Posted by (+152) 4 years ago
While a student in school at Custer Co. High School {52 to 55} I was fed the mythology of Custer’s Last Stand. Miles City, as most of you know, is a bird flight from the actuality of the Little Big Horn but centuries apart when considering its take on the American Indian. As a kid if I wanted to buy beer as a teenager I knew that all I needed to do was go downtown and find an Indian and have him buy it for me. I even remember teepees up near the Tongue River right outside Miles City. And I remember the signs set up right outside the rez near Lame Deer, No Indians or Breeds Allowed
Years later I became a teacher of social studies because my own education was so lacking in high school. By then I had read many accounts of the ‘last stand’ some by American Indian authors. I had even researched the subject at the Library of Congress where I finally came upon first hand accounts of the Custer fight by the Lakota and the Northern Cheyenne. My question is how could the teachers of CCHS
Believed the 7th Calvary accounts of a fight ,that was ultimately a disaster for the Plains Indian, that had so clearly been mythologized to fit the white racism against the Plains Indian.
Because I could not believe that I had teachers who had it so wrong I became a history teacher in the East. In fact my education came more from the US Navy than from any of the classes that I had from Marinkovich or Oloughlin, my teachers at CCHS.?????
Recently I checked into my own past wondering why I had been held up so long in 1962 to getting into the Peace Corps. I did what is called a Freedom of Information Act with the FBI. My results of this search gave me an answer about teachers at CCHS. Every teacher I had in high school gave me a very bad review as a person who should be in the Peace Corps. My teachers at CCHS hated me and tried to keep me from going overseas with the Kennedy Peace Corps. Luckily professors at the University of Colorado and San Diego State College gave me glowing reviews and it
took some time but I made it to the job of a lifetime in Liberia.
While teaching in West Africa I read a lot of histories and began to feel my way as
A teacher of that subject first at the University of Liberia and then later in a school that June and I took over for our final year in Liberia.
Back in the US I became a teacher of social studies in Massachusetts, Maryland and NYC. Now my study of the battle of Little Big Horn began. Some 50 years later I have just finished my, probably, 50th book on the subject. Guess what, nothing is changed, there are still people who believe the mythology created after 1876 and there are folks that know that we will never know what happened on the Little Big Horn and of course there are people who believe that Custer was a disaster in the West.
The racism of the teachers of my high school was unacceptable to me. To set the record straight that is why I became a teacher. My background of three years in the Navy, my degree in social studies from San Diego State, my two years in Africa, My MA in geography, my years of study on the American Indian have brought me to today. My study of Custer is pretty complete, he was an egomaniacal fool who got what he deserved and sadly took a lot of people with him. But the battle of the Greasy Grass was a huge turning point for the American Indian. The genocide of the peoples continued into the finish of the 19th century and well into the 20th . I wish I could say we are now more correct in our interchange with the American Indian.
I will end with a quote from Sherman Alexie.
‘Last Sept. 16th, I was walking in downtown Seattle when this pick up truck pulls up
in front of me. Guy leans out the window and yells, “go back to your own country,”
it wasn’t so much a hate crime as a crime of irony.’
My question is have we improved. I am not sure.
• K
• L
Years later I became a teacher of social studies because my own education was so lacking in high school. By then I had read many accounts of the ‘last stand’ some by American Indian authors. I had even researched the subject at the Library of Congress where I finally came upon first hand accounts of the Custer fight by the Lakota and the Northern Cheyenne. My question is how could the teachers of CCHS
Believed the 7th Calvary accounts of a fight ,that was ultimately a disaster for the Plains Indian, that had so clearly been mythologized to fit the white racism against the Plains Indian.
Because I could not believe that I had teachers who had it so wrong I became a history teacher in the East. In fact my education came more from the US Navy than from any of the classes that I had from Marinkovich or Oloughlin, my teachers at CCHS.?????
Recently I checked into my own past wondering why I had been held up so long in 1962 to getting into the Peace Corps. I did what is called a Freedom of Information Act with the FBI. My results of this search gave me an answer about teachers at CCHS. Every teacher I had in high school gave me a very bad review as a person who should be in the Peace Corps. My teachers at CCHS hated me and tried to keep me from going overseas with the Kennedy Peace Corps. Luckily professors at the University of Colorado and San Diego State College gave me glowing reviews and it
took some time but I made it to the job of a lifetime in Liberia.
While teaching in West Africa I read a lot of histories and began to feel my way as
A teacher of that subject first at the University of Liberia and then later in a school that June and I took over for our final year in Liberia.
Back in the US I became a teacher of social studies in Massachusetts, Maryland and NYC. Now my study of the battle of Little Big Horn began. Some 50 years later I have just finished my, probably, 50th book on the subject. Guess what, nothing is changed, there are still people who believe the mythology created after 1876 and there are folks that know that we will never know what happened on the Little Big Horn and of course there are people who believe that Custer was a disaster in the West.
The racism of the teachers of my high school was unacceptable to me. To set the record straight that is why I became a teacher. My background of three years in the Navy, my degree in social studies from San Diego State, my two years in Africa, My MA in geography, my years of study on the American Indian have brought me to today. My study of Custer is pretty complete, he was an egomaniacal fool who got what he deserved and sadly took a lot of people with him. But the battle of the Greasy Grass was a huge turning point for the American Indian. The genocide of the peoples continued into the finish of the 19th century and well into the 20th . I wish I could say we are now more correct in our interchange with the American Indian.
I will end with a quote from Sherman Alexie.
‘Last Sept. 16th, I was walking in downtown Seattle when this pick up truck pulls up
in front of me. Guy leans out the window and yells, “go back to your own country,”
it wasn’t so much a hate crime as a crime of irony.’
My question is have we improved. I am not sure.
• K
• L