Among the Intellectualoids/Russell Means on Custer Hill
Sarf, Wayne Michael
AMONG THE INTELLECTUALOIDS - ----frf ...__„T_________________________ _ 4.- _.....___. ..-•.._ 167– – -----_-- ---, E.-- -- - -. --. -_,-...---- ----___ • –___=–...,–=_W %:.....---- --...
...Yet he made no attempt to explain why security had been inadequate...
...It is sickening to look at the bodies stripped," wrote one eyewitness...
...No problem: ed in Jerusalem...
...for controversy, and not the continued defilement of graves in his care, seemed for him the worst imaginable catastrophe...
...Yet due to a near-blackout of news coverage, some members of the Little Big Horn Associates—an organization devoted to "Custeriana"—were unaware of the atrocity until the climactic banquet of their Canton, Ohio conference in July...
...Since Sitting Bull, spiritual leader of the Sioux victors, painstakingly recorded his killings of women in pictographs, this concern for noncombatants seems lamentably anachronistic...
...Evidence of their warrior legacy is already provided by other stones at the battlefield: those marking the graves of Indian veterans at rest with their fellow servicemen in the National Cemetery...
...there, after reading a letter him...
...x 4 ft...
...But one now expects such behavior from this non-leader and his non-following...
...Here a hand gone, here a foot or a head, gaudy gashes cut in all parts of the body gouged out, noses and ears cut off, and skulls crushed in...
...Bred and twelve years after Custer's seemed unaware that it was over a cenSuch a thing could not, of course, death, Sioux "activist" Russell Means The recent archeological dig is a lie, claim- tury old: "Archeologists, anthropolooccur—not at that monument, anyway...
...vince some Crow Indians that their an- handful of "activists"—installing, segments to the heart of Montana's "The whole thing is a lie...
...Indian oratory had deteriorated mark- sources (as I once did in trying to con- (continued on page 34) 32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1988 Homelands, Treaties and Sovereignty...
...Thus appeasement—perhaps especially appeasement—is no guarantee against "incidents," for the ante can always be raised and the list of grievances infinitely extended...
...6/25/88...
...in the meantime, certain NPS employees began "destabilizing" it by removing bolts, while a large local "mountain man" single-handedlywrenched it free—only to drop it back into place...
...G. Magpie, Cheyenne...
...In 1881 a flock (including whites with "Indian"- the crowd" (as Park Superintendent brought along to party with...
...Superintendent Ditmanson rose to brief the hundred-odd diners, including Captain Benteen's granddaughter Luisa Benteen Steves and Custer's great-grandnephew, Colonel George Armstrong Custer III...
...Where gists, and historians have produced a But all war memorials are not created the grounds of Custer Battlefield Na- would we get all these automatic [sic] monument like that, a monument that weapons and then what did we do with equal...
...Ditmanson replied that they would have been back the next day, that some of them were "our neighbors," and that the site was "hallowed" to Indians as well—though, of course, no Sioux or Cheyenne graves were being desecrated in his park...
...yet among the plaque-planters was the Crows' befuddled tribal chairman, who (despite some Crow displeasure at the plaque) said he felt obliged to aid Indian visitors—and, presumably, tacitly accuse his own tribe of complicity in attempted "mass-murder...
...Magpies" handiwork...
...The calculated defilement of 1988 must have seemed a celebration of atrocity, another indignity heaped upon the defenseless slain...
...Among many others, Cooper T. Holt, executive director of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, asked whether such a small group could, "by a show of force, intimidate the NPS at a national monument and not be held accountable...
...Perhaps a deeper disgust should be directed elsewhere...
...Perhaps confrontation was the goal...
...The evening's dirty little secret was the fear of angering the Meanites...
...And that was easily the most disturbing thing that night—Ditmanson's inability to see just how revolting his audience would find the action (and inaction) of June 25...
...and an estimated forty followers entered ing that Custer was outgunned...
...Likewise, a stone in the park cemetery honoring soldiers who died "clearing" the Yellowstone district of "hostile Indians," upsets interpretive historian Mardell Plain-feather...
...murderer...
...The plaque's sheer ugliness makes it unlikely that honoring Indian combatants (or, by his own account, witnesses to mass suicide) was Means's main concern...
...I n the normal course of events, the Meanites would have been stopped, arrested, and appropriately charged...
...While Means_ rambled, under Brevet Major General George Indian World Peace Day" (disconcert- We also gave them a sensitivity training ses- others produced shovels and began to Armstrong Custer were annihilated by ingly marked on the slaughter's anniver- sion too...
...Ditmanson readily told of "non-informational" meetings held with Means's group after he had learned of their plans...
...Russell Means may justly resent the fact that, despite his great influence in determining NPS policy, no one has suggested appointing him director...
...For the true militant, grievances are all the more enjoyable if held against people long dead whose efforts cannot be easily reversed...
