Racism still alive 145 years after the assassination of Crazy Horse

A little house breaks on the prairie near US 212 just east of Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana

The Fort Robinson monument in Nebraska commemorating Crazy Horse is inlaid with precisely cut slabs of red catlinite.

Around midnight on this date in 1877, Oglala war chief and spiritual leader Crazy Horse was killed by a soldier's bayonet after attempting to avoid arrest at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. A year after leading Lakota and Cheyenne forces in a decisive victory over Gen. Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Crazy Horse had surrendered to U.S. troops in order to aid his cold and hungry people. Crazy Horse resided in a village near the Red Cloud Agency, but escalating tension between he and the U.S. soldiers made him the object of distrust from many of the officers. On this date, Crazy Horse was turned over to guards. Suspecting that arrest was imminent, the 37-year-old Indian struggled to escape. In the subsequent melee, most eyewitnesses agree he was stabbed by a soldier. He died later that night, and his place of burial is still a mystery. [South Dakota Magazine]

During the Battle of Greasy Grass on the banks of the Little Bighorn River in Montana George Custer attacked the encampment where the elderly, women and children were hidden and during the Washita Massacre he held a similar contingent as hostages and human shields.

Irish Central Newsletters provides an account of how Custer abused the beloved old Irish drinking song. The headline reads: “Irish song ‘Garryowen’ played before Custer’s massacres now banned.” For the Cheyenne and Sioux, the drinking song with a marching cadence “is akin to what ‘Deutschland Uber Alles’ is to the Jews, a hated reminder of an evil past,” according to the newsletter author. Custer’s band played “Garryowen” for the last time in 1876 on the way to the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Yet, we, the descendants of those who were murdered to the strains of “Garryowen,” shouldn’t have sit at a modern-day banquet and be subjected to it. [Clara Caufield, ‘Garryowen’ retired by some after Custer’s use as death song]

George Custer, Phil Sheridan, George Crook and William Harney all committed crimes against humanity yet their names still besmirch numerous government and geographical features.

"The Lewis and Clark expedition spent just two weeks on the return trip, passing the Big Sioux and out of South Dakota forever on this date in 1806." via @SDMagazine https://t.co/8Q4yAgoTV6

— interested party (@larry_kurtz) September 4, 2022