Editor's Note: Beverly Slapin submitted this review essay of Paul Goble's Custer's Last Battle: Red Hawk's Account of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Slapin uses quotation marks around the name "Red Hawk" because that is a fictional character. Slapin's review may not be used elsewhere without her written permission. All rights reserved. Copyright 2016. Slapin is currently the publisher/editor of De Colores: The Raza Experience in Books for Children.
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Goble,
Paul, Custer’s Last Battle: Red Hawk’s
Account of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, with an introduction by Joe
Medicine Crow. Wisdom Tales / World Wisdom, 2013.
Each
year on June 25, Oglala Lakota families at Pine Ridge gather to celebrate the
Lakota people’s victory at the Battle of the Greasy Grass, where, in 1876, as
Oglala author and activist Debra White Plume says, “Custer wore an Arrow
Shirt.”
“Warriors
get ready,” the announcer calls. “Be safe, and thank your horse when you’re
done.” The warriors, mostly teens, race off to find and count coup on the white
guy who’s volunteered to stand in for Custer. No one knocks him off his horse,
but they take his flag. “Our ancestors took that flag from the United States of
America,” White Plume says, smiling. “We’re the only people who ever did.”
“I
think it’s important,” she continues, “for the young men and young women to
receive the training of the Warrior Society as our ancestors lived it, because
that’s where the important values are played out, like courage and helping your
relative and taking care of your horse and taking care of the land. All of that
was important to us then and is important to us now.”
How
different the people’s reality is from “Red Hawk’s” lament at the beginning of
Goble’s story:
We won a great victory. But when you look about you [sic]
today you can see that it meant little. The White Men, who were then few, have
spread over the earth like fallen leaves driven before the wind.
Goble’s new edition of his first-published
book contains a revised “narrative,” a new Author’s Introduction, and a short Foreword
by Crow historian Joe Medicine Crow, whose grandfather had been one of Custer’s
scouts. According to Goble himself, “The inclusion of the Foreword by Joe
Medicine Crow… gives the book a stronger Indian perspective.” Of the 20 sources
in Goble’s reference section, only two are Indian-authored—My People, the Sioux and My
Indian Boyhood—both by Luther Standing Bear, who was not at the Greasy
Grass Battle (because he was only eight years old at the time).
In the two previous editions
of Red Hawk’s Account of Custer’s Last Battle, Goble acknowledges
the aid of “Lakota Isnala,” whom one might presume to be a Lakota historian. He
was not. In this 2013 edition, Goble finally discloses that “Lakota Isnala” was, in fact, a Belgian
Trappist monk named Gall Schuon, who was adopted by Nicolas Black Elk. Custer’s Last Battle, writes Goble, is his
fictional interpretation of Fr. Gall Schuon’s interpretation of John G.
Neihardt’s interpretation of Nicolas Black Elk’s story. (And there has been
much criticism by scholars—and by Black Elk’s family—of Neihardt’s exaggerating
and altering Black Elk’s story in order to increase the marketability of Black Elk Speaks.) In other words, Goble’s
book is a white guy’s interpretation of a white guy’s interpretation of a white
guy’s controversial interpretation of an elder Lakota historian’s oral story,
which he related in Lakota. Finally, at the end of his
introduction, Goble writes, “Wopila ate,” which is probably supposed to mean,
“Thank you, father.” Except it doesn’t. “Wopila” is a noun and means “gift.”
So, “wopila ate” would mean, “gift father,” which is just a joining of two
unrelated words. “Pilamaya,” which is
a verb, means “thank you.”
Returning to Goble’s introduction,
there’s this:
Because
no single Indian account gives a complete picture of the battle, Indian people
telling only what they had seen and done, I added explanatory passages in
italics to give the reader an overview of what might have taken place…
In truth, Native traditionalists in
the 1800s
did not offer linear recitations of events. Rather, they narrated only those
events in which they had participated. Sometimes historical records consisted entirely
of these narratives. Sometimes contemporaneous Indian historians, such as
Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa),
assembled credible historical records. Sometimes persons from outside the
culture, who knew and respected the Indian traditionalists, successfully
assembled written records of oral narratives.
