The battle rages on at Bighorn

130 years after epic clash, where and how story is told still unsettled

Jim Sheeler, Rocky Mountain News

Saturday, May 6, 2006

LITTLE BIGHORN BATTLEFIELD NATIONAL MONUMENT, Mont. — When the oldman tells the story of the battle, he still speaks as an eyewitness.

"We were riding just over here," said 92-year-old Joe Medicine Crow, as he swung his weathered cane up toward the area studded with whitegranite slabs meant to mark the places where the soldiers fell.

As a boy, Medicine Crow rode the area on horseback with his grandfather, who was one of the Crow Indian scouts for Lt. Col. George Custer and the 7th Cavalry. On the battlefield, he still hears his grandfather's voice.

"Boy, it was a hot day. The soldiers were sweating," he said. "Custer jumped on his horse, saw the (Indian) camp and his white face turned even whiter."

He pointed to a grassy valley where hundreds of Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne tepees blanketed the ground that day in 1876. In the years leading up to the battle, the Lakota had refused to allow the government to acquire mineral-rich land on their reservation, and some refused to be constrained by the reservation's boundaries.

Custer was sent to pursue the bands of roaming Indians and found them at the place the Lakota called "the Greasy Grass," near the banks of the Little Bighorn River. It was here that Custer and more than 200 of his men died during one of the most famous routs in history, triggering a massive retaliation by the United States government against Indians throughout the West.

Dressed in a red jacket and dirt-crusted cowboy boots, Medicine Crow looked back down at the riverbank, where dozens of Indians also were killed, to the spots where the government has begun to erect red granite markers to recognize the ground where they fell, in a place where the government only recently began to acknowledge their stories.

Though it was long ago, people around here say the battle isn't as far back as it seems - "130 years," they say, is "only a couple of long lives ago."

When Medicine Crow left the reservation to attend school in California in the 1930s - and later left to fight in the Army during World War II - he took his grandfather's stories with him. Back then, however, nobody wanted to listen.

"When I was in California, I saw an ad that read, 'Wanted: 100Indians for a movie with Errol Flynn called They Died With theirBoots On," he said. "Later that day, the big money man, theproducer, came over and asked me if I knew anything about the battle. Isaid my grandfather, White Man Runs Him, was one of Custer'sscouts."

The producer asked Medicine Crow what he thought of Custer.

"I said, well, according to my grandfather he was a damn fool. Heattacked and got himself killed, and 200 other boys, too.

"He said, 'You believe that?'

"I said, 'Yes.'

"He said, 'You're fired. We're doing a patriotic movie here.' "

"I said, 'You people in Hollywood. You have a way of messing/ up goodstories.' "

Over the decades, Medicine Crow has heard the story told in hundredsof different ways. He's seen the movies and read the books - he's evenwritten a few of his own. He's watched the arguments between the Indiantribes and Custer supporters, and those of both groups with theNational Park Service.

As the 130th anniversary of the June 25 Battle of the Little Bighornnears, government officials and historical groups are still trying tofigure out the best place to tell the story of what happened, and howthe story is told.

In the place where the fighting never seems to end, they've foundthemselves in yet another battle.

The end begins the tour

At Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, the tour begins atthe end: Last Stand Hill.

Upon entering the park, visitors follow a road that leads directlyto the area where Custer likely fell. Tourists who want to imagine howthe battle unfolded can drive the 4 1/2-mile road to the beginning ofthe battlefield and work their way back, following the interpretivesigns and white granite markers scattered throughout the battlefield,one for each soldier who fell (though most historians now doubt theaccuracy of many of the markers).

Along the way, visitors can stop at a towering stone obelisk firstbuilt in 1881 atop a mass grave for the 7th Cavalrymen - a place thathas served as a rallying point for Custer loyalists and a magnet foranti-Custer demonstrations.

After 110 years of honoring the vanquished, the government finallybegan to recognize the battle's victors, and in 1991 the Park Servicechanged the name of the divisive Custer Battlefield to the LittleBighorn Battlefield and began planning an official Indian memorial.

In 1999, in recognition of the sacrifices of the tribes who foughtthere, the Park Service began placing red granite markers bearing thenames of Indian warriors who fell - a task that continues today.

In 2003, the government dedicated the Indian Memorial - anothermonument that arrived only after years of controversy.

Just below Last Stand Hill, inside the drab institutional walls ofthe park's visitors center, the latest battlefield skirmish hasbegun.

"It's not much of an architectural marvel - it's just a cinder blockbuilding," said Superintendent Darrell Cook, as he walked around thecenter. "I hate to say this, but every time we've remodeled it, we'vestayed with ugly on ugly."

Now, 54 years after the visitors center's construction, Cook saidthe building strains to accommodate the monument's 400,000 annualvisitors. In summer, the tiny museum is jammed with tourists trying toview the modest interpretive displays.

