Letter writer Larry Carson took the paper to task for an article that referred to the 1876 event known as “Custer’s last stand” as an occasion when Lt. Col. George Custer was “massacred” by the Cheyenne and Sioux tribesmen. Mr. Carson argued that this was a misrepresentation of history because the Indians had been “camping peacefully” before Custer’s attack (“Custer’s last stand,” June 27). Further, he argued that the history of the West as generally related includes various “battles” that were simply attacks by the U.S. Cavalry on Indian villages.
While Mr. Carson is correct that Custer was not an innocent victim on that historic day in 1876, it seems to me that he overcompensates for what he sees as historical injustice. No, Custer was not an innocent, but it is a bit of a stretch to say that Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and other Sioux leaders were “camping peacefully” when he approached. These men and their followers were not at peace with the U.S. government or with white settlers at the time of Custer’s expedition, nor were they pacifists by inclination or habit. The Sioux or Lakota were a proudly warlike people, and under Sitting Bull’s leadership, they had recently clashed with U.S. forces. They did not accept U.S. sovereignty over their traditional hunting grounds, and they were prepared to fight over the issue.
Of course, we need to look critically at traditional historical accounts that portray Native peoples as bandits or savages or that whitewash the violence often employed against Native women and children by U.S. forces. At the same time, Sitting Bull and his team were definitely warriors by tradition and by choice, and they shed the blood of settlers and soldiers without compunction. Any effort to portray them as mere victims of aggression flies in the face of the known traditions of their tribes and does them an injustice of another kind.
Mark Chalkley, Baltimore
