Page 18 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • November 3, 2010 of the battle after his horse gave out has been dismissed – I think rightly – as a fantasy by careful students. Perhaps the most invidious take was “Crazy Horse and Custer” by Stephen Ambrose, that prince of platitudes and plagiarism, who tried to split the difference and turn the death struggle of Plains Indian culture into a sort of sporting event. Ambrose, who elsewhere said there was no advance warning of the Pearl Harbor attack, and banished the awful post-war mortality of German POWs of the United States with a yawn and a shrug, made a few mistakes with this one too, but in the welter of controversy about the Little Bighorn, he wasn’t even a key player. Guys like Ambrose are dangerous not because of the way they glorify dead “heroes” and make brave young kids want to emulate them, but because they make it impossible for Americans who don’t drop below the best-seller list in their reading choices to understand the reality of American history, such as where wars really come from, and why a lot of foreign people don’t like us. Defenders of the Custer myth think they terminate the Custer survivor story when they repeat the lie that the Indians said there were no survivors, or never mentioned a survivor. They are wrong three times. Rain-In-The-Face, a formidable warrior, offered the quote that touched off my book: “One Long Sword got out…I later saw the man in Chicago.” Rain-In-The-Face also said that the Indians had better rifles than the troopers did, the soldiers fought badly, and many of them died cringing and begging. Memory Hole! Never happened! Every white man was a hero! Just ask Stephen Ambrose. Richard Allen Fox and Doug Scott, two fair-minded white archaeologists, unearthed evidence in the 1980s that the battle must have looked very much as Rain-In-TheFace said it did. The Custer Crazies don’t like them much, either. Relatives of Crazy Horse also vaguely mentioned a survivor to Dr. Valentine McGillycuddy, but the doctor never followed up. A contemporary Cheyenne quoted Wooden Leg, the most authoritative of the Cheyenne who fought at the Little Bighorn. The Cheyenne mentioned a fugitive who fled, pursued by Sioux, and said he presumed the man was killed, but wasn’t sure. I don’t think this was Frank Finkel, who would have escaped when C Company broke up under massive gunfire early in the engagement, but Wooden Leg’s account confirms that many whites tried to escape. This was no Thermopylae. Realizing they had fallen into what looked like a trap – actually, it was a flawed sneak attack based on faulty reconnaissance – a lot of soldiers just plain hoofed it. The disparity shows that about 210 soldiers rode into the killing zone, but only 197 bodies were found. That statistic was later augmented to 203. One fugitive was found 25 miles from the battlefield, dead where his exhausted horse had fallen on him. The friendly Crow Indians reported five or six bodies miles from the battlefield. Memory Hole! Everybody died shoulder-to-shoulder, loyal to the last, just like in the Errol Flynn movie “They Died with Their Boots On!” The anti-racist historian Richard Slotkin has described that movie as prescient propaganda for World War II. Be that as it may, it’s still the most enjoyable movie about Custer ever made, and one of the few that visually alludes to the corporate swindles that set the Indians on the warpath. We can’t have a Custer survivor, you see, because a suster Survivor would shatter the Custer myth. The Custer crazies want a brave and brilliant commander betrayed by envious or cowardly subordinates. That part is still somewhat plausible, though the amount of firepower available to the Indians through crooked whites would have reduced any rescue attempt to a more comprehensive massacre. The Custer crazies also want the Indians to be “savages” who were obstructing civilization. Memory Hole! The tribes who fought Custer had tried to establish farming on designated reservations since 1860, had been promised these reservations in 1868, and had been ordered to sell the best parts of these reservations in 1875, under conditions that were bluntly impossible. Almost nobody, incidentally, ever mentions the 10 Indian women and children killed at the Little Bighorn. Memory Hole. Out guys never kill women and children, not at Sand Creek, not at Wounded Knee, not in the Philippines, not at Dresden, not at Hiroshima, and not at My Lai. Also neglected is the embarrassing fact that the Lakota (Sioux) and Cheyenne killed 268 soldiers and wounded 60 others for a loss of 14 Lakota and 12 Cheyenne warriors. Custer didn’t cripple the fighting power of the Northern Plains tribes. It supplied them with 200 extra rifles, though they already owned better ones thanks to the United States War Department and the United States Department of the Interior. Poor drunken Marcus Reno, the ranking white survivor, wrote in his summary of the battle that the next time he took the field against the Indians, he hoped that both sides hadn’t been armed by the same government. In the end, we have to have a Custer survivor because his survival shows us that the most famous battle in American history was not an ambush: It was a failed sneak attack after a broken treaty, both perpetrated by the United States against people who were themselves genuine Americans. That is why the Little Bighorn is not only the most famous battle in American history, but also the most relevant. Residents of the region who may have seen me being shadowed by camera crews may gleefully assume that I’ve been caught doing something reprehensible. They’re right. I’ve been caught telling a truth for which some people are not ready. Unimpressed with the screams of detractors that may be perused