Little Bighorn Indian Memorial

By editor

Crow Agency, Big Horn County, Montana

Bloody Knife was Arikara. He was also Hunkpapa Lakota on his father's side, which made him a man caught between two peoples who were at war with each other. He chose to serve as a scout for the United States Army, and on the morning of June 25, 1876, he rode with Major Reno's battalion toward the great Lakota and Cheyenne village on the Little Bighorn.

Before the charge, he looked at the sun and spoke. The words were recorded by those who heard them: "I shall not see you go down behind the mountains tonight. I am going home today, not the way we came, but in spirit, home to my people."

He was killed in the first minutes of the fighting, shot through the head while sitting beside Major Reno. He was perhaps forty years old.

The Indian Memorial at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument carries his words at the entrance, because they say something true about what it meant to fight here. The warriors who defended the village were going home too, in the only way left to them. The Arikara and Crow scouts who rode with the Army were going home in a different direction. Everyone who fought on this ground in June 1876 was fighting for something they understood as home.

The memorial's interior walls carry the names of the Lakota leaders who were present: Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Gall, Crow King, Rain in the Face, and dozens of others. It carries the names of the fallen warriors -- Hump Nose, Young Black Moon, Dog With Horns, Chataka, Red Horn Buffalo, and more than fifty others whose names were remembered and recorded. It carries the words of the survivors.

Low Dog, Lakota, said: "They came on us like a thunderbolt. I did not think it possible that any white men would attack us, so strong as we were."

Gall, Hunkpapa Lakota, said: "That night the Lakota men, women and children lighted many fires and danced; their hearts were glad for the Great Spirit had given them a great victory."

Crazy Horse, whose Lakota name was Ta Sunke Witko, said: "We did not ask you white men to come here. The Great Spirit gave us this country as a home. You had yours. We did not interfere with you. We do not want your civilization."

Bloody Knife's story is worth dwelling on, because it is the story that the memorial's placement of his words at the entrance seems to insist upon. He was born around 1840, the son of a Hunkpapa Lakota father and an Arikara mother. His childhood among the Hunkpapa was difficult; he was taunted for his mixed heritage and eventually returned to the Arikara. He became one of the Army's most trusted scouts, serving with Custer on the Black Hills Expedition of 1874 and on the Yellowstone surveys before that. He was with Custer at the Little Bighorn because he had been with Custer for years.

After Bloody Knife was killed, Major Reno's battalion was driven back across the river and up the bluffs. Reno later testified that the sight of Bloody Knife's death -- the scout was shot beside him, and his blood and brains spattered Reno's face -- contributed to his decision to order the retreat. Whether that is true or not, Bloody Knife died at the beginning of the battle and the battalion he rode with survived. The five companies that rode with Custer did not survive.

The Arikara scouts who survived the battle returned to their reservation on the Missouri River. They carried the memory of what they had seen with them. Frank Grouard, who had served as a scout for General Crook at the Battle of the Rosebud eight days before the Little Bighorn, wrote later: "The Rees [Arikara] were good soldiers. They were brave men who fought for what they believed in, the same as the Sioux." The memorial at Little Bighorn holds all of those men -- the Arikara scouts and the Lakota warriors and the soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry -- in the same circle of memory, on the same ridge above the same river.

The memorial does not resolve the history. It holds it. It holds the names of the dead on both sides, the words of the survivors, and the fact that all of them -- Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Arikara, and the soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry -- were human beings who understood what they were fighting for and paid the price that fighting costs.

See also

• Little Bighorn Indian Memorial at Crow Agency, Big Horn County
• Indian Memorial at Crow Agency, Big Horn County
• Peace Through Unity at Crow Agency, Big Horn County