Can dogs hike in Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument?

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Look at the hillsides as the road climbs. White marble stones mark where soldiers fell, and red granite stones mark where warriors fell, on the same grass. This is Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, ground the country set aside for what happened here.

Before the park

This valley lies inside the Crow Reservation. The Crow call themselves Apsáalooke, children of the large-beaked bird, and their nation governs about two point two million acres from Crow Agency. A treaty in eighteen fifty-one recognized about thirty-eight million acres of Crow country, and a second treaty in eighteen sixty-eight cut it to eight million.

That same year, the Treaty of Fort Laramie set aside a reservation for the Lakota in what is now western South Dakota. In eighteen seventy-four an army expedition under George Armstrong Custer found gold in the Black Hills, and miners poured in, breaking the treaty.

The Lakota govern today at Standing Rock, where the Hunkpapa and Sihasapa bands live alongside Dakota people. The Northern Cheyenne call themselves Tsis tsis'tas, the beautiful people, and govern their reservation from Lame Deer. The Arikara call themselves Sahnish, and govern together with the Mandan and Hidatsa.

In eighteen seventy-six the army sent three columns to force the Lakota and Cheyenne onto reservations, and at the heart of one rode the Seventh Cavalry, under Lieutenant Colonel Custer.

Making the park

In eighteen seventy-nine part of the battlefield became a national cemetery for the Seventh Cavalry. In nineteen forty-six it was named Custer Battlefield National Monument.

In July of nineteen eighty-nine, Barbara Booher, of Northern Ute and Cherokee descent, became the superintendent, the park's manager. "All I'd ever heard about it in school was from the Custer point of view," she said, and this was "the only place where all the monuments are to the losers".

In December of nineteen ninety-one, a law signed by President George H. W. Bush changed the name to Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and called for an Indian Memorial. The memorial was dedicated in two thousand three, under the words Peace Through Unity, and it honors the Arikara, the Apsáalooke, the Arapaho, the Cheyenne and the Lakota. Its Spirit Gate opens toward the soldiers' monument, to welcome their spirits too. From nineteen ninety-nine, working with Cheyenne and Lakota people, the Park Service began setting red granite where warriors fell.

One story

In late June of eighteen seventy-six, one of the largest camps the Plains nations ever made stood along this river: about seven thousand Lakota, Cheyenne, Dakota and Arapaho people. Many of them call what came next the Battle of the Greasy Grass. Sitting Bull, an elder and spiritual leader, had seen a vision of soldiers falling upside down into his village. Crazy Horse and his Oglala people were there too.

With the Seventh rode almost thirty Arikara scouts and a half dozen Crow scouts, and the Arikara found the village for Custer.

Custer split his regiment, and kept two hundred and ten men in his own command. At Deep Ravine, about twenty young Lakota and Cheyenne warriors charged them and stampeded their horses. Custer and all of his soldiers died, and none survived to tell exactly what happened.

Over two days, about two hundred sixty-eight soldiers, scouts and civilians died, and an estimated sixty to one hundred Lakota and Cheyenne warriors. Bloody Knife, an Arikara and Custer's favorite scout, was among the dead. The Lakota had won, but they knew more soldiers would come. Within a year most had surrendered, and the United States took the Black Hills without paying the Lakota. Two hundred and ten men rode with Custer, and not one came back.

Today

Visits fell to about forty-two thousand in twenty twenty-five, the year the monument closed four days a week through much of the season for construction. A new visitor center is rising where the old one stood, built by a company owned by members of the Paskenta Band of Nomlaki Indians.

The live argument is about the signs. Early in twenty twenty-six, under a presidential order, the Park Service removed signs here about broken promises to tribes and the loss of Native culture and language in government schools for Native children. The Northern Cheyenne Tribal Council voted eleven to none against changing or removing Native markers and signs. Lucy Real Bird, a teacher at Crow Agency, said, "We're going to keep telling our story."

The battle turned one hundred fifty in June of twenty twenty-six, and riders came hundreds of miles on horseback to mark it.

Watch the hillsides as you go: white stones and red stones, on the same ground. This is Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.