“This here’s Cedar Coolie, where Custer came, but he got spotted and the warriors chased him up on the ridge.” Depending on who you believe, his intention was to either round up the women and children as hostages, or slaughter them.
Gambling and church are strong presences in many reservationsĬuster’s plan was simple: send a detachment of men to distract the warriors to the south while he sneaked around and attacked the camp from the east. On 25 June, 1876, Custer came there and, looking down here, saw the tipi camp, right where our house is now.” “You see that notch in those mountains?” He pointed south to where the Wolf mountains rose up. James leaned on the pommel of his saddle. We trotted down to the river, splashed across, then rode up on to a bluff overlooking the river. There were three other people on the ride who clearly knew more than I did about horses. “You ain’t got boots!” He searched among a mountain of old cowboy footwear and kitted me out. In Britain, whenever I’ve been riding, the first thing they do is provide you with a helmet. There were horses everywhere but he had already picked mine out: “Tarzan. A young man in a white cowboy hat came out of the house and introduced himself as James Real Bird. Rady for steer-roping at the Crow Fair rodeo Photograph: Kevin RushbyĪ few days later, I drove out to a house on a big curve in the Little Bighorn river surrounded by fences, feed boxes and, rather prominently, a mechanical bucking bronco. When the dust had settled, at the end of the 19th century, they had decent land in Montana that included the site of Custer’s final, and fatal, military engagement: Little Bighorn. They had a prophet who warned them not to fight the white man, and so they didn’t. In all this, the Crow tribe, it has to be said, did not fare too badly. (“We are not going to let a few thieving, ragged Indians check and stop progress,” Sherman wrote to President Ulysses S Grant.) In one of the more bizarre sequences, a group of tourists in Yellowstone park got entangled in the pursuit of the Nez Perce tribe by Sherman’s cavalry. Back in 1877, the first holidaymakers to go west arrived a little early – before the cavalry had fully prepared the ground. Tourism and the Native Americans have had a tricky relationship. After a little while, someone came over and gave me a phone number for the Little Bighorn ride. We pulled our chairs over to Mike’s camp next door and chatted about horses, several of which he had in a pen beside his tipi. “Sometimes a bit wary.” He lived a nomadic life, moving between towns, taking photographs of horses and sacred landscapes, then selling them to Native Americans at annual pow-wows like this one. “I just got to know ’em 20 years ago and been hanging around ever since. The potential for uncomfortable moments is great.Ĭrow warriors in the dance competition at Crow Fair, Hardin, MontanaĪt the tipi camp, one of the men eventually turned and said: “You should talk to Mike Yellowmeal.” Pause. The Native Americans, on the other hand, got the Badlands and the measles. Custer has a city, six counties, two towns and a type of hair extension.
#BADLANDS GUARDIAN INDIAN HEAD PLUS#
The largest tree in the world is named after Sherman, plus 11 towns, an asteroid and a battle tank. Sheridan’s military mentor, William T Sherman, was the general who talked of extermination of the “Plains Indians” as a “final solution”, long before the Nazis used the term. There are also five counties, a mountain, a glacier, countless streets, and a 1960s army tank. There are seven US towns named after Philip Sheridan. The night before, I had driven into Sheridan, Wyoming, a city named after the man who reputedly said: “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” This was the man who ordered the seventh cavalry, under his protege, George Armstrong Custer, to exterminate as many Native Americans as possible, slaughter their horses and burn their tipis – hoping the survivors would either freeze or starve to death. Sometimes the best tactic is to keep still, keep smiling, and ride out uncomfortable moments. A woman stepped forward and pointed with her cast-iron frying pan: “That’s the Real Bird camp. “Someone told me they take people out riding at Little Bighorn?” “I’m looking for the Real Bird camp.” I said.
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