Let the Family Vacation Begin!

At dawn on November 27, 1868, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s 7th U.S. Cavalry attacked Black Kettle’s Southern Cheyenne camp on the Washita River. The winter attack is dramatized in one of my favorite movies, Little Big Man (1970).

We started our family vacation with a stop at the Visitor Center here (which opened in 2007), and learned how the Cheyenne chief Black Kettle was a leading proponent of peace in the region. He was shot in the back during Custer's attack and died along with his wife and about 50 other Cheyenne that morning. Many more of the 250 Cheyenne in the village were also wounded. After the initial attack, Custer's soldiers shot and killed the Cheyenne ponies--over 800 of them.

Only one of Custer's soldiers was killed in the initial attack on Black Kettle's village. However, twenty more under the leadership of Major Joel Elliott chased a band of fleeing Cheyenne and were intercepted by a much larger band of mounted Cheyenne, Kiowas and Arapaho men who had been camped nearby and were rushing to assist Black Kettle. They killed Elliott and all of his men. When Custer realized that this larger force was on its way to the battle site, he abandoned the field without discovering what had happened to Elliott and his men. This decision angered some of his officers and may have affected their reluctance to come to his aid in the Battle of Little Big Horn.

Custer later lied about conducting a careful account of the dead on the battlefield and inflated the number of Cheyenne men his soldiers had killed. He took 53 women and children with him, which greatly reduced the risk of a counterattack.

On the way to the site of the massacre, we listened to Johnny Cash's "Custer," Edwin Starr's "War (What Is It Good For?)," and Cash's "Vanishing Race." It was Memorial Day.

When we got to Amarillo, we met John Dan, Michelle and Aunt Carolyn at the Kabuki Romanza restaurant and realized that we also ate here on the same day in 2013!

On this date in blog history . . .
2013: "On the Banks of the Pecos",
2013: "On and near La Plaza en Santa Fe",
2013: "At the Georgia O'Keefe", 2008: "Nina-and-Pablorama",
2008: "Nina Smiles",
2007: "A Taste of Forty,"
2006: "To Dad, with Love" (On the occasion of a retirement roast).