Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument: Greasy Grass Victory

As with Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the Little Bighorn Battlefield has long been on my Life Goal List. Getting there turned out to be interesting. A long day of meandering across Montana along Scenic Highway 2 provided a close up study of a segment of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The day's mission changed from Glacier National Park, near the west end of Route 2, to the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument after I learned that eleven miles of the Road to the Sun over the top of Glacier were still snow covered. My quest to ride in national parks included a ride over and back on that road. I also planned to hike out to quickly disappearing remnants of the park's namesake glaciers in that upper section of the park.

The change in plans resulted in a late arrival at the Little Bighorn Battlefield on the Crow Agency land. A few hours of restless napping preceded a wait in a long line of visitors at the gate to the property. My visit lasted almost four hours as I took part in every facet of the experience: listening to ranger presentations, watching films, touring the museum, visiting the battlefields, and reading the separate military and native monuments.

This emotional visit was the culmination of many readings about the battle. Lee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee awakened me to the "other" perspective of the battle. Brown's version, representing both U.S. Military and Native American "first hand" accounts, created in me an interest that kept me looking for information for over thirty years. Listening to an energetic and thought provoking ranger presentation and then standing, watery eyed, on that hallowed ground took me back to those chaotic and vicious minutes in 1876.

That ranger talk, which included powerful exclamations and well timed pauses, followed my visit to the visitor center bookstore where I read pages from dozens of new to me books on the battle. Years of study created numerous questions. Reading from those books and listening to the talk answered some of those questions while creating new questions.

We have a foundation or outline of what occurred on June 25-26, 1876. General Custer searched for the "hostile" and nonconforming Lakota Sioux, Arapaho, and Cheyenne indians (most know of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse) who were trying to maintain their traditional plains lifestyle. When he realized that his troops had been detected, Custer immediately split his troops and attacked an encampment of roughly 8,000 natives.

Custer ordered Major Reno's 140 troops to cross the Little Bighorn River to attack the encampment almost two miles southwest of the camp with assurance that Reno would be fully supported. Custer ordered Captain Bentene's 125 troops to move further left of the camp to stop dispersed and fleeing natives. Meanwhile, Custer moved to the northeast or right of the camp. All of these movements took place in valleys behind hills and out of sight of the indian encampment.

It is believed that Custer expected the women and children to flee Reno's attack while the warriors fought Reno. As in previous battles, Custer expected to capture women and children to force the warriors to lay down their arms. In a sense, Custer expected to route the warriors by outsmarting them and taking advantage of their honor to their families. It did not work out as he planned.

Reno retreated again and again as hundreds of warriors unleashed a steady flow of deadly bullets and arrows. He received no back up. Bentene stayed several miles away from the encampment, supposedly waiting to meet up with the fourth division, the supply train, of the Custer force.

That left Custer and his 210 men alone and moving fast through a valley on the northeast side of the encampment. Custer was miles away from the hill that Reno would hold until the next day when the warriors moved south and backup arrived. The dust storm created by the "last stand" was seen from that hill and from another hill further away where Bentene was.

Custer and his 210 men were met with the fury of hundreds of warriors. Greatly outnumbered, Custer ordered retreat to high ground just as Reno had. It was reported by surviving indians that those 7th Calvary soldiers eventually shot their horses in order to hide behind them. A barrage of arrows and bullets made that effort futile as the warriors eventually moved in and killed every soldier. Custer took two bullets, one of them to the temple.

There is an incredible amount of hearsay and legend about this battle. Did the warriors recognize Custer, a well known enemy even though he had cut his hair just before the battle? Did Custer and other soldiers use their last bullets on themselves instead of meeting brutal battlefield deaths? Did Bentene stay out of the fight due to a known disagreement he had with Custer? These and many other unanswerable questions keep the interest high. There are so many discordant accounts of the battle that we will never know all of the details.

We do know these facts. Custer and his 210 men were killed and mutilated. (Mutilation was carried out to impact future life) Four of General Custer's family members died with him at the Little Bighorn. Bentene went to trial, was found innocent, and then saw his life go to hell. Within a decade of the battle the bison were slaughtered almost to extinction. As in Sitting Bull's vision, the mutilation of the troops was followed by the demise of the American Indian. The indian victory at the stream the Lakota Sioux called the Greasy Grass created a powerful response by the U.S. military that brought an end to the traditional life of the American Indian.

