New Name For Custer State Park

A New Name For Custer State Park? Let’s Talk About It
Even heard talk about changing the name of Custer County, and the town of Custer. As many of you may know the highest point between the Rocky Mountains and the Alps is now Black Elk in lieu of the former Harney Peak.
Be interesting to see how this plays out as it is a state park, not federal as Black Elk vs. Harney.

Sounds dumb.

Considering the thousands of bison on the hoof there, perhaps Tatanka State Park. Better yet, ask the Lakota to name it.

Now before any comments go off as if this were an actual proposal being considered, keep in mind that the opinion writer thought of this, and then asked some people what they thought. Nothing more.

Of all the historic name changing going around, I think this would fall under those that make sense. The park wasn't founded and named until 1912, so it has no meaningful historical connection.

And from the viewpoint of the Native American population in South Dakota, it would seem a bit off-putting to have part of your living room named to commemorate the guy who burglarized your house. Even if you managed to shoot him in the end

So if the idea can generate majority support in the area, nothing wrong with it.

Like everyone, I have an opinion. Naming a county, town and state park
after a person who killed old men, women and children in their winter
camp during a blizzard. That sounds like a poke in the eye to the native
Americans in that local...
I've seen bumper stickers in that part of Oklahoma that said, "Custer had
it coming". I agree!

There were very few great Indian victories. I have been to the Montana battlefield. It is native land, the natives won, let them decide if the name should be changed.

I myself have a rather poor opinion of Col. Custer.
However, I think renaming places and rewriting history simply for the sake of political correctness is a bad practice.
We are meant to learn from history. The bad parts teach the best lessons. leave them alone.

If you haven’t been to the Black Hills before, and you have limited time, see Custer Park before you see anything else. If you are a motorcyclist, the Wildlife Loop is one of the best rides you will ever take. I suppose you have to go see Rushmore, but I have been in the Hills maybe thirty-five times and only seen Rushmore twice, the last time in 1973. I go through Custer Park almost every time I am in the Hills.
While you are there, take Red Valley Road down through the back side of Wind Cave N.P.
I don’t have a problem with changing the name, but when I ride through there, I imagine what it must have felt like to come into that beautiful country for the first time. Of course, it belonged to the Indians, but that beauty was a familiar part of their world. It must have been a revelation to Custer and his boys.

How about ... West Cleveland Guardian's Park?

Custer looked like Chuck Norris?

Where does the renaming stop?

The Sioux stole the Black Hills from the Cheyenne about 100 years prior to Little Big Horn. So how many cycles of conquest do we have to go through to get the most politically correct name?

Rammer Jammer said:

Where does the renaming stop?

The Sioux stole the Black Hills from the Cheyenne about 100 years prior to Little Big Horn. So how many cycles of conquest do we have to go through to get the most politically correct name?

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It doesn't! History being re-written as we speak!

History is always—and *has* always—been subject to constant revision.

The only difference nowadays is how many folks get their knickers in a twist trying to prevent it.

I am perfectly content to let other people have whatever opinion they choose. Sometimes I am in the minority, and sometimes I am in the majority.

In early 1945, every sizable town in Germany had a street named “Adolf-Hitler-Strasse”

In later 1945, none did any more.

Doesn’t mean anyone forgot about the guy.

Old Arkansawyer said:

Like everyone, I have an opinion. Naming a county, town and state park
after a person who killed old men, women and children in their winter
camp during a blizzard. That sounds like a poke in the eye to the native
Americans in that local...
I've seen bumper stickers in that part of Oklahoma that said, "Custer had
it coming". I agree!

Click to expand...

Just to be clear, the Battle of Little Big Horn in Montana occurred on June 25-26, 1876. It clearly wasn’t a winter camp. Custer also didn’t intentionally kill women and children. But it’s a fine point. It seems very likely he was intending to ride around the north end of the encampment while the braves were busy engaging Reno at the south end of the valley, and once there would have basically held the women and children hostage to get the warriors to lay down their arms. That had been done in the past when attempting to bring Indians back to the reservation.

