Custer ignored the sign, "Welcome to Montana, DON'T GET STUPID !" in the vast flowered grasslands where soon he would be knelt on the sandy earth, the skin of 261 graves not yet dug, waving his Colt Navy revolver, spitting blood in the dust, shot through the frowning mustache, where death would soon gather him up with the rest. But he wouldn't bleed for long. He was in the last moments of a mythic warriors life, going down fighting beside two brothers and a nephew. Custer's wound would remind Crazy Horse of the time he was shot through the mouth by the husband of the love of his life, Black Buffalo Woman. The irony of the coincidence would not be lost.To Crazy Horse it was a sure sign of victory, like the vision given to Sitting Bull of dead horse soldiers raining from the sky head first. But now it was too late for these Philistines. The Seventh Cavalry had already crossed the doomsday threshold of the pissed off Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho. All unfurling from the lazy teepee village of a thousand mwarriages, on the stream they call the Greasy Grass, where lusty warriors suddenly spilled forth in a startling frenzy of death.
"You shudda read the sign, ASSHOLES!" It must've been quite a sight on that low rising hill. Custer in his fringed buckskins, scarlet scarves and blue velvet blouse. And Crazy Horse flying wildly on his enchanted pony, both painted for war. And the cagey Sitting Bull doing his grisly work, stoic in war as in peace. And the unhinged Gall, the guy Liddy Custer proclaimed the most perfect specimen of a Red Man she ever saw, so batshit his own men feared him. All happening at once, the sounds, the chaos, the life and death, and the anguish of permanent darkness under the Big Sky obscured in clouds of dust and gunsmoke, all in a blazing hot dizzying whirl.
Yep, Custer got stupid. He brought the freakin' band for chrissakes !
But make no mistake, Custer wasn't the buffoon that he sometimes is depicted as in history. Custer was a brilliant and audacious general. The real deal. In the Civil War, his Michigan Wolverine regiment was famous for snatching victory from the jaws of many a defeat. When others were in retreat, it was Custer and his men rushing headlong, slamming into the enemy to save the battle, gallant charge after gallant charge. They called him "the boy general" at age 24, and his exploits were followed by all the big Eastern papers. He was a genuine American hero. In fact, he was so highly regarded that it was Custer who accepted the white flag of truce from Robert E. Lee. And he was among the select few invited to the signing of the surrender. Grant thought so much of Custer that he gave him the table on which the signing took place.
But Custer had become sloppy and reckless after the war and was kicked out of the Army for abusing his men. But he was later recalled by Sheridan, who needed just such a fighting general to run down the renegade tribes, destroy them in battle, and clean up the mess out west, forcing the Indians onto reservations. This was a humiliating and sad fate for those proud feral nomads. Although they would not go without a fight, the writing was on the wall. The arrival of Custer would bring the final extinction of their ancient and spiritual culture.
Custer was like many great generals, inadequate without war. His fellow fighters, Grant and Sherman, were also mediocre and dismal as civilians. War defines these brave men, and its absence undoes them. Custer was no different. He quickly became bored with garrison life on the plains, and frustrated by the ghostly tactics of the Indians to simply vanish. Even his hounds couldn't track them. This was late June 1876, and some think Custer was eager to force a decisive battle so he could rush back to Washington D.C., making a triumphant entrance in the centennial celebrations, boosting a possible Presidential nomination in this election year. Our legendary general was bursting with a bad case of hubris, an inexcusable flaw in a business where rashness is usually fatal. But after it all played out, we are left with the iconic image of Custer, metaphorically, fighting valiantly to the death, all humanity's mortal demons. Fighting alone in the face of death, the last man standing. Good against evil. He was us, foolish, flawed and heroic and maybe the old hippie T shirt that said, "Custer died for our sins," was right. Accidentally profound and metaphysical. Why not ?
But on this day, under the final sun behind the Big Sky and above the subterranean River of the Dead, with it's dark tributaries guarding the secrets of the meanings of life, the Indians herded Custer's "Column of the Walking Dead" into one big group and began the slaughter. "Like a buffalo hunt ", as some described it. It was over quickly, "As long as it takes a hungry man to eat a meal." Shocking. Unbelievable. No survivors, the signature of Crazy Horse. No survivors except for one horse, all shot to hell, who would live hauntingly into old age. So the Indians won the battle, but it meant the end of them, also. An Armageddon where everybody loses.
When the guns stopped popping
Screaming horses lay still
Only murmuring
Of the grunting squaws
As custom over the kill
So Crazy Horse did his horrid work
And swept away the spirits
Of all the soldiers as they slept
Then vanish in ghostly smoke
Rising in the silence kept
Broken only by the crows
Calling the sacred wreckage
Of hallowed boots and saddles.
They fell into mythology
Strange fruit of Wolverines' battles
Bathed in their sacred blood
The genocide so came to pass
Horse soldiers dead on the Greasy Grass.