Graves from soldiers from the many battles were moved to Little Bighorn

The Last Stand Battlefield 

Native Monument Sculpture

Entrance to Native Monument

Markers where they died - Custer's in the black one.

Closer view of the Last Stand soldier graves
All warrior death sites also marked throughout the grounds

Museum display

Corresponding museum display

7th Calvary Monument - Horses buried across the road

Native Monument - informative and beautiful

Looking down the Last Stand ridge to the Visitor Center

Is this how it ended?

Now do you understand the photograph at the end of the last post?

Life is short and the roads are many and long.  ST

Theodore Roosevelt National Park - The North Dakota Badlands

A visit to Theodore Roosevelt (TR) National Park took its place on my Life Goal List back in 1986 when I learned of it while reading the Wilderness Society quarterly publication in the Purdue Library during a study break. Later, as I developed a fascination and profound respect for TR, I felt a connection with this unique landscape that I had never set foot in. Now that I have walked, slept, ridden, and driven through the oddly sculpted and seemingly broken land while trying to envision the "strenuous life" TR found so endearing I feel even more attracted to it. I also recognized and welcomed the healing and strengthening aura that TR often spoke and wrote of.

A young TR visited the area in 1883, killed a buffalo, and bought into the Maltese Cross Ranch. He returned in February 1884 as a broken man having lost both his mother and wife on the same day. TR started his own ranch, the Elkhorn, about thirty miles north of the Maltese Cross and the town of Medora, ND. Medora had been founded in 1883 by Frenchman Marquis de Mores with his elegant home, the Chateau de Mores (now a museum), and his meat packing plant as primary structures. While de Mores wanted to send meat to Chicago on refrigerated rail cars TR wanted to raise cattle to supply meat to a growing population of settlers and miners.

A bitterly cold 1887 winter killed almost all of TR's livestock, bringing an end to his ranch as an industry, but the event helped formulate and give momentum to his conservation philosophy because it coincided with the mass slaughter of the bison. The bison had been reduced from more than 5,000,000 in 1870 to less than 500 by 1889.

TR also noted the widespread destruction of the landscape as he traveled across the country. He felt that something had to be done. Yellowstone was already an established national park. TR wanted more lands protected:

“It is also vandalism wantonly to destroy or to permit the destruction of what is beautiful in nature, whether it be a cliff, a forest, or a species of mammal or bird. Here in the United States we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping-grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy forests, and exterminate fishes, birds and mammals — not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements. But at last it looks as if our people were awakening.”

TRNP was envisioned it its first form in 1919, was named the Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park by Truman in 1947 and was officially named a national park in 1978. It is broken into three areas called units: South Unit, North Unit, and Elkhart Ranch Unit. They are accessed by separate entrances. The South Unit is entered through Medora and has 35 miles of paved, winding, and hilly roadway featuring a 24-mile loop. The North Unit paved road winds 14 miles to a turn around. I camped next the Little Missouri River in the South Unit Cottonwood Campground. Juniper Campground in the North Unit looked just as therapeutic.

The combination of Medora, the surrounding National Grasslands, and TRNP present a worthwhile reason for visiting the otherwise out of the way plains of North Dakota. The wonderful people I met from all over the world in this park included: elderly Jerry, who took my photo and discussed the Ever After with me - a 30-something couple from Banff, Canada who, like me, dodged the many massive piles of bison scat on their bikes while riding the park road - Lisa and Jenny, a couple from Seattle who were "just wandering," and Jeremy, a Trinity geology major from Ohio whose internship included working the Visitor Center information desk and presenting the ranger geology talk. And then there were the many animals I encountered. Not pictured below is the prairie dog who first played dead on the road and then attempted to run between my bike wheels. It failed, but managed to run away after the neck crush of my rear tire.

Below are some of the sights I captured during my three day visit.

The bison herd is expanding!

You Shall NOT Pass!

Wild horses might not keep me away, but they will cause me delay.

Applying insect repellent

It just happened . . .

The North Unit has a large bison herd and a longhorn herd

Ralph left a mess - I cleaned it up.

Family life in the grasslands

Teddy's writing table in his Maltese Cabin

TR's Maltese Cabin was a quality structure given the time and place

A gentle post race ride on a challenging loop

Steep climbs and descents kept it interesting when absorbing the scenery - and avoiding the bison scat!

