Opposite, there is an aperture, the "Spirit Gate", to welcome in the Cavalry dead:
(I think there's supposed to be a small waterfall down at the bottom, but no water was moving that day.)
The panels themselves provide lists of Indians killed in the battle – small lists – and provide some perspective on the battle from the points of view of the different tribes involved. Combined with the presentation given by the park ranger, they give a more complex background to the battle than I had been aware of. I knew about the Sioux and the Cheyenne, of course; the one-minute capsule summary of Little Bighorn (arrogant Custer Sitting Bull vision soldiers falling upside down Crazy Horse encircles) focusses on them as the antagonists to the 7th Cavalry (tragically doomed or suicidally arrogant, depending on decade).
I didn't realize that some Arapaho had been allied with the Sioux and Cheyenne; and it never really sank in until then that a small number of Crow and Arikara scouts had fought on Custer's side. The Crow, especially, had no love for the Sioux, because the Crow considered the Sioux to be encroaching on their lands (the Crow's lands including, in fact, that very place, along the Little Bighorn). But the Crow couldn't muster the resources or fighters that the Sioux could, and decided to throw their lot in with the whites. On June 26th, 1876, that must have seemed like a bad decision – but then again, here we are, 131 years later, and it is Crow land again – at least, the Crow can say it is their land as much as any Indian tribe can say reservation land is theirs, and it certainly isn't the Sioux's land anymore.
Posted by David Fleck at 26 June 2007 07:23 AM