Why do you observe the splinter in your brother's eye and never notice the great log in your own? And how dare you say to your brother, "Let me take that splinter out of your eye," when, look, there is a great log in your own?Matthew, Chapter 7.
Hypocrite! Take the log out of your own eye first, and then you will see clearly enough to take the splinter out of your brother's eye.
Recently I made several posts on the big battles about the Confederate memorials. From those it's probably pretty clear that I have mixed
feelings about the whole thing. On one hand, I think that most of those memorials went up in the teens and twenties riding a the crest of the "Lost Cause" myth that did violence to history itself. On the other hand, I also think that they stand as reminders as to how things were viewed when they were put up, and I think that's valuable in and of itself. One thing I noted there was that perhaps a page should be taken out of the book on how Indian War memorials have been handled in the US, in which I stated:
All over there's been a movement to remove monuments that were erected in earlier times to things that now are recognized as morally wrong. Yale University, for example, has been fighting over the removal of symbols that demonstrate that some of its early donors were slave holders. But removing them won't change that fact. At least one other university went through something similar as well. Probably almost any Eastern university has some money that came, originally, out of human trafficking and something that recalls that in honorific form. Removing that causes that to be forgotten, it doesn't change the fact that it occurred. And it needs to be recalled that it occurred, and that something about earlier generations even celebrated it, or at least could but it out of mind. Taking the evidence away doesn't correct the wrong, it just dulls the memory until it is erased entirely.
Indeed, such monuments, in my view, can serve as monuments to a greater historical reality, and that's what's occurred in my region of the country. There are a lot of monuments put up in the early 20th Century to people and events involved in the Indian War that were massively one sided and even racist, as we'd view that now. Some have come down, such as the "First White Man's Cabin" marker here in Natrona County. But most have not. Rather, efforts have been made to correctly name things, such as changing the Little Big Horn battle ground to that name (which was always used here, oddly enough) form Custer Battleground, and where older monuments exist new explanatory ones have been added that enhance the understanding of what actually occurred.
Monument at the Fetterman Battleground, placed in the early 20th Century. The battleground itself has a large number of very good explanatory signs that explain the battle and what occurred there.
Something continued to make me uncomfortable about all that, however, and I think I can say why, even though I was processing it at the time.
Somehow it didn't occur to me that I'd taken a photograph of just such a memorial location recently when I posted the topic, but I hadn't put it up yet. I just put it up on two of our companion blogs and I think this helps focus my queasy feeling over the whole things. This would be my recent post on Some Gave All, which focuses (or has come to focus) on memorials of all types. Here's the entry in its entirety. We'll break it down from there:
Some Gave All: The Sundance, Wyoming Rest Stop Memorials.:
Memorials at the Sundance Wyoming Rest Stop.I usually don't put a bunch of memorials, even at one single spot, in one single post. Each, I generally feel, deserves its own post as each is its own topic, in terms of what it commemorates.
Black Hills Sign at the Sundance Wyoming Rest Stop.I'm making an exception here, however, as these are grouped so nicely, they seem to require a singular treatment.
The first item we address is the Black Hills sign. This sign discusses the Black Hills, which straddle the Wyoming/South Dakota border.
Crook County sign.The second sign discusses Crook County, named after Gen. George Crook, and in which Sundance is situated.
The sign oddly doesn't really go into Crook himself, but then its a memorial for the county, not the general. Still a controversial general, Crook came into this region in the summer campaign of 1876 which saw him go as far north as southern Montana before meeting the Sioux and Cheyenne at Rosebud several days prior to Custer encountering them at Little Big Horn. Crook engaged the native forces and then withdrew in a move that's still both praised and condemned. At the time of the formation of Crook County in 1888 he was sufficiently admired that the county was named after him, at a time at which he was still living.
Custer Expedition Memorial.Finally, the Rest Stop is the location of an old monument noting the passage of Custer's 1874 expedition into the Black Hills, which is generally regarded as the precursor of the European American invasion of the Black Hills and the Powder River Expedition of 1876. Obviously, it's more complicated than that, but its safe to say that the discovery of gold in 1874 gave way to a gold rush which, in turn, made conflict with the Sioux, who had taken over the Black Hills (by force) from the Crow, inevitable.
This memorial is interesting in the super heated atmosphere of today given that the historical view has really changed since 1940, when this roadside monument was dedicated (surprisingly late, I'd note, compared to similar Wyoming monuments). In 1940 Custer was still regarded as a hero. By the 1970s, however, he was regarded in the opposite fashion, by and large, at least in terms of his popular portrays are concerned. The 1874 expedition into the Black Hills is not favorably recalled in history now at all.
I have to wonder, however, in terms of the history if this expedition changed history the way it is recalled. The Black Hills always seem to be an attractant. They attracted the Sioux who took them (in living memory in 1874) from the Crows and it seems highly likely that they would would have attracted European Americans as well. Certainly they continued to even after the hopes of gold seekers were dashed.
Now, it's obviously the marker to the Black Hills Expedition of 1874 that has my focus here. Let's take a second look at that memorial, and what it says, and what I said about it:
Custer Expedition Memorial.Finally, the Rest Stop is the location of an old monument noting the passage of Custer's 1874 expedition into the Black Hills, which is generally regarded as the precursor of the European American invasion of the Black Hills and the Powder River Expedition of 1876. Obviously, it's more complicated than that, but its safe to say that the discovery of gold in 1874 gave way to a gold rush which, in turn, made conflict with the Sioux, who had taken over the Black Hills (by force) from the Crow, inevitable.
