Trip of the Tongue (3 page)

Chapter One

Montana: Crow

The first place I'm going to tell you about is Montana. This might seem a strange place to start, particularly given that I didn't make my way there until midway through my travels. But it was in Montana that I began to get to know the diverse group of languages and cultures that have been in America the longest. And, therefore, it was in Montana that I began to lay the groundwork for my understanding of everything that came after.

Going into my research, this first group of languages—the languages of Native America—was without a doubt the group of American languages I was least familiar with. I like to think I had a fairly liberal education, but as a child I was exposed to only the barest minimum about the people and cultures of the Americas before the arrival of European explorers, colonists, and conquerors. Much like millions of other American schoolchildren, I learned about the first Thanksgiving, the construction of tipis, and, of course, the way that the Indian appreciated the earth and therefore honored each and every last piece of the buffalo. The only notable difference in my experience was, perhaps, my proximity to and therefore slight familiarity with the Cahokia Mounds.

Not that I could tell you very much about the Cahokia Mounds, apart from the fact that they are, indeed, quite moundy.

The languages of Native America were also the languages I found most intimidating. I'd read a few pages here and there about Algonquin noun class or the Cherokee syllabary, but only as part of my general fetish for linguistic novelty. I had never stopped to consider the broader scope of Native languages, either in terms of linguistic complexity or in terms of their role in American history and culture.

So five years ago languages such as Crow or Navajo—much less Lushootseed, Quileute, or Makah—would have primarily inspired in me an intellectual trepidation. I was, you see, afraid to discover just how much I didn't know. As Douglas Adams once wrote, “In an infinite universe, the one thing sentient life cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.” Once I opened my eyes to the vast landscape of indigenous American languages, I feared I would have to acknowledge just how microscopic the dot was that said “You are here.”

I wasn't wrong. To call the time I've spent with Native languages eye-opening would be a gross understatement. But they provided me with a crucial framework for understanding the mechanics and ramifications of language loss. And, even more critical, they awakened in me an unexpected zeal. The languages that I once approached so cautiously—so reluctantly—are now the languages I would defend most ardently.

I came to Montana from South Dakota, driving west along Interstate 90 through the Badlands and into northeast Wyoming. In a city called Buffalo the highway jogs north some 120 miles before heading west again at Hardin toward Bozeman Pass. Along this stretch you'll find two great landmarks of the American West: the inn in Sheridan, Wyoming, where Buffalo Bill Cody auditioned for his Wild West Show, and the Little Bighorn Battlefield, where George Armstrong Custer had his last stand. You'll also find my eventual destination, the great, grassy expanse of Crow Nation.

The Crow Indian Reservation is the largest reservation in Montana and the sixth-largest reservation in the United States, comprising some 2.3 million acres. It is home to more than 8,000 Crow—about 70 percent of the tribe's total enrollment—the majority of whom work for the tribe or for federal programs. The bulk of the tribe's businesses and administrative offices are located in Crow Agency, an unassuming town just north of the Little Bighorn Battlefield on I-90. I stayed in Billings, some sixty miles to the west, hoping my research might benefit from the city's relatively more expansive tourist infrastructure. But as I picked through the conspicuously flimsy collection of maps and brochures in my hotel's lobby, I realized I wasn't sure what I was going to find here—if, indeed, I was going to find anything.

When I was a kid, I'd thought Montana impossibly uninteresting. Every few summers we would drive out to visit my father's family, and Montana felt like an endless in-between. It was past Mount Rushmore but still days from the Pacific Ocean, north of Yellowstone but south of my grandmother's house. There were so few other cars to spot that my license plate tally invariably leveled off, and despite being promised otherwise, I never saw a single grizzly bear. It was the kind of state that made me want to catch up on my reading—or my sleep. The only thing I remember clearly from those trips is how the roads seemed to have an improbably gradual slope, as if I were seeing the Earth itself curving away into space.

By the time I drove onto the reservation for the first time I was rethinking things. I decided instead that the landscape in Montana is like a Rorschach inkblot. Before long you start to see in the grass and trees and ground all the things that happen to be swirling in your subconscious. And that day I was clearly fixating on my own inadequacies.

