Sunday, December 19, 2010

Debate Over Little Bighorn Battle Monument

NY Times: Debate Over Little Bighorn Battle Monument: "A political tug of war has raged between the National Park Service, Custer buffs and Indian tribes over how best to fix a litany of problems with the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, in south central Montana."

"Custer's Last Stand" by Thomas Hart Benton, 1943.
The above is an interesting article about how a decaying infrastructure at the Little Big Horn is forcing interested parties to come up with a compromise solution. The Crow Nation in particular is flexing its political and moral authority over the issue and demanding a leadership role in interpreting and event which is a turning point in their history and happened right on what became their reservation.

The NY Times has an archive of Custer stories that provide background and snapshots of the man's declining historical reputation:


You might notice no articles between the late 1920 and the 1980s above. It seems that the Times has put articles from that era back behind a pay wall. I am  not sure when this happened or why!

1 comment:

jacobite said...

Two comments--

*One of my students has been tracking European 1848 refugees as a sidelight to Civil War History. The sheer number and influence of the Hungarian (Louis Kossuth's blockbuster lecture tour of the 1850s), German and Czech wave is really interesting since many were professionals (doctors, engineers) or got into state politics quickly. Maybe because of the languages involved, this seems to be an understudied phenomena (and a reason for me to kick said student into keeping his German reading sharp).

*The Little Bighorn debate is interestingly handed by the US Army. They have developed a "Staff Ride" of the whole campaign, in which evidence is weighed and the landscape studied. I know some of the historians who developed it and it is a fascinating process done responsibly and taught in an interactive way.