The Greasy Grass

(Source)

History demonstrates that when an advanced civilization encounters a more primitive society, the less advanced society will eventually be destroyed, marginalized, or subsumed by the advanced civilization.

While the Pre-Columbian Americas were categorically not the pastoral, peace-loving, environmentally friendly paradise that some modern day lunatics and Gaia worshippers would have one believe, things really went to Hell in a handbasket for the locals when the Europeans showed up.

The Great Plains stretch on for mile upon mile, rolling hills, narrow watercourses here and there delimited by sparse trees but mostly prairie grasses. This ecosystem supported a wide variety of wildlife - deer, antelope, bison, and the wolves and coyotes that preyed upon them and the smaller species. Most of us have heard of the great herds of bison (what we usually call buffalo, but they're not) which darkened the Plains in their millions.

There were also the native peoples (native insofar as they arrived on the continent before anyone else, they didn't evolve here) who lived on the Plains. The Sioux, the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, and numerous other groupings. The great horse culture as some have called it. (Ironically, though not intentionally ironic, as the horse had been native to North America but the aboriginals had hunted them to extinction. The Europeans brought them back. So the horse culture wasn't that old, but old enough to make for a viable way of life.)

After the Civil War, when the whites were done killing each other, they could now focus on extending the "blessings" of civilization to the entire continent. Manifest destiny and all that. But there were all those pesky Indians out there who didn't really care to share with the greedy whites.

The most "humane" idea was to corral them on reservations, where they'd be less trouble and the government could keep an eye on them, ya know, "help" them. You can imagine how well that worked.

Eventually nearly every tribe fought back, eventually they all lost - their lands, their way of life, and their freedom to roam and do as they please. Governments really don't like people doing as they please, doesn't matter what color your skin is, but one group got in some pretty good licks before they went down hard.

On this date in 1876, the bodies of Companies C, E, F, I, and L of the United States Seventh Cavalry Regiment, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, lay rotting (along with Custer) on a hillside in Montana Territory not far from the Little Big Horn River, called the Greasy Grass by the locals.

Two other battalions of the Seventh - Companies A, G and M under Major Marcus Reno, and Companies D, H, and K under Captain Frederick Benteen - were still fighting for their lives not all that far from where Custer's battalion lay in the hot sun. They were better prepared than Custer's batallion and had had time to receive the attacks from the aroused natives. Some research postulates that Custer's detachment had been hit hard and suddenly, with no time to set up for a proper defense, out in the open, outnumbered, they were overwhelmed. Some native accounts support that contention.

At any rate, Reno's and Benteen's detachments lived (or most of 'em anyway) to fight another day. Custer's detachment was killed to a man. Every last one, soldier and scout, went down fighting or running, didn't really matter, they all died.

Two hundred and sixty eight men of (or attached to) the Seventh Cavalry died on the 25th and 26th of June. Fifty five more were wounded, six later dying of their wounds. Perhaps as few as 31 of the Sioux, Arapaho, and Northern Cheyenne were killed in action (some sources say as many as 130 to 300 were killed). Perhaps as many as one hundred and sixty Indians were wounded. At least ten non-combatant Indians were killed.

By the 27th of June when the column of General Terry arrived on the scene, the great Indian encampment stretching along the banks of the Greasy Grass, the target of Custer's impromptu attack, was long gone.

It was a bitter defeat for the U.S. Army, the worst defeat suffered in the Indian Wars. But it was the last time the native Americans inflicted such a big defeat on the whites. It was all downhill from there.

While not the only military catastrophe inflicted on a modern military force in the 19th Century (musn't forget the British defeats in Afghanistan and South Africa) it certainly marked the beginning of the end for the inhabitants of the Great Plains.

Where once the buffalo roamed in their millions, and the old tribes followed their migrations, now there are highways, and towns, and farms.

Progress?

Perhaps.

Better?

Not for those whose spirits still wander the land of their ancestors. The old ways died on that hill beside the Little Big Horn. Along with most of the Seventh Cavalry.





Sources and good information on the battle:

• http://www.friendslittlebighorn.com/custerslaststand.htm
• https://www.nps.gov/libi/learn/historyculture/the-battle-of-the-little-bighorn.htm
• https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/354.html