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Custer's Wild Ride, part 1

© Mary Trotter Kion

The Fairy Tale and Lie Swapping Party

This tale I am about to relate concerning the 7th Cavalry’s golden boy, General George Armstrong Custer, sort of puts me in mind of how my old Kansas grandma use to bring her Model T to a halt. To get that brakeless machine to whoa-up, she’d run it into the side of the farmhouse. She may have gotten the idea from George. Though the soon to be bereaved General never had the honor of meeting my grandmother, she may have heard about his wild ride after a crazed buffalo and come to her own conclusion.

Custer didn’t ram a car into the side of a building. What he did do, instead, involved the horse he was riding. And if the Indians out there on the plains had been privileged to witness this particular Custer exploit history could well have been changed a bit. If this had been the case there would have never been a Battle at the Little Big Horn because all the Indians involved would have already been dead. They would have laughed themselves to death.

What happened was that Custer figured out a nifty way to stop his horse. He only performed this Great American Plains demonstration the one time, however, which does show a yard of good sense old George usually exercised by short inches.

To set the scene up for you, George and some other brave souls of the western army had been attempting to host a Fairy Tale and Lie Swapping Party with the Plains Indians. Some of the elite guest invited to this shindig were none other than Pawnee Killer of the Sioux and White Horse of the Cheyenne. Satanta had received an invite as well. He was one of the top swappers of the day.

For those who are unfamiliar with this term “Fairy Tale and Lie Swapping Party” that I just invented here’s a brief explanation. This sort of get together is one where, in the 1800s as well as somewhat before and after, the United States Government sends its brave boys in dusty blue and tarnished gold out on the hostile plains to meet with various Native American persons. It’s sort of like a football game with one team being the White Team and the other the Red Team but the results can make a national football game look like a tea party.

First off, both teams get into a huddle. The White Team tells the Red Team that they don’t want to fight and kill them. While this is being said somewhere out on the plains hide hunters are swarming over the land. With the President’s blessing they are killing off all the buffalo that the Red Team needs to keep from starving to death.

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