The view from the highway through the reservation is the same as it is anywhere in eastern Montana, a panorama of compact, grassy hills and wide, grassy plains. But tucked out of sight are the valleys fed by the glittering, meandering tributaries of the Bighorn and Little Bighorn rivers. To the south the hills give way to the Bighorn, Pryor, and Wolf mountains and the part of the reservation that is open only to members of the tribe. As a child I'd thought there was nothing to see in Montana, but as an adult I began to wonder if maybe I just didn't know what I was looking for. I was perpetually aware of some great presence looming in the distance; I worried I would never get close enough to know its shape.

I didn't pick the Crow language out of a hat. I picked it because Crow is one of the more vital Native languages in the country, and I wanted to visit a Native community that still spoke its traditional language on a regular basis. But I was also interested in exploring the relationship between Natives and outsiders, between the preconceptions of a non-Native and the discoveries of a fully engaged visitor. And each June, this patch of Montana provides an opportunity to do exactly that, as members of Crow Nation, residents of nearby Hardin, and tourists from across the country gather to celebrate the anniversary of one of the most famous armed conflicts in American history, the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

The seeds of the Battle of the Little Bighorn were sown in the early 1870s, when gold was discovered in the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory. Previously, this area had been set aside by the U.S. government for the exclusive use of the Lakota Sioux, but the illegal intrusion of white prospectors led to escalating tensions between the Lakota and their allies and the government. In 1875 U.S. leaders decided to stop enforcing mining restrictions in the Black Hills, and in the first sally of what would later become known as the Great Sioux War, the commissioner of Indian Affairs ordered all Lakota and Cheyenne to report to their agencies or face the threat of military force. Hostilities commenced soon after the January 31, 1876, deadline.

By June 1876, several thousand Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho—including the men known as Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse—were encamped along the Little Bighorn River. In an effort to drive the Indians back to their reservations, General Philip Sheridan sent three columns of soldiers to the area. George Armstrong Custer got there first. And despite warnings from his scouts about the size of the encampment, which some estimate held between ten thousand and fifteen thousand people, Custer chose not to wait for reinforcements.

And so, on the afternoon of June 25, 1876, a cavalry force led by Major Marcus Reno crossed the Little Bighorn River and began the battle that would take its name. Very quickly, Reno recognized that he was seriously outnumbered and retreated, inadvertently allowing the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho forces to concentrate their efforts on Custer and his men. There are conflicting reports about what happened next, but one thing is certain: every U.S. solider who attacked with Custer died that day. It was the greatest defeat the U.S. military has ever suffered at the hands of American Indians.

The Little Bighorn battlefield has been catnip for curiosity seekers ever since. The first gathering at the battlefield took place just a year after the battle itself, and the first reenactments were held at the tenth anniversary. In 1964 Crow Nation and the Hardin Chamber of Commerce agreed to produce an annual reenactment, but mounting political tension and criticism from the American Indian Movement led to the show's cancellation in 1976. Hardin revived the reenactment in 1990, and today it is a part of the town's Little Bighorn Days Festival, which includes a fancy-dress ball, a parade, and a variety of local events.

When I arrived in Hardin, I went first to the County Historical Museum and visitor center to pick up a schedule and tickets for the reenactment. The two teenage girls working the desk pulled out a pair of pamphlets as soon as I approached the counter. Hardin, just fifty miles east of Billings, is otherwise the kind of town that typically merits only a cursory sort of acknowledgment in a travel guide:
By the way, you can probably get gas and a sandwich here
. Little Bighorn Days is, as you can imagine, the most popular tourist attraction in town, and there was something refreshing about the fact that no one expected me to be here for any other reason. It's not like New York, where locals can't seem to help but roll their eyes at the tourists who come to see a show and eat at Sardi's.

I took the pamphlets gratefully and asked how much the tickets cost. “Which one do you want tickets for?” they asked.

“What do you mean, which one?”

“Which reenactment. There's the one here in Hardin, then there's the one the Crow do.”

“Competing reenactments?” I asked, a bit dumbly.

“Something like that.”

“Which one do you recommend?” I had visions of cold war–style one-upmanship, possibly involving horses, definitely involving pyrotechnics, but ideally involving both.