...True, the Indian Wars were not conspicuous on either side for respect accorded enemy dead...
...Ditmanson thus asserted that keeping the plaque would thwart the vandals by denying them publicity...
...Not surprisingly, he illegal marker would stay in place...
...We un- ft...
...Vermont granite monument, bearing the style false braids affixed to their heads) Dennis Ditmanson later put it) and was names of 263 officers, soldiers, Indian began an illegal march, ostensibly to One is reminded of film star Tim hastily installed with bolts and quick-scouts, and civilians who had died with reach the Reno-Benteen Battlefield over McCoy's comment that the best way to drying, water-doused cement...
...calvary [sic] in order to save our God Bless You, Buffalo Bill: A Means treated his followers and scat- to learn about his ancestors, and that women and children from mass-murder...
...But he was also against covering it up, as this would not solve the (unspecified) "problem," and even suggested, horribly, that it might be displayed in the museum with a caption explaining its part in the battlefield's ongoing "history"—thus appeasing the vandals by enshrining their propaganda...
...Unfortunately, small monument to draft dodgers or "Last Stand" or "Custer Hill," where place," he said, pointing down to the Means neglected the "real story" dead-fallen NVA regulars—were to dig up the the bodies of Custer and some forty visitor center and museum...
...After almost two more months, the National Park Service screwed its courage to the sticking place...
...The vandals (as- eating a last-ditch defense...
...He was against removing the plaque...
...even William Wells, a director of the privately run Custer Battlefield and Historical Museum Association, declared himself "convinced people would have been killed" had anyone interfered...
...Layman's Guide to History and the tered tourists to a speech indicating that impudent whites citing contemporary In doing so, preserving rights to our Western Film...
...But the fun was just starting...
...but as he had not even surrendered yet, this can hardly have been uppermost in their minds...
...as yet another radical has-been facing rebirth as a seventies trivia question, Means must behave obnoxiously to gain attention...
...It was, perhaps, especially revolting due to an unspoken but emotional factor at work in more than one mind—the knowledge that most of Custer's men were not simply killed, but also sadistically mutilated, sometimes before death...
...One hesitates to attribute emotional reactions to men long dead...
...In the meantime, of course, anyone trying to remove it would risk arrest...
...The plaque was removed (apparently with Means's permission) and triumphantly borne off—into the museum, where one can now see the government's dead soldiers defamed without fear of snakes or inclement weather...
...For those panned to battle buffs by Crows the pre-sod in front of Washington's Vietnam others had been found in positions indi- swallowing the racist lie that at the bat- vious year, proving that a wounded CusVeterans Memorial...
...More likely, the "militant's" unique talent for exploiting guilt, and official anxiety to avoid even the appearance of harshness lest screams of "genocide' resound, had combined in a pattern of capitulation...
...The Crows, aiding Custer against the "hostiles" occupying their lands, had wept over his defeat...
...With no more right on the Hill than a discarded candy wrapper, the plaque was mysteriously invested with a quasi-legal status as Ditmanson passed to others the buck of post facto sanction, decreeing that it would remain until unspecified "courts" decided whether it should permanently adorn the grave—as though any court had a right to sanction such defilement...
...Yet if we judge neither the Indians nor the whites of 1876 by our standards, we can avoid using their actions as excuses for today's sins...
...He produced a mild outcry by twice pointing out that the plaque accused no individuals of attempted mass-murder...
...But there is a difference...
...A blackish, 2'h Sioux and Cheyenne warriors at the sary...
...Did paleface archeologists af- ter—were Means's chief targets: "Can geance...
...Then began a weird descent into Hedgespeak...
...or what he planned to do...
...Though the first park superintendent cited "unhealed Indian wounds" in opposing a projected statue of Custer dominating the field, initial Army stewardship and Congress's 1939 authorization of the cemetery as a monument to Custer and his fallen did leave a "balance' problem...
...34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1988...
...Domi- unnamed Indian "elders") offered the ful Cheyenne woman sitting on his head...
...I rose to declare it well within the superintendent's legal right to remove any "unsightly trash" on the battlefield—and point out that this was, after all, grave desecration of what Lincoln had termed "hallowed ground...
...He had stated that he would recommend retaining the plaque until an authorized Indian monument appeared...
...Warning whites, "You remove our monument and we'll remove yours," Means audaciously asked Ditmanson to initiate paperwork toward official approval of "G...
...ument removed, and the sod re-planted, nating the hill and the white markers in- truth: the cavalry had outnumbered the The "Hitler monument'?—and Cuswhile the citizenry howled for ven- tended to show where each man fell, the Indians...
...AMONG THE INTELLECTUALOIDS - ----frf ...__„T_________________________ _ 4...
...but is there a seemly remedy...
...Throw them away...