It’s also clear Custer was a glory seeking idiot who ignored his scouts, badly underestimated the size of the force against him, exceeded his orders, left behind his Gatling guns in order to move faster and win the engagement before the other prongs of the larger campaign arrived, and split his forces during the battle, pretty much dooming his command.

The irony is that Reno and to a lesser extent Bentsen were blamed for much of the failure. However, if you ever visit the battle field and actually walk the ground, particularly the south end of the valley where Reno and Benteen held out, you’ll realize that Reno found, fell back to and held the only defensible position for miles. It had steep draws to the south and west and a wide open field of fire for 1000 yards to the east and for a similar distance to the north. The only vulnerability was the high ground to the north from which they were sniped at over the next couple days, but that had minimal effect once they dug in.

——

I assume you are instead referring to the Wounded Knee Massacre that occurred on December 29, 1890, 14 and a half years after Custer died. The 7th Cavalry was there, but was commanded by Colonel Forsyth. He happened upon the scene after a detachment commanded by Major Whitside had them on their way back to the reservation. Whitside had the good sense not to try to disarm them as that would lead to violence. Forsyth lacked that good sense and ordered them disarmed. A scuffle, an accidental discharge and a total loss of control of the troops led to the massacre.

——-

Custer’s role in the Black Hills had to do with his leading a survey expedition to the Black Hills in July and August of 1874. Custer entered the Black Hills from the north and traveled to the Harney/Black Elk peak area before establishing a camp near present day Custer SD (about 7 miles south west of the peak).

The expedition itself was in part to seek a suitable location for a forest and route south west through the Black Hills. It was also intended to address rumors of gold in the Black Hills. Gold was found in the creeks in the northern Black Hills as well as in French Creek west of the camp Custer established south west of Harney peak.

Finding/confirming gold in the Black Hills prompted a gold rush in 1874-76 that brought a flood of whites into the Black Hills, which had been ceded to the Sioux by the Fort Laramie treaty in 1868. That of course angered the Sioux and led pretty much directly to the war in 1876.

In that regard, the camp Custer established was named after Custer during the 1874 expedition, and the town that grew from that was named after the camp. The park, with its western boundary about 5 miles east of the town, was named after General Custer, but somewhat indirectly. If the town of Custer hadn’t been where it is, the park would have probably been named after someone else.

It's an opinion piece and I believe there's a petition somewhere going for it, not an official proposal, and knowing SD it's not going to change.

Custer's legacy in the Black Hills was leading an expedition to look for gold that lead to the US violation of Fort Laramie treaty and driving the native tribes out in favor of settlers. His wider legacy was as a daring Union cavalry officer, as an indian fighter who, as almost all involved did, engaged in atrocities against combatants and noncombatants, and as a commander involved in a legendary defeat that ranks up among the great historical examples of military hubris.

I don't care too much one way or the other on it, nor do I buy into the complaints about "erasing history". We name things, build statues, and otherwise commemorate those we value in our time as honors to them, as did in their time the people who built and named the statues, parks, and areas that we're discussing now. We can choose to change what we honor, as do cultures all over the world when their values shift. I don't get mad about Russia and Soviet Bloc countries tearing down statues commemorating famous communists when that system changed, nor do I get mad at plans to remove statues of conquistadors in New Mexico or of confederates in the southeastern US. The history remains, what changes is what is being honored, and I'm happy to leave that to those involved. If most people want it changed, great, if they don't, that's fine too.

Right, wrong or otherwise, Custer’s 1874 expedition to the Black Hills did open them up for white settlement, and like it or not, he is a well known figure in the region. So there is that when it comes to naming the park after him.

Unfortunately he was also a vainglorious idiot who got his command killed and did a poor job of bringing native Americans back to the reservation. Although in his defense he was also just carrying out a fatally flawed and very disingenuous Indian policy by the US Government.