And there certainly is, today, a wealth of material, much of it put together by
descendants of those who fought in the Greasy Grass Battle.
In the same paragraph, Goble writes,
[T]here
were no survivors of Custer’s immediate command, and there has always been
considerable controversy about exactly what happened.
By limiting his discussion (and the
story) to the casualties of Custer’s “immediate” command, Goble sidesteps the
reality that, although five of the 12 Seventh Cavalry companies were completely
destroyed, there were many survivors in the other seven. And, according to the
histories passed down by Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho traditionalists, there
was never any “considerable controversy about exactly what happened.” In one of
the major battles, for instance, it’s said that as the fighting was coming to
an end, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse saw no sense in continuing. Rather, Crazy
Horse posted snipers to keep the surviving Blue Coats behind their
barricades—watching helplessly as he and his thousands of warriors returned to
camp to help take down their lodges and move south.
So, to be clear, there is nothing in
Goble’s fictional Indian narrator’s voice, accompanied by Goble’s explanatory
passages—even if they were accurate and appropriate, which they’re not—that
might add anything of value for children or anyone else.
Piling romantic metaphor onto romantic
metaphor appears to be Goble’s way of trying to imitate “Indian” storytelling
style, which it doesn’t. Toward the beginning of the story, for instance, “Red
Hawk” describes Crazy Horse: “A tomahawk in his hand gave him the power of the
thunder and a war-bonnet of eagle feathers gave him the speed of the eagle.” Goble’s
magical tomahawk stuff notwithstanding, Crazy Horse never wore a headdress. Following instructions given to him in an early vision, Crazy Horse wore the tail feathers from a red-tailed hawk at the back of his head, and a reddish-brown stone behind his left ear; his battle paint was a lightning mark across one side of his face, and blue hailstones on his chest.*
Besides being mired down with
cringe-worthy metaphor and misinformation, Goble’s fictional narrative paints
the Lakota people as “brave yet doomed.” Here, for instance, “Red Hawk” relates
the camp’s panicked response to an impending cavalry attack:
In
an instant everyone was running in different directions…. The air was suddenly
filled with dust and the sound of shouting and horses neighing. Dogs were
running in every direction not knowing where to go…. Warriors struggled to
mount their horses, which reared and stamped in excitement, while women grabbed
up their babies and shrieked for their children as they ran down the valley
away from the oncoming soldiers. Old men and women with half-seeing eyes
followed after, stumbling through the dust-filled air. Medicine Bear, too old
to run, sat by his tipi as the bullets from the soldiers’ guns already
splintered the tipi-poles around him. “Warriors take courage!” he shouted. “It
is better to die young for the people than to grow old.”
Goble’s melodrama notwithstanding,
the Indian camps were extremely well organized. In times of war, everyone knew
what to do. Children were protected, as were elders—not abandoned, helplessly
sitting around “splintered tipi poles” or “stumbling through the dust-filled
air.” Compare Goble’s fictional “narrative” above with a piece from Joseph
Marshall III’s In the Footsteps of Crazy
Horse, in which Grandpa Nyles explains what happened to his grandson:
It
was customary for Lakota wives and mothers to hand weapons to their husbands
and sons. And they had a saying that gave them encouragement and reminded them
of their duty as warriors…. The women would say, “Have courage and be the first
to charge the enemy, for it is better to lie a warrior naked in death than it
is to run away from the battle.”…It means that courage was a warrior’s best
weapon, and that it was the highest honor to give your life for your people.
And. Goble’s description of
“shrieking” women is taken from the many outsider accounts of “wailing” women.
In reality, the camp women were singing Strong Heart songs to give their
warriors courage as they rode off to battle.
