Photographs by John Warner, Soaring Eagle
150th Anniversary of the Little Bighorn Battle is a Spectacle for the Heritage Living Center Elders.
It was a spectacle unlike any you or I will ever witness. Hundreds of men and women, boys and girls, flying at full speed on their painted horses, galloping across swooping ravines and over the grasslands, to reach the crest of the highest hilltop. There, they circled clockwise, pounding up dust into the Montana sky. War cries and lulus filled the air at full volume.
We were gathered in a sprawling sea of nearly all Native Peoples, standing on our own nearby hillside, tribal flags waving with the wind. The surreal scene was as if scripted by Hollywood, taking us back to the day when our ancestors were attacked by George Armstrong Custer’s 7th Calvary, and how they responded to defend their families and way of life.
The panoramic event was on June 25, 2026, marking the 150th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Preparations for the anniversary had been planned for more than a year by tribes and the national parks service. Members of 19 Indian Nations converged on the famous site to celebrate their cultures and heritage at the National Monument. They came to celebrate the victory that shocked a nation as it was preparing to celebrate America’s Centennial in 1876. More than one hundred Lakota’s rode horseback from South Dakota for this once-in-a-lifetime gathering.
We were overwhelmed; waves of emotion coursed through the marrow of our beings. We paused to catch our breath. The circling riders then spread their horses across the distant ridgeline in a flanking, frontal formation, waiting for the signal. Without warning, they suddenly kicked their horses and exploded downhill directly at us. It was frighteningly magnificent. The mass of riders pounding down on us stood everyone straight up; they were going to ride right through us! Bearing down on us, the riders then pulled hard on the reins, bringing the horses to hoof-pounding halt only feet from an old, barbed fenceline separating us. If there ever was a time or place when you thought, “You had to be there,” this was it.
I had a profound vision while taking it all in. I thought of the women; the mothers and grandmothers, during the time in our history when husbands and sons rode off to fight. I thought of watching my two youngest sons, now 19 and 21, painting their horses and riding towards the next fight to protect our people, our loved ones, never knowing if they were coming back. I felt a rush of fear and anxiety for how dreadful it had to be for them.
HLC elder Roberta Lonebear had the same thoughts. “I thought about the moms and grandmothers, sending their boys off and never knowing if they would come back, or if one or two would make it back and all the others, gone,” she said. A spiritual woman with sacred responsibilities in our Cheyenne culture, she offered an intuition as she looked on. “Those horses, they knew what was going on.”
The anniversary was a week-long event. Four miles south of the national battlefield monuments and cemetery, along the edge of the Little Bighorn River (or the Greasy Grass River as the Indians knew it) a massive tipi encampment was erected. Tribes had their own two-acre plots, and the “camp covenants” strongly encouraged tribes to erect the biggest canvas tipis available to them. My father is a chief and helped coordinate our camp. The centerpiece was a 30-footer. Its supporting 40-foot-long tipi poles are made of lodgepole pine trees, stripped of their bark. It took a village to raise it!
The encampment was located on the southern end of where the estimated 6,000-8,000 Indians, led by Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Two Moon (often spelled Two Moons), were camped 150 years ago. We were also within view of where Custer had ordered Major Marcus Reno to attack the village first, while Custer’s command was four miles to the north. Reno’s charge across the river to pitch into the village was a disaster; losing dozens of men dead in the initial attack, with dozens more trying to escape across the river to climb the steep bluffs to higher ground. In the aftermath, Reno famously said of the furious counterattack, “The very earth seemed to grow Indians.”
Walking along the riverbank, I could see and I could feel the chaos, the anger, the shock and mayhem of Reno’s attack. I felt empathy for Gall, Crazy Horse’s lifelong friend since childhood, whose two wives and three children were among the first killed by troops because their lodge was near the end of the encampment. I felt death, and left to seek the laughter and friendship of our camp.
When we returned to the slower pace of life at the Heritage Center, it was time for the annual Chiefs Powwow in Lame Deer over the Fourth of July weekend. The Heritage Living Center hosted an early evening meal at the powwow for all elders at the powwow. We truly enjoy extending our work out into community. A free meal of homemade sandwiches and side dishes under the shade of our large canopy is a relaxing time for the elders, awaiting grand entry to kick off the evening of dancing in the arbor. Thanks to our donors, we get to be good neighbors to the community on special occasions.
Whew! Thank God for our air-conditioned Heritage Living Center. It has been over 100 degrees for many days this summer. I thought about the elders suffering in their former houses; government-built hot-boxes absorbing the sun like an adobe brick during our long summer days. The elders and I thank you for providing a reprieve from the life-threatening heat. And we thank you for “Keeping the Miracle on the Hill Alive!”
Nea’ese (Thank you),
Kay Medicine Bull
Executive Director