Next stop on the tour . . .

USAT Duathlon National Championships

I drove to St. Paul last week with mixed feelings. I left three days later emotionally and physically devastated. I was content to finish the event and would have been extremely excited about a podium finish. Other aspects of life are more important and, as those close to me understand, I currently have greater concerns that keep this in perspective. I simply needed an uplifting experience.

After months of consistent strengthening and stretching my body seemed not only to have returned to balance, it also moved more powerfully and fluidly while walking, running, or riding. Hell, I even sat with authority. My confidence was higher than it had been in three years. One prolonged uncomfortable session of sitting changed all of that and my struggle to regain equilibrium returned just before my season of racing.

For almost two weeks leading up to Du Nats I could not run, but almost miraculously the body relaxed the day before I was supposed to leave. Though a test run went smoothly I did not fully trust my body. I also had the struggle of last year's embarrassing race in St. Paul stamped in my mind. Still, driven by whatever it is that motivates me, I loaded the car and drove to St. Paul. My biking, strong of late, would need to make up for slower running.

Run one went much better than last year as I went out tentatively, but was actually moving at just under six minute pace. Andy and another guy raced off ahead of the pack while I cruised back in 8th-10th place until people began to slow and I found myself in 3rd. Then, when accelerating after rounding one of the u-turn cones on lap two, I felt the hamstring twinge. Reluctantly, I shortened the stride and fell back to 5th entering transition.

The lead pair was about 90 seconds ahead of me when I powered up the 2K 9% Ohio Street climb the first time. There were dozens of riders from earlier waves going up with me. Countless menacing cracks and holes, a creaking bike, and two burning thighs are all I remember about the three passes up that hill. I loved it.

Unfortunately, the long winding descent was interrupted each loop by slower less confident riders. On the first loop I was passed by a guy with a disc just before the sharp turn at the bottom. It was Marcus, who was in my age group and who had left T1 just behind me. He promptly lost control on the sharp high speed turn and almost took both of us out of the race. I would pull away Marcus on each climb only to have him catch me near the bottom of the descent.

On the third descent I caught Andy just as Marcus caught me at that same sharp turn. The three of us entered T2 within seconds of each other and just behind the leader, but I must confess that I pedaled hard right up to the dismount line to close a hundred foot gap the two had opened on me after I dropped gear to ease off on the tight hip/ham. That meant that the top four positions in a very strong age group were within about twenty seconds of each other at T2. I needed and really wanted to do what I have always loved to do in duathlons: throw down a brutally painful second run.

The hamstring had begun to tighten and pull while I was riding, so I knew that the piriformis was knotted up. Unlike last year when I laid down in T2 and stretched, I was caught up in being in T2 with the others. I came out in 4th place and held my position behind Marcus while Andy pushed toward the leader, Fred Bunn, who was leading the age group at nationals for the first time.

Approximately seven minutes into the first loop of run two I decided that I need to pass Marcus strongly and create a gap since the tight leg was not going to allow me to run fast (I'm slow anyway!) at the end. A dozen or so strides into the quicker pace I had pulled within arms length of Marcus when the hamstring locked up. I tried to stay upright, but the leg was immobilized in a bent position so I fell and rolled.

If you've ever had a cramp, say in your arch, then you have an idea what kind of pain I was in. Over the next four minutes I rubbed, stretched, stood, and cursed the leg before falling again as soon as I attempted to move forward. It is all right there in the heart rate/pace file below. Missing from the image is the emotional devastation the incident caused.

The Polar V800 tracked my effort right up to the bitter Man up/Man down ending.

I typed this post in Gardiner, MT near the North Gate of Yellowstone National Park. I've driven 1400 miles since I left St. Paul. The back of that thigh is colored - green and black. Driving does not make it feel better, but the journey, the journaling, the people I've met, and places I have and will see are helping with the mental healing.

I've noticed that the curious followers of this blog have checked in several thousand times since my last post. Though I have not blogged about most of my Spring races or trips, I plan to add posts about my summer experiences (and maybe even insert journal entries from prior events). This introvert certainly would be content with journaling if people weren't interested in reading and looking at the photos. It is my hope that some of you gain satisfaction, a smile, or bit of knowledge from my musings. ST

They seem to have life sorted out.