Post by Diane Merkel on May 26, 2008 17:06:53 GMT -6
There's an "interesting" sole survivor story in this . . . . I don't recall ever before seeing a reporter site Wikipedia.
Article: www.thedailyreview.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19720081&BRD=2276&PAG=461&dept_id=465049&rfi=6
“[White Bull] was a chief and he led the assault then on Gen. Custer, him and his warriors,” Chief David [Bald Eagle] states.
According to Wikipedia, the Internet encyclopedia, the Battle of the Little Bighorn took place June 25-26, 1876, in eastern Montana, a territory then. It “was an armed engagement between a Lakota-Northern Cheyenne combined force and the 7th Cavalry of the United States Army,” Wikipedia reports. Native people call it “The Battle of the Greasy Grass.” White people call it “Custer’s Last Stand” — because it was there he died.
The Indians didn’t want to fight, Chief David says. But the soldiers had killed their people. “They had to do something,” he says.
Custer’s men had been in the wilderness too long, looking for the famed Indian Crazy Horse. “We made it so it took weeks and weeks and weeks before they could find him.”
The soldiers were tired. Their loads were too heavy.
Crazy Horse planned to trap Custer. You come in from behind, he directed White Bull. “Ride your fastest horses! ... Don’t use anything that makes noise.”
And when the fateful moment fell ...
“They were ready for him.”
The trap sprang. The soldiers fired. But the Indians had shields. And clubs, tomahawks, bows and arrows, and spears. The cavalry’s horses were tired. The Indians’ weren’t.
The Indians would “just run right up to them and knock them off their horses,” Chief David says.
Only one soldier survived, Chief David says — a half-white, half-Indian scout. The Native Americans gave him to an Indian woman as her husband. She could do as she wanted. ... So she killed him.
The Army sent four other units to help Custer, Chief David says. So the Indians went after them too, he says, and caught their flag.
White Bull told David about it all. “You will tell this to your grandchildren or your children if you ever get married.”
Article: www.thedailyreview.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19720081&BRD=2276&PAG=461&dept_id=465049&rfi=6