And. “Red Hawk’s” recounting of what
Medicine Bear said seems to have been “borrowed” from Luther Standing Bear’s Land of the Spotted Eagle. But what
Standing Bear really wrote was this:
When
(I was) but a mere child, father inspired me by often saying: “Son, I never
want to see you live to be an old man. Die young on the battlefield. That is
the way a Lakota dies.” The full intent of this advice was that I must never
shirk my duty to my tribe no matter what price in sacrifice I paid…. If I
failed in duty, I simply failed to meet a test of manhood, and a man living in
his tribe without respect was a nonentity.
More misinformation: Toward the end
of “Red Hawk’s” story, he says, “White Men have asked me which man it was who
killed Long Hair. We have talked among ourselves about this but we do not know.
No man can say.”
Although there may not be
written narrative accounts of who killed Custer, Indian people know it was
Rain-In-The-Face. Besides the oral stories that have been handed down, there exist
Winter Count histories in pictographs, which are at least, if not more,
reliable than histories written by outsiders. On one particular Winter
Count, the pictograph detailing the most important event of that specific year,
or winter, shows Rain-In-The-Face (along with his name glyph, or signature tag,
of rain falling in his face) firing a rifle (with smoke coming out of it)
directly at Custer (who is shown with long hair, falling backwards).
For the most part, and for
cultural and pragmatic reasons, Indian people at the time did not have a lot to
say to white people about their participation in the Battle of the Greasy
Grass. Dewey Beard, for instance, said only that: “The sun shone. It was a good
day.” But Goble chose to rely on the easily available written versions, rather
than on the oral and pictograph versions—which he probably would not have understood
or respected anyway.
In what has come to be known
as ledger art, the Indian artists used basic media of whatever was
available—crayon, colored pencil, and sometimes ink—on pages torn out of
discarded ledger books. What they created was art of great beauty. Early ledger
art related the histories of the great battles, the buffalo hunts, and other
scenes from their lives. In the battle scenes, there were iconic name glyphs
over the heads of individual warriors to identify them. There were handprints
on their horses—coup marks—to show that these horses were war ponies, that they
and their riders had previously seen battle. There were horses of many
colors—reds, yellows, purples, and blues—because people who really knew horses
could see their many shades. There were hoof prints at the bottom of the pages
to denote action. The warriors shown often carried the prizes of war that they
had taken from the enemy—US flags, cavalry sabers and bugles—that represented
power. And often, there were wavy lines coming out of the mouths of the
warriors as they charged, to symbolize that they were “talking” to the
enemy—“I’m not afraid of you!” “I’m coming to get you!”
Although the details were
generally the same or similar, techniques varied from tribe to tribe. According
to Michael Horse, a talented contemporary ledger artist and historian, Cheyenne
and Lakota styles, for example, were mostly stick figures, while Kiowa and
Comanche styles were more realistic.
Even after people had been
incarcerated in the prisons and on the reservations, these ledger paintings
represented freedom and bravery.
On the other hand, Goble, as
a European transplant, has transplanted his European aesthetic and style onto
his “Indian ledger art.” It’s clear that he has looked at—maybe even studied—the
old ledger paintings, taken what elements or designs he considers important or
typical or romantic, and discarded the rest. His paintings are devoid of the
historical and cultural content that were so important in the originals—they
have no story and no spirit. All of Goble’s warriors are decked out in regalia
and carrying weaponry—much of it unbelievably cumbersome—yet none of the
warriors is identified by a name glyph, so we don’t know who they are. The
warriors are not shouting at their enemies—they don’t even appear to have
mouths. There are no symbolic, brightly colored war ponies—Goble’s “Indian” ponies
exist only as blacks, browns, roans and an occasional gray. None of the ponies
has a coup sign. There are no hoof prints, so there is no motion—just ponies
and their riders suspended in space and time. They are indistinguishable, with
a lack of identity, a lack of action, and a lack of Indian reality.
It would not be a stretch to
say that Paul Goble does not know—and probably does not care to know—how to
read Indian ledger art. Rather, it would seem that he perused actual direct
statements from the original artists and saw only “decorative motifs” to be kept
or discarded. I would also opine that Goble does not regard Indian ledger
artists—traditional or contemporary—as artists.