Yet, even that isn’t as simple as it sounds. I grew up in western SD on the Cheyenne River a reservation and in the Black Hills.

The Lakota and Dakota bands of the Sioux originated in the central Mississippi valley and moved into what would become central Minnesota and western Wisconsin around 800 AD. In the 1700s wars with the Ojibwa pushed them west onto the plains in what would become North Dakota and South Dakota.


That’s a bit inconsistent with the origin stories you’ll hear involving the black hills and wind cave, etc. and I suspect much of that was either appropriated from tribes they displaced or was more or less justifying the move to the Dakotas after they were displaced from Minnesota and Wisconsin.

And to be fair, that pressure moving them west in the 1700s was directly related to pressure of colonists pushing eastern tribes further westward in the 1600s and 1700s.

I’d be a little more sympathetic to the plight of the Lakota and Dakota bands, except I worked on an archeological dig at an Arikara village on a River bluff over the Missouri River in South Dakota where they had massacred over 600 men women and children and dumped them into the fortification ditch around the village. Given the Arikara were primarily agricultural and didn’t follow the Buffalo like the Sioux, they weren’t really competing for critical resources. They were just their first and got killed when the Sioux arrived.

—-

So…it’s complicated. Yes, whites displaced the Sioux and other tribes and killed a lot of them off needlessly. But, the hands of the Sioux are not exactly clean either. Claims on the Black Hills are also not as clean as some would suggest as the Black Hills which were originally in lands occupied by the Cheyenne before the Cheyenne were displaced south and west by the Sioux, who were of course displaced to the west by the Ojibwa. And to be fair the whole chain of events keeps preceding eastward until you reach the first permanent white settlement in America.

Notice in my post I reference Oklahoma where there is a Custer city and
Custer did attack a Cheyenne village at dawn in late Nov. on reservation
land and at peace as it was.
Over a hundred old men, women and kids shot or put to the sword.
I still say he had it coming.

Old Arkansawyer said:

Notice in my post I reference Oklahoma where there is a Custer city and
Custer did attack a Cheyenne village at dawn in late Nov. on reservation
land and at peace as it was.
Over a hundred old men, women and kids shot or put to the sword.
I still say he had it coming.

Click to expand...

I agree. Note I cited his prior MO in attacking a village or encampment with mostly unarmed women and children to bring warriors to heel. In order for that to work, he had to pose a credible threat to the women and children. That operationalizes to Custer killing some and threatening the rest. That’s best case and assumes he and his commanders could control their troops once the shooting starts.

The point here is if Custer had successfully reached the village, he’d have killed a lot of women and children in order to draw the warriors back from Reno’s position about 3 miles to the south.

One of his many major failures was his failure to recognize that the natives had more than enough warriors to keep Reno busy and met any threat Custer might present.

I suspect a great deal of hubris was involved as well to think he could make an end around behind the ridges on the east side of the valley and do so undetected and have any hope of surprising the village.

There’s some debate what occurred at Medicine Tail Coulee and whether the two companies that attempted to cross there were attempting to directly threaten the encampment and take hostages, or to just threaten the encampment and draw warriors off Reno’s position and keep them engaged while Custer crossed farther north to the threaten the village.

Battle of the Greasy Grass..


Frustrating fact:
When I was around 12 years old, I met one of the Oglala Sioux Indians came down to Cheyenne Frontier Days every year.
His "reservation name" was Dewey Beard. He was an old man then.


About 10 years ago, I found out that Dewey's real name was Wooden Leg and he and watched the Battle of the Greasy Grass from the village when he was about 12 years old. He wanted to go join the fighting, but his mother wouldn't let him.


I became very interested in the battle over the years.



Oh, if only we two could have met and talked somewhere in between those two times.

Could it be simply because the locals were getting tired of being called "Custerds"???