Indian Country

This has been a long hard ride, but I wanted to get to the Black Hills so I can have tomorrow as a relaxed day. Much of the day I spent riding through the rolling hills, occasionally interspersed with bigger mountains, that were the last lands defended by the Plains Native American Tribes.

 



These lands once had grass so tall it could hide a rider on horseback, tens of thousands of buffalo roamed them at will, and they had been given to the tribes in perpetuity. 

I rode past place names such as Crazy Woman Creek, Piney Creek, Powder River, and of course Little Big Horn. It was there that one of the noblest of the Chiefs, Crazy Horse, made his grandest and most tragic gesture of resistance at the greatest battle of the Plains.

Suddenly and without provocation a huge gathering of tribes was attacked by the legendary 7th Cavalry. Crazy Horse gathered the braves and rode to meet the aggressors. As he charged into combat he urged on his compatriots with the words: "It is a good day to die." He didn't. In a strange way it might have been  better if he had. Instead the arrogant, foolish, and ignorant George Custer lead his soldiers into a devastating disaster, which destroyed any chance that the United States would ever treat the Indians with the slightest decency. Crazy Horse died sometime later, in government custody, betrayed by his own people and the officials who had promised to protect him.

Of all the lands taken away from the tribes, none were more galling than the Black Hills which had been promised to them "forever." To add insult to injury the faces of four white men who cared or understood little of the meaning of all this, in fact one of them was a major contributor to the tragedy, were carved into the fabled hills.

A Polish artist,  Korczak Ziolkowski,  moved as I am by the events wanted to do something to balance the record. He acquired land and entirely on his own started a memorial to Crazy Horse. It is to be the largest statue in the world, dwarfing Mt. Rushmore. Crazy Horse will be depicted on his pony, pointing to the Black Hills as though to say: "They will always belong to the Great Spirit, always free!" Ziolkowski  has since died but his family continues the work. I saw it thirty years ago. Now I want to see the progress.

For me, Crazy Horse's sad tale need not be his legacy. Instead he can always be on his pony, with the charging braves around him. And I will know, it was indeed "a good day to die." For John Donne wrote: "Death you shall die."