on the Internet in connection with “Custer Survivor,” my most recent book, a wide-awake film crew is now working on a two-hour film examining the Battle of the Little Bighorn: Custer’s Last Stand with intense focus on the fact that there was a survivor of the most famous “nosurvivor” battle in American history. I have been recruited to talk about Frank Finkel, the man who rode away from Custer’s Last Stand. He survived due, in part, to the charity of some rather shady characters, and ultimately lived out his life as a prosperous farmer in Washington State. He didn’t die until 1930, and his widow lived until 1951. This is a man who many Custer admirers cannot afford to acknowledge was, or even just might be, an actual fugitive from a battle they had always tried to portray as heroic – “an American Thermopylae,” as some once called it, or a sequel to the Alamo. That is not what happened at the Little Bighorn, folks. We have, in American history as practiced by Americans, an instrument called the Memory Hole. Journalists and politicians construct a cover story and, even when intelligent people know the cover story is bogus, any facts to the contrary are dropped down the Memory Hole. Advocates of the Confederate States of America have long argued that, based on the text of the Declaration of Independence – which was written by a slave owner – people who didn’t like the government imposed on them had a right to drop out and form their own government. The text of the Declaration of Independence is a matter of record. That fact that chattel slavery as practiced in the South was an abhorrent anachronism was a no-brainer to anybody who didn’t own slaves, but the people who owned slaves rationalized endlessly, to the point where some of them may have believed the slaves were better off in their custody. No one who didn’t own slaves believed it. Certainly the slaves didn’t. The objection to a Custer survivor is cut from the same cloth. Some of Custer’s biographers, notably Louise Barnett of Rutgers and Jeffry Wert, historians whose books are stocked in most libraries, are able to look at Custer objectively. Others, like the two authors now featured at the top of the list, vector off in opposite directions. James Donovan’s book is accurate, but also verges on outright admiration of a man who had some very serious character flaws and whose most famous battle didn’t exactly place in him the same league as Caesar or Napoleon. Nathaniel Philbrick’s book also contains a number of fascinating facts and is very well written, but lacks an understanding of Indians to the point where he quotes people who were joking as if they were serious. Philbrick’s key witness, incidentally, is Peter Thompson, whose story The Little Bighorn is still relevant today Letters to the Editor Dear Editor: With respect to the upcoming Midland Park Council elections for the two council positions, residents have asked, “Who should I vote for?” “Who are you voting for and why?” It’s a personal decision made based upon the qualities, capabilities, and character each of us values when evaluating a candidate. That said, residents have three differently qualified choices: Councilwoman Nancy Peet, Councilman Bud O’Hagan, and former Councilman Ken Kruis. As a lifelong borough resident, Councilwoman Peet raised her family as she continued in the tradition of her multi-generational family. She is a town historian, if you will, who has governed with a respect for history, but always with an eye towards our future. She applies her diversified public service experience on the board of education, borough council, and her senior executive business experience in the medical industry in every thoughtful decision she makes. Councilman O’Hagan has raised his children here and served the borough for two decades on the council. Bud has demonstrated leadership and contributed so much by applying his prior zoning board experience, professional printing business experience, and real estate brokerage background. His contributions to the Boy Scouts and Lions Club continue to be noteworthy. As a long-standing resident, former Councilman Kruis, now running as an Independent, as I did, is a successful entrepreneur leading a large heating and air conditioning company in town with a growing young family. He has applied his business sense as an employer, sense of fairness and financials skills with a long-term view while on Offers perspective on candidates council. His involvement in sports and various organizations throughout the community are noteworthy. There you have it. I support their efforts to serve our community, but make your decision on whom you -- not others -- believe are best equipped to shape our future. Joseph Monahan, Mayor Midland Park Dear Editor: At first glance, Franklin Lakes residents may think that the 2011 tax reassessment will help lower property taxes by lowering the property’s assessed valuation. However, along with a lowering of the assessed value, a concurrent raising of the ratables of tax rate per property will effectively nullify any substantial decrease in one’s total taxes on each individual property. This is all explained in detail on the Franklin Lakes website. All this ploy managed to accomplish is effectively destroying the chances of successful tax appeals in the future by lowering the valuation of each property. Along with a nearly 10 percent increase in municipal taxes and a 50 percent reduction in winter garbage collection, this reassessment is not in the best interests of Franklin Lakes residents. Ren Franse Franklin Lakes Dear Editor: I encourage all Midland Park registered voters to vote for Nancy Cronk Peet on Nov. 2. I met Nancy in 1996 when I was elected to the Midland (continued on next page) Reassessment concerns Support for Peet