Speaking at a conference a few years
ago, Joseph Bruchac coined the term, “cultural ventriloquism,” to refer to the
many non-Native authors who create “Native” characters that function as dummies
to voice the authors’ own worldviews. So it would not be a stretch to imagine
that Goble’s “using the voice of a (fictional) Indian participant” and
“illustrat[ing] the picture pages in the style of ledger-book painting” are to
showcase his own art by pretending to
make this whole thing authentic. As such,
Custer’s Last Battle can in no way be
considered an Indian perspective of an historical event. It’s not even a
well-told story that approximates an
Indian perspective. It wasn’t
successful in 1969 and it’s not successful now.
Returning for a moment to
Goble’s introduction. He writes,
I grew
up believing that Indian people had been shamefully treated, their beliefs
mocked, their ways of life destroyed. I tried to be objective in writing this
book, but for me the battle
represented a moment of triumph, and I wanted Indian children to be proud of
it. (italics mine)
Plains perspectives of the
Battle of the Greasy Grass are not difficult to understand and do not need to
be interpreted by someone from outside the culture. Plains traditional
narratives are not incomplete and do not need to be rewritten by someone from
outside the culture. Plains traditional and contemporary ledger art forms are
not primitive and do not need to be fixed by someone from outside the culture.
The children at Pine Ridge, against all odds, are holding on to their
traditions, histories, arts, and cultures. The last things they need are fake
narratives and fake art, combined with a cultural outsider’s arrogance and
sense of entitlement—to “give” them pride.
—Beverly Slapin
References
There are many excellent sources of
information about the Battle of the Greasy Grass; biography, fiction and
nonfiction about the people who lived in that time period; and historic and
contemporary ledger art. This is by no means an exhaustive list.
An outstanding short film, produced
by the Smithsonian and from an Oglala perspective, is “The Battle of the Greasy Grass,” and might be a good beginning for study (grades 4-p).
For information about the Battle of
the Greasy Grass or that era, see:
Edward and Mabel Kadlecek, To Kill an Eagle: Indian Views on the Last Days of Crazy
Horse
Joseph Marshall III:
The Day the World Ended at Little Big Horn: A Lakota
History (2007)
In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse (2015)
The Long Knives are Crying (2008)
Soldiers Falling Into Camp: The Battles at the Little
Rosebud and the Little Big Horn (2006)
Luther Standing Bear, Land of the Spotted Eagle
James Welch and Paul Stekler, Killing Custer: The Battle of Little Big
Horn and the Fate of the Plains Indians
For examples of, and information
about, traditional ledger art, see:
Howling Wolf and the History of Ledger Art by Joyce M. Szabo (University of New Mexico Press, 1994)
For examples of, and information
about, contemporary ledger art, see:
See To
Kill an Eagle: Indian Views on the Last Days of Crazy Horse by Edward and Mabel Kadlecek, who
lived near Pine Ridge and listened to the stories of Indian elders who had
known Crazy Horse.
Some of the best accounts of this
historic battle, in fiction and nonfiction, include: Killing Custer: The Battle of Little Big Horn and the Fate of the
Plains Indians by James Welch (Blackfeet / Gros Ventre) and Paul Stekler
(1994); Welch and Stekler also collaborated on the important documentary, “Last
Stand at Little Bighorn.” There’s also
The Day the World Ended at Little Big Horn: A Lakota History (2007), The Long Knives are Crying (2008) and Soldiers Falling Into Camp: The Battles at
the Little Rosebud and the Little Big Horn (2006) by Joseph Marshall III
(Sicangu Lakota), as well as Marshall’s new children’s book, In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse (2015).
See a description of this maneuver,
for example, in Marshall’s In the
Footsteps of Crazy Horse, pp. 120-121.
Each
Winter Count pictograph portrays the most important event that occurred in a
particular winter, or year. It could be a major battle, or an outbreak of
disease, or the death of a leader, or something else. The pictograph that represents
1876 shows the killing of Custer at the Battle of Greasy Grass.
