Oh General Custer (On My Birthday)

Oh General Custer (On My Birthday) June 25, 2016

General_Custer's_Death_Struggle,_H_optIt was with great disappointment that I discovered that my birthday marked the Battle of Little Big Horn and the death of General Custer. Even greater disappointment came the more I learned about “cowboys and Indians.”

I rode a stick horse around the house and yard in Clendenin, West Virginia, so often that the end grew dangerously sharp. I don’t know how many I wore out  . . . and there was never a day from six to eight when I did not want to wear my six-shooter cap guns. The caps were loud and cool in the day . . . and more than a bit dangerous when you hit a whole load of them with a hammer.

Not that anyone should do this.

The sad truth, however, is that the older you get, the more you learn and the more you learn, the harder it is to have heroes. My dad was and is a decent and honorable man and so my standard for heroes was pretty high. Few men reach it and fewer famous men. There were “good guys” who were in the cavