Where My Dead Lie Buried

The great history of America is shadowed by some seriously questionable ways in which the westward expansion took place. Land was bought at bargain prices from the French, Russians and Mexicans while the rest was acquired through wars with colonial and native powers, the latter of whom were moved off of prime ancestral real estate and cheated out of the rest through treaties seldom honored and thus hardly worth the paper they were written on. One of those instances is the Treaty of Ft. Laramie.

Actually there were two treaties by that name. The first one in 1851 identified certain lands as sovereign to the Native American nation tribes between the Missouri and Arkansas Rivers that also provided safe passage for settlers on the Oregon Trail in exchange for both sovereignty and compensation. The feds never paid and never stopped settlers during the Gold Rush from staking claims in sovereign territory. The second treaty of 1868 was something different indeed.

This time the US Government was negotiating with the Lakota, Dakota and Arapaho Nations of the northern plains centered around Wyoming Territory. In order to end a two-year war in the area the second Treaty of Laramie was drawn up closing the Powder River Country to settlers and offer the locals financial and farming assistance. More claim jumping in Lakota territory by gold prospectors led to more and ever escalating fighting until the feds simply took all of the Black Hills in 1877.

Not long after this work began on Mt. Rushmore, still seen today by some as an insult to the Native Americans whose land this once was. The mountain itself was known as the "Six Grandfathers" until someone decided it should be named after a lawyer from New York. It didn't help matters upon discovery that the chief sculptor had been linked to the Ku Klux Klan. Four white presidents of the United States of America, two with military service and the other two managing wartime administrations carved in stone in the heart of "Indian" territory. Enter the Crazy Horse Monument, next stop on my post-furlough journey after Mt. Rushmore during the Fall of 2001.

Chief Standing Bear went to a sculptor that had worked on Mt. Rushmore and said "We have heroes, too." Crazy Horse was proactive in preserving the Lakota Sioux lifestyle, to put it mildly. He led a war party at the Battle of Little Bighorn among other notable skirmishes with both traditional Lakota enemies among the Plains Tribes and with US settlers and servicemen around Ft. Phil Kearny, Wyoming before dying mysteriously in US custody at Ft. Robinson, Nebraska in 1877. His legacy among Native Americans ranks with any powerful freedom fighter in US history.

Work started in 1948 and has been ongoing ever since, most notably in refusing each and every offer of federal and state assistance to complete the massive carving. The four heads of Mt. Rushmore will supposedly fit under the arm of Crazy Horse, such are the dimensions of this centerpiece to a cultural center aimed at educating all comers on the combined true story of the Native North Americans. At the tip of his finger is the chalked eye of the horse still to be blast-sculpted from the native rock. Although Native Americans of the time considered it rude to point, Crazy Horse is gesturing expansively across the Black Hills in answer to the question of where his lands were.

"Where my dead lie buried" was his response. His own grave remains a mystery to this day.

In a courtyard is a miniature of the completed sculpture. When looking past this statue to the real thing it is both easy and incomprehensible to get a true sense of scale, particularly since only the face is truly completed after 60+ years. Strangely, I felt a mix of awe and sadness in viewing the piece. Not only was there a countering cultural need for the work but also in the ironic sense that no matter the size and importance it would still be "the 2nd/other monument" in the area behind the four (white) presidents.

Is this "mission accomplished?" Mine wasn't.

Gotta go.

Nothing Much at Naseby

From a young age I’ve always enjoyed “period” films depicting events from an earlier, more colorful time. The style of speech, the battle scenes and the depiction of life from lowly serf to highest royalty fascinated me and "Cromwell" had it all, including a “live” depiction of a royal execution! What eight-year old boy could pass that up?

Many years later I was an invited guest to a Highlander’s Wedding in Daventry, Northamptonshire, about 80 miles northwest of London. In the "Pancreas" of England between Birmingham at the west, Stratford-Upon-Avon to the south and Leicester to the northeast lay the birthplace of rugby, Warwick Castle and the Roman Road of “Watling Street.” Most exciting of all to me, however, was the Battlefield of Naseby only 15 miles from the site of the wedding!

In June of 1645 the “unthinkable” English Civil War had been raging for nearly three years and things were starting to turn against the crown. King Charles I (played in the film by Sir Alec Guinness seven years before Obi Wan),was heading south to his base at Oxford following a costly victory at Leicester when he was flushed out by the Parliamentarian “New Model Army” racing northward under Sir Thomas Fairfax to catch him. Unable to meet up with reinforcements from Wales and Somerset, Charles swung back north to regroup at Newark but was forced to turn and fight on the fields of Broad Moor at Naseby.

Oliver Cromwell (a scene chewing Richard Harris) made light work of Sir Langdale, his direct opponent on the King’s left. He then charged to the west through the weakened center of the Royalist infantry towards the remaining cavalry of Prince Rupert (a scene stealing Timothy Dalton) on the King’s right, routing the royal army in short order, just as he had done the year before at Marston Moor.

The film that I first saw as a boy covered nine years of British history in under three hours. The Battle of Naseby itself lasted about as long.

Few historical films are ever 100% accurate and “Cromwell” is loaded with inaccuracies and blatant omissions but it hardly mattered to a mesmerized eight-year old. One thing is certain: Charles lost the war and ultimately his own head, the only sitting monarch in English history to be executed. It ran in the family: his grandmother was Mary, Queen of Scots. To this day, however, he maintains a loyal following of supporters.

This is not an American Civil War battlefield. On the edge of an unremarkable field stands a weather-beaten monument that seems cast aside, woebegone and misplaced but in truth marks the center of the “Roundhead” Parliamentary line. No manicured green space, tour bus parking lot ringed with gift shops and cafes, "timeline trails" stuffed with placques and markers detailing what happened "at this very spot" or guides to retell the tale. There’s not even a McDonald’s; just an open field gently sloping downward beside a quiet country road before rising again barely a half-mile away at Dust Hill where the Royalist army was positioned on the northern ridge.

The entire area is pregnant with silence, the Sulby Hedges at the western edge of Broad Moor field are the lone surviving witnesses, resolutely maintaining a 360 year covenant with the stillness. Where buglers sounded, calling to nameless and forgotten men at odds, today hardly even the winds remain.

At least it is still there. If every battlefield in England were preserved there’d be no living England to speak of. Yet for as much fighting that has taken place on and above British soil only the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and the Battle of Britain ever garner much in the way of conscious thought. Naseby in comparison may as well have not happened at all.

In the grand scheme of things Naseby merely started the transition from monarchial to parliamentary rule, little more than the natural evolution of government in one country among many. Right. And nothing much ever really came from the Battle of Yorktown either.

Gotta go.