Wild Montana Skies

Well here we are in our 5th State of the holiday. Montana"s skies are not wild on this hot, sunny day but I still sang Wild Montana Skies in the car because it is my favourite John Denver song. Our hotel in Billings is extremely comfortable and we are relaxing in the garden area just now. This morning we visited Custer's Last Stand - the memorial site of the Battle of Little Bighorn. We went on the battlefield tour, rightly supposing that a guide would be able to explain it all more clearly. Our guide was excellent - she is a great great great grand-daughter of Curly, who was one of the Crow tribe. The Crow tribe joined in the fighting as scouts on the side of the American army, because they thought that this was the best way to secure their lands. They figured that because they had always been fighting the Sioux tribe anyway, it didn't really matter. Hmmm I'm not so sure. - sounds a bit like the Campbells siding with the English at the Glencoe massacre to me. Anyway she gave us a lively account of the battle, in the course of which Custer made every possible mistake he could, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The battlefield is a sad place and it's hard to imagine the slaughter that took place, although there are markers dotting the landscape where each soldier fell. It was the Native Americans' last victory in their resistance to the huge tide of European settlers - so in a way it was their last stand too.