They shared a smug look. “Oh, ours, for sure—it's way better.”

Not wanting to seem rude, I smiled and bought tickets for the Hardin reenactment. But, of course, I also took down the information for the Crow reenactment. After all, I hadn't driven two thousand miles just to get one side of the story.

The Hardin show takes place a few miles west of the town center, in a field between Old U.S. 87 and the railroad. The set for the reenactment was larger than I expected, about the size of a football field. To the left was the façade of a wooden fort; to the right was a cluster of tipis. Behind the bleachers was a sort of souvenir shantytown, tables and booths that sold an unexpectedly eccentric array of items, from gyros to quesadillas to crossbows. Just a stone's throw away, a Burlington Northern Santa Fe train rumbled past.

I found a space on the metal risers and settled in. Quickly I discovered that the show was less a strict reenactment than a historical pageant. The early minutes of the production were dedicated to the story of contact between Natives and European explorers, traders, and settlers. We met Lewis, Clark, and Sacagawea.
^a
We were introduced to mountain men and covered wagons and war cries. We were shown how to erect a tipi. Eventually Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Custer and his wife made their appearances. Then, finally, we eased into the events of June 1876.

I don't exactly have a strong background in military history, but as far as I could tell, the battle was true to life in at least one respect: it was messy and fast. I watched in some dismay as a chaotic tangle of men on horseback resolved almost immediately into two groups: victors and corpses. If you're looking to understand with any precision how exactly Custer's forces were defeated in the battle, a reenactment like Hardin's will likely be of little help.

Nor did it manage to convey a sense of how horrific the battle must have been, despite the grave tone affected by the show's narrator. Rather, the Hardin reenactment had the sweet self-consciousness of any amateur production. The participants weren't quite able to summon the ferocity of battle, and any hard edges were rapidly smoothed by the patent delight on the faces of the younger actors. Many wore costumes that wouldn't have looked out of place on a middle school stage. Some wore denim shorts under breechcloths; others simply donned khaki shorts they decorated with leather fringe. After the show, audience members climbed down from the bleachers to take pictures with and beg autographs from the actors—many of whom, I got the impression, they already knew.

There were moments of solemnity and there were moments of revelry, but the Hardin reenactment felt overwhelmingly like old-fashioned family fun, with all the historical accuracy that implies. Although the narration and program emphasized that the reenactment was based on the notes of a Crow tribal historian and was from the “Indian perspective,” it was clear that a number of choices were made to privilege pageantry over pedagogy. One of the more blatantly sentimental scenes, for instance, depicted Custer taking leave of his wife, Libbie. Even if you're relatively uninformed about the history of the American Indian it's quite clear that Custer wouldn't be considered a romantic hero from the “Indian perspective.”

The Crow reenactment is a more intimate affair. One of its main selling points is that it takes place in sight of the Little Bighorn River, a few miles south of Crow Agency on Real Bird Ranch, on land that was actually part of the original battlefield. This fact is, as I understand it, enough to coax dedicated and experienced historical reenactors to participate for free. The other feature that distinguishes the Crow reenactment from the Hardin show is that it purports to show the “Native American perspective.”

I sensed from the start a vague hint of controversy surrounding this assertion, but at first I couldn't figure out why. Frankly, the two shows are not substantially different. The reenactments may take place on two different plots of land and they may employ two different George Armstrong Custers, but they tell largely the same story. As it turns out, both scripts were written by members of Crow Nation. (The Crow script was, in fact, written by the grandsons of the author of the Hardin script.) To be sure, the show I saw on Real Bird Ranch had a slightly greater focus on Native traditions and cultures than the version I saw in Hardin. Though it, too, included set pieces about Lewis and Clark and the arrival of Montana's mountain men, it also, for instance, took the time to emphasize the cultural importance of the horse in Crow culture. Participants wore traditional breechcloths and rode bareback, the latter choice adding immeasurably to the suspense of the battle sequences. And at various points during the show, a circle of tribe members sang and played traditional instruments while the show's stage manager, a stout man in a yellow plaid shirt and a cowboy hat, rode back and forth on his horse issuing curt instructions in Crow into a walkie-talkie. Custer was referred to pointedly as “Custer Yellow Hair, the one who killed babies and old people.”