Though the Park Service owns some of the most valuable Custerartifacts that exist - most of them donated by the estate of Custer'swife, Elizabeth - there is room in the center to display only a smallfraction of the collection.

For the past 20 years the Park Service has tried to find a way tofund a restoration project that would expand the boundaries of the parkand build a larger, more comprehensive visitors center closer toInterstate 90, just west of the monument.

After waiting in vain for those plans to be finalized, Cook recentlyproposed an addition to the visitors center of roughly 1,000 squarefeet to allow more space for tours and displays.

The uproar was immediate - primarily from battlefield historians whoassailed the proposed expansion as another potential blight on hallowedground that they say has been disturbed enough already.

"There's no question that the visitors center there is not adequate.But do we want to expand the visitors center that stands in the middleof the battlefield? Absolutely not," said Paul Hutton, professor ofhistory at the University of New Mexico and a Custer scholar. "If theycan tear down the visitors center at Gettysburg, they certainly can dothe same here."

The Gettysburg visitors center - considered one of many eyesores onhistoric battlefields throughout the country - will soon be replacedwith a 139,000- square-foot museum built off the pivotal Civil Warbattleground, funded with public and private money.

For scholars, including Hutton, the proposed visitors centerexpansion at Little Bighorn is not only a cosmetic affront, but also amissed opportunity to build a proper museum that would add context tothe markers that punctuate the battlefield and offer a better platformfor the tales that have yet to be told.

"Here's the place where you (could) tell the story of who wasSitting Bull, who was Crazy Horse, who was (Lakota Chief) Gall - aswell as the story of who was Custer . . . this young American who diedthere with all his friends for his government," he said.

According to Hutton, finding a way to tell those stories is not justan opportunity, but a duty.

"This is right at the heart of the Western myth, and the ParkService has a responsibility to recognize it properly," he said. "It'sat the heart of our cultural war over our identity. What we standfor.

"It's a real flashpoint on the cultural landscape of America andit's always been that way, as long as I can remember."

Battlefield in his backyard

Roughly four miles from Last Stand Hill, in the approximate placewhere the battle began, Chris Kortlander gazed at a black-and-whitephoto of a beautiful young woman, once one of the most famous warwidows in the world.

Through a telescope in one of his bedrooms, Kortlander, 48, can seethe place where her husband died at the battle's apex.

Elizabeth "Libbie" Custer never visited the Little Bighornbattlefield, saying she couldn't bear the memory of the place where herhusband, the dashing "boy general," was killed with more than 200 ofhis men. She spent the bulk of her life defending what happened thereand molding a myth that lasted for decades.

Now Kortlander has brought a massive cache of her personalcorrespondence and manuscripts to the tiny town of Garryowen. Thebattlefield literally begins in his backyard, near the place whereSitting Bull camped.

Inside his office, Kortlander lifted a heavy binder from a cartloaded with more than 6,000 pages of documents. The collection includesblack-bordered condolence letters from military leaders andcorrespondence to the Custers during the Civil War, along with many ofLibbie Custer's personal reflections and manuscripts.

He plans to use the collection to anchor a 56,000-square-foot museumhe envisions as the largest in Montana, and recently began a campaignto raise the $35 million he estimates it would take to build what heplans to call The Elizabeth Custer Library and Museum of Frontier Womenof the West.

The newly acquired documents, for which Kortlander says he paidabout $500,000, now rest in an unlikely place: the vault of his gasstation/museum/post office/tourist complex off I-90 - a place wheretowering signs advertise Conoco gas and Subway sandwiches.

Inside his adjoining private, nonprofit Custer Battlefield Museum,he displays cigar store Indians near reverent photographs of tribemembers by acclaimed photographers.

The collection of Western artifacts housed here, which he said isworth between $8 million and $10 million, includes a Crow Indian warshirt, the contract signed by Sitting Bull to work in Buffalo Bill'sWild West Show, and a lock of Custer's hair, among hundreds of otheritems.

Alongside the museum, a souvenir shop Kortlander leases on theproperty offers items ranging from handmade moccasins and 7th Cavalrypennants to T-shirts that read "Custer Got Siouxed" and "GotIndians?"

Not far from the shop, Kortlander pulled from a stack ofarchive-quality binders a faded letter penned by Capt. Myles Moylan,who was on a hill only a few miles away on that day in 1876:

"My Dear Mrs. Custer,

>"Do not think it strange that I have allowed so long a time to elapse since that terrible day when you lost so many who were so dear to you, and when I lost the best friend I have ever had, without writing you . . . I cannot write of what I saw on the 27 of June when we went over the field and buried the dead . . . There were the men of his own blood lying around him . . .

"A day will come, and thank God it is not far distant, whenJustice will be done for the dead of the Little Big Horn."

Inside his office, Kortlander drew a long breath.

"It gives me goosebumps," he said.

Run-in with the feds

The town of Garryowen was established in 1895 by the railroad thatran through. It is named after an Irish drinking song that Custer's menplayed before going into battle.

