On June 25th, 1876, Northern Arapaho, Cheyenne and Lakota warriors defeated the U.S. 7th Cavalry in southeast Montana. The Battle of the Little Bighorn was the culmination of the Plains Indian Wars but it later led to a violent crackdown by the U.S. Army and, eventually, containment on reservations. This June will be the 150th anniversary of the battle, known to the tribes as the Battle of the Greasy Grass. The Brinton Museum outside Sheridan recently unveiled an exhibit re-centering that history from the Indigenous perspective. Wyoming Public Radio’s Melodie Edwards sat down with the show’s curatorial director Jochen Weirich.
Editor's Note: This story has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Melodie Edwards: Why did you guys choose the title for this exhibit, the Unfinished War?
Jochen Weirich: Number one is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn was upon us. I wanted to build an exhibition that would reflect our collection; we have a very strong American Indian collection. While it was a singular event that they emerged victorious from, it had so many repercussions for their lives, for their cultures, for their history. When you talk to people today, there's deep family history. The memories of the battle just continue and because, after the battle there was an intensified persecution of these Plains Indian people and efforts to really push them into reservations and really give up their traditional ways of life.
ME: How does this change the way that we are taught about the Battle of the Little Bighorn in school?
JW: The story has always focused on [Col. George Armstrong] Custer, from the get go. As soon as newspaper reports were circulated, the focus was mostly on Custer. I think what our exhibition really accomplishes is that it really shows the extent of Native Americans taking whatever medium they had available.
The first historic images that we're talking about are on muslin. Some of them were on hide. Of course, everybody knows about the ledger books and there were many of those. I think this is a really good time now, on the 150th anniversary, to really just create an exhibition that brings all those different voices together and really shifts the perspective.
ME: What are some of the artworks or pieces that you have included in the show that are directly from witnesses? Can you tell me one of your favorites?
JW: The piece that motivated me and really sparked my curiosity was Stephen Standing Bear’s muslin painting. It's typically in our Plains Indian gallery. It's one of our masterpieces. Stephen Standing Bear was a young man, maybe 16 years old, who fought in the battle and then later in life he painted maybe five major muslin paintings depicting what he had experienced. Ours is really special because he also includes depictions of the events that were leading up to the battle. The famous Sundance ceremony, which happened a few days later, where Sitting Bull sacrificed himself, the piercing of the flesh and all that, and he had his vision. Basically, he had a vision of soldiers falling from the sky, which then, essentially, was a premonition of Custer's defeat. Standing Bear includes all these scenes, and it's just a fabulous painting. There's a lot of artistic creativity that went into this. The use of the colors, there's the whole composition, how he told that story.
ME: Can you talk a little bit about how this exhibit is able to document the artwork and memories multi-generationally?
JW: These artists that were active, say, in the 1960s and 70’s, artists like Fritz Scholder, who was included. Jaune Quick To See Smith, Dwayne Wilcox, they're that particular generation, there's a term called the Red Movement, right? This awakening of a kind of political consciousness, political awareness, and this notion that, ‘We need to take some control of all of those stories that are told about us.’ And so in that regard, these artists are dealing with Custer almost as a symbol of all the misrepresentations they have witnessed.
[The Battle of the Little Bighorn] was a moment of victory and it was also a moment of loss for Native Americans. They've rebuilt their cultural identity against all the odds. From today's perspective, then these artists are really honoring those sacrifices.
ME: It sounds like what you're saying is there's some pieces that are from that era of the American Indian Movement of the 60’s and 70’s where the tribes are kind of reckoning with their history through this lens of the civil rights movement. Can you tell me an example of a specific piece of artwork from that era that really illustrates that?
JW: I think our earliest example is Fritz Scholder’s, “Custer and 20,000 Indians.” It's [a painting of an] iconic Custer with a sword and besieged by a wall of the Indians. [They] are really only just a wall of silhouettes. He's in the throes of his last stand. Of course, it's very ironic. The idea that there were 20,000 Indians is a completely inflated number. So Fritz Scholder really is aware he's kind of deconstructing Custer here, right?
ME: Why was the Brinton Museum the right place for this exhibit?
JW: The Brinton Museum, number one, we're very close to the battlefield. I mean, we're just an hour's drive. And frankly, we have really a very deep and long history of collecting Native American art, which goes back to Bradford Brinton, our founder. For the last 10 years or so, we've had an American Indian Advisory Council. We've worked very closely with the major tribes that were involved in the battle. We are stewards of the collections that we've inherited, some of them quite sacred. The exhibit is on view through September 14.The Brinton Museum will commemorate the battle’s anniversary with an oral history symposium June 11 and a scholarly lecture June 15.
