region.

Still, as many Americans are celebrating the 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, for many Native Americans it’s not a reason to rejoice.

“It’s just a mark to me of 250 years of injustice to the Native people,” Crow tribal member and reenactment coordinator Jim Real Bird said.

Eagle agreed: “That’s one of the things that we always tell our people when we come together, is they failed at their attempts to rub us out. We’re still here as ancient people deeply connected to our environment.”

Commemoration keeps history alive for future generations

For more than 30 years, reenactments featuring hundreds of warriors have marked the anniversary near the battlefield. The choreography is based on Northern Cheyenne oral history and highlights horsemanship and language preservation.

“All the other things that are Native American don’t mean nothing if you don’t know your language,” said Real Bird.

The atmosphere at the battlefield area was celebratory as hundreds of people from numerous tribes had gathered. Several hundred horse riders charged up a hill and circled at the top as they whooped and yelled. The sun shined on the battlefield area, a wide-open grassland with few trees, mountains in the distance.

Elders wore headdresses. People sang and played drums as flags flew from various tribal nations. The camp with dozens of tepees stood along the Little Bighorn River, with people there from tribes in the Dakotas and as far away as Washington state.

“This is our fuel for the year. We come here and this is a renewal for us, too, you know, personally,” said Theresa Long Turkey, of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe in South Dakota.

At Standing Rock, Eagle said the races honor the horse nation that carried their ancestors to victory 150 years ago. The commemoration also includes oskáte, a traditional celebration of oral histories, victory songs and tribal dancing.

“It’s just an opportunity for us to share with the generations coming behind us that they’re descendants of a very powerful nation and ancient people that are still here despite everything that was done to us,” said Eagle, whose great-great-grandfather, Sunka, fought that day. His father, Charging Thunder, also was there.

Goodhouse recalled stories his grandfather would tell him of their ancestors who were in the Hunkpapa camp when troops attacked. His grandfather’s great-grandfather, Striped Face, was shot but mounted his horse and joined the fight.

“There’s this kind of energy there that still lives on because we have this direct narrative that was handed down,” he said.

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Dura reported from Bismarck, North Dakota.

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This story is published through the Global Indigenous Reporting Network at The Associated Press.