...Such bizarre acquiescence was not,could not be, inspired simply by physical threats...
...The men who defeated Custer were warriors—and when their monument is erected, it will honor the greatest Indian victory west of the Mississippi...
...Our information packets included government inserts on AIDS—perhaps to induce nostalgia for the 1870s...
...Even the seemingly fair-minded proposal to rename the Custer Battlefield "Little Bighorn National Battlefield" would inevitably demean Custer in effacing his name, while (for different reasons) the very museum exhibits can be easier to display than to undisplay...
...But one cannot imagine leaders such as Crazy Horse or Lame White Man being other than shamed by the burn-outs led by the shameless Means—smug jackals content with "counting coup" on bones a century dead...
...Eighty percent of the soldiers shot dig into the mass grave...
...and repeating rifles were used against names of the SS, of Nazi officers, erectnouncement by our government that the On June 25, 1988, exactly one hun- Custer...
...But nothing happened...
...On Sunday, June 25, 1876, five tional Monument, along with others them...
...Yet even if one conceded the perils of trying to out-media Means, Ditmanson's dread of controversy seemed grotesque...
...he said he guessed he probably did—but declined to do it without Mott's say-so...
...Only one thing would arouse weathered shaft is starkly impressive, firm that hundreds of breechloading you imagine a monument listing the more public outrage and disgust: an an- sadly evocative of death...
...As Ron Nichols, president of the battlefield association, observed: "The Park Service can't win media battles—and they know it...
...never tell was named for him, named for a mass companies of the Seventh Cavalry merely intent on observing "American you about the wagon train up in the hills...
...apparently to avoid shocking its donor, several administrations kept on view a watch-case (recently removed) which, while supposedly Custer's, was actually made for the Errol Flynn movie They Died With Their Boots On...
...My heart cestors wantonly slaughtered game) perhaps in the interest of fairness, a Crow Indian country and erected atop bleeds when I think of people in that should be ignored...
...When it was pointed out that his precedent left all our monuments and parks at risk, he actually conceded the point—but still refused to "get everything back on the front page of the newspapers...
...W %:.....---- -- --------'------, "--..,- "._ 7 -:---' .•,,'..' .41,-_-_---- _______ '''.57– ....41 . , ..=--- .---:-.-•–•_____ ..,__,-,- - Mak • RUSSELL MEANS ON CUSTER HILL by Wayne Michael Sarf Imagine, if you will, the reaction if a Frederick Benteen), was hauled in edly since the days of Chief Joseph...
...Crudely Custer (or with surviving detachments four miles away, but soon returned to learn an Indian's history is to tell it to inscribed, apparently with a blowtorch, under Major Marcus Reno and Captain the Hill...
...The answer, apparently, was Yes—though National Park Service Director William Mott did not bother replying to such complaints, while the Park Service declined to release information on the incident...
...in a grave tle the Indians had outnumbered the ter had met death by suffocation at the suming they had not been killed) would surrounding the monument lie the cavalry, Means (who had talked with hands—so to speak—of a large, vengebe promptly jailed, the offending mon- bones of more than 200 soldiers...
...In one effort at relief, a cryptic quote from Sioux holy man Black Elk, "Know the power that is peace," was added to a visitor center wall—although, since Black Elk's own youthful exploits on the field had consisted largely of killing and mutilating the wounded, perhaps the phrase "or else' should have been added...
...The ceremonies over, Means's themselves because they were drunk...
...Mentioning a suggested site for a future Indian memorial, I added that the plaque should have been removed as soon as the Meanites were out of sight...
...Gifted with second sight, those carving the 1881 monument might have granted Sitting Bull "equal time...
...but now, asked who had the authority to remove it (I could not resist interjecting loudly, "The Superintendent...
...But Means's unusual battle recon- its legend ran: "In honor of our Indian from white clergymen apologizing for struction was a logical result of the the- Patriots who fought and defeated the Wayne Michael Sarf is the author of the last few Centuries of Dishonor, ory that no Indian need crack a book U.S...
...Left to stew in the knowledge that the Thing was still out there, buffs talked hopefully of a private-sector commando raid...
...More frankly expressed was the fear that such malcontents could better manipulate the Fourth Estate...
...steel plaque "emerged from they that kegs whiskey the all covered Battle of the Little Bighorn...
...Mounted Indians rode atop the grave, their horses defecating on it, and, like old-time warriors gaining credit by touching a fallen enemy, they "counted coup" on the monument with sticks...
...Superintendent Ditmanson's explanation of why they were not interrupted—the fear of sparking violence in a tourist area—sounded plausible...
...or why the plaque was still in place...
...Yet it was never explained why so few security personnel were available to deal with Means (a known criminal with a history of irrational violence), despite Ditmanson's own admission that the NPS had learned of the threatened plaque-laying in late March...
Vol. 21 • December 1988 • No. 12