Kortlander - a historic artifacts dealer from Malibu, Calif. -bought the run-down town center after his home burned in a Californiawildfire in the early 1990s. He moved to Garryowen in 1995, taking aname the government had recently discarded - Custer Battlefield Museum- and building his town around it.

Despite the museum's name, Kortlander says he does not take a sideon the battle.

He built his own Peace Memorial at the burial site of an unknownsoldier found near Garryowen, flanking the gravesite with busts ofSitting Bull and Custer and an inscription from Joe Medicine Crow, whomhe considers a friend.

For his efforts to restore the town, he was recognized as theMontana Tourism Person of the Year in 2004.

Considering the controversy over the expansion of the visitorscenter at Last Stand Hill, Kortlander says it makes sense to build hisproposed museum on his site, which already is in a commercial area.

Kortlander, however, is also confronting a controversy of hisown.

Last spring, federal agents showed up in Garryowen and raidedKortlander's complex.

"We seized a number of items and we have some serious concerns aboutwhat he collects at that museum," said Bart Fitzgerald, special agentfor the Bureau of Land Management in Billings, who said he could notprovide details of the investigation.

But, he noted, "It's serious, and we're serious about it."

Though the raid took place more than a year ago, Kortlander has yetto be charged with anything. He claims the investigation is an attemptby the federal government to remove his private museum from competitionwith its own proposed visitors center. Garryowen is one of thegovernment's proposed alternative sites for the center.

"I feel that I have been targeted and victimized by the governmentagencies for impermissible reasons," Kortlander said in a statement. "Iam still trying to work through the process, but at this point there isno predictability about when or how the controversy is going to beresolved.

"Because I am not going to give up without a fight (and) I am goingto continue to keep speaking out on these issues, I fear the governmentmay escalate its activity with a goal to put me out of businesspermanently," he added.

If his new Elizabeth Custer archive were split up and sold toprivate collectors, Kortlander said, it could be worth as much as $3million to $4 million. His proposed museum, however, would guaranteethat the material would remain intact, he said.

"Sometimes I think I should just go give (the manuscript collection)to the government," he said. "But what would they do with it? They'dput it in the basement."

Expansion uncertainty

In the basement of the Little Bighorn visitors center,Superintendent Cook slid open a metal drawer, revealing a threadbareregimental flag of the 7th Cavalry - a guidon - that was used in thebattle.

Then he slid it back into the dark.

"There's some neat stuff in this collection. It would just be goodto get it out there," said Cook, a Lakota Sioux who grew up on the PineRidge Reservation in South Dakota, and who, as a child, once met DeweyBeard, the last survivor of the Battle of Little Bighorn.

"A lot of people have a lot of strong feelings - whether Custer wasright or wrong," he said. "There are such strong feelings both ways. Wedon't interpret it one way or another, we just try to balance thestory."

Yet, with its tight budget, the Park Service museum can't even hirea full-time curator. And Cook openly wonders if the artifacts might bebetter protected at a site off the battlefield.

At this point, Cook said, congressional appropriations for a newvisitors center - likely costing tens of millions of dollars - is faraway.

"I'm a lot more practical," Cook said. "We gotta live with what wehave."

Plans for the expansion, too, are still in the review phase, butCook hopes to present a draft proposal by the 130th anniversary of thebattle in June, when thousands of tourists are expected to flood thearea.

If the proposal is approved, he said, construction could becompleted within the next two to five years.

No matter what happens at the site, Hutton and Cook agree upon onething: the hope that the upcoming anniversary drives more people tovisit the place that Hutton says every American should see.

"I defy any human to stand and look at those markers and not bemoved," he said. "You can just envision it. That knot of men encircledon the hill, and certain death. It's a visual representation that Ithink every human can identify with."

Stories should be shared

On the battlefield, Joe Medicine Crow continued to tell the story ashis grandfather taught him - in the first person.

"There was fighting all around us. Whooping and hollering," he said."But we stayed there all day."

As Medicine Crow walked the ground, he said he is torn between thenew proposals.

He wants to keep the visitor's center, he says, but likes the ideaof an expanded museum in the valley.

He supports Kortlander's proposed private museum in Garryowen toensure the Crow side of the story is told.

Now that people are finally listening, he said, the stories from allsides should be shared at every opportunity.

As he walked toward Last Stand Hill, he paused.

The vast majority of visitors to Little Bighorn only stop here,spending all their time where the fighting stopped.

The old man pointed out that although it marks the end of thebattlefield, it was actually only the beginning.

As the struggle continues over the best way to tell the story,Medicine Crow said he hopes the focus doesn't remain solely on LastStand Hill, and that any new museum tells the story of what happenedbefore - and after.

"It wasn't Custer's last stand; it was Custer's last fight,"Medicine Crow said.

"It was Sitting Bull's last stand. They won the battle that day butlost a way of life."

CORRECTION: A map on this story misidentified the Bighorn River in Montana.