This memorial is interesting in the super heated atmosphere of today given that the historical view has really changed since 1940, when this roadside monument was dedicated (surprisingly late, I'd note, compared to similar Wyoming monuments). In 1940 Custer was still regarded as a hero. By the 1970s, however, he was regarded in the opposite fashion, by and large, at least in terms of his popular portrays are concerned. The 1874 expedition into the Black Hills is not favorably recalled in history now at all.
I have to wonder, however, in terms of the history if this expedition changed history the way it is recalled. The Black Hills always seem to be an attractant. They attracted the Sioux who took them (in living memory in 1874) from the Crows and it seems highly likely that they would would have attracted European Americans as well. Certainly they continued to even after the hopes of gold seekers were dashed.
And now let's take a second look at how the State of Wyoming is handling the setting for this memorial today:
Some Gave All: The Sundance, Wyoming Rest Stop Memorials.:
Memorials at the Sundance Wyoming Rest Stop.
I wonder if you see what I'm seeing here?
Now, this location is in the Black Hills itself and just over the South Dakota state line. The Black Hills have been the focus of a protracted argument between the Sioux, the United States, and basically South Dakota and Wyoming for decades, with that focus being very sharp since the 1970s. Their argument is that the Black Hills are sacred to them, and that the United States stole it.
Let's consider the actual history of this for just a moment.
George Armstrong Custer. Civil War general, post war colonel. Hero of the Civil War in his own day, and still to those who study Michigan's cavalry in that war. Hero of the Indian Wars to the public during his life and certainly for a time after his death, but controversial and somewhat disliked officer to his fellow officers and men. Genocidal agent in revisionist histories of the 1970s and bad commander serving a dubious cause in modern times. But the same guy the whole time, really.
Custer went into the Black Hills on a military expedition, with part of that expressed military expedition being to explore the region for economic minerals. That surely violated at least the spirit of the treaty of the late 1860s that had carved this region out for the Sioux.
Now, we should note, this this wasn't George Armstrong Custer's idea. He was a soldier and he was ordered to go there. The decision to look at the Black Hills was done by the Administration, and no matter what we think of it, it truly was hedging the bets on the treat that was entered into by the prior Administration. Grant was the President, and he was generally fairly sympathetic to the Indians conceptually, even if in terms of actual policy they really lost out under him. Andrew Johnson's administration had concluded the Treaty of 1868, which reserved the Black Hills for the Sioux, who truly did regard it as sacred. None of that had anything to do with Col. Custer, who was simply following orders.
Crow Indians in Montana in 1908. These two men are old enough to have fought against the Sioux in their youth.
It did have something to do, however, with the Crow. When the Sioux received the Black Hills it recognized, in effect, that they'd conquered them from teh Crow. But in 1874 the Crow had not acknowledged that at all. Indeed, the amazing thing acout the Crow is how tolerant they'd been in putting up with US blundering on the whole topic of Sioux expansion onto the plains and into t he rangeland of northern Wyoming and Montana, which was theirs by right of long occupation. Indeed,t he Crow had been loosely allied with the US in Red Cloud's War and had offered to throw in with the US in a conclusive fashion prior to the Fetterman disaster. If Col. Carrington had taken the offer up chances are that the Crow would have turned the tied and the Sioux would have been pushed out of the Powder River Basin and back to the Black Hills prior to 1868. That the Crow were fighting for the entire area was well known to Americans of the time, if wholly forgotten now. Indeed, one old Frontiersman present at the 1868 council noted to a Sioux chief, regarding the Black Hills, "you just stole it from the Crow, who stole it from someone else". If the Crow "stole" the Black Hills I have no idea, but they'd certainly been fighting to hold or recover it at least as early as the 1840s.
Two Crow women in the very early 20th Century. These women would have been born and have grown to adulthood in the 19th Century when memories of Crow possession of the Black Hills were still strong. Note the title, which would be regarded as offensive today.
The Sioux, for their part, invaded the area as they were being pushed out of the upper Midwest by European American expansion. It's hard not to sympathize with them on that, but at the same time their reaction was basically an invasion of their neighbors to the west, an action that was followed by their allies, the Cheyenne, who interestingly are not a closely related people. The Cheyenne, for their part, were pushed out of the Great Lakes region by the Ojibwa. The Sioux, interestingly enough, had been allied with the British in the Midwest against the United States, providing an example of how Europeans entered into alliances with native peoples and vice versa. The first combat between the US and the Sioux on the plains, however, came not over a land contest, but because an Army unit positioned itself between a Sioux band and a Crow band in an attempt to enforce the official US policy of peace on the plains. The Sioux asked them to move, and they wouldn't, so they were attacked as a result. This was, if I recall correctly, in the 1840s.
All of which may be more or less interesting, but put in context, it makes this entire story rather confusing in terms of who is right and who is wrong. The US should not have been exploring the Black Hills for economic minerals, even if it wasn't officially seeking to violate any treaties. The US also really shouldn't have given the Black Hills solely to the Sioux in 1868 as that violated a long and rightly held claim of the Crows. Should the Sioux have pushed the Crows out of the Black Hills? That doesn't really seem right either. There doesn't seem to be any clean hands in this story, except perhaps that of the Crows.
So what's the point, should all these signs be updated and corrected?
No, I think not.
Rather, these signs serve as memorials not only in the context of those who placed them, but also as reminders of previously held common views. We would do well to recall that those views were held, and why, even if we disagree with them. We won't learn that by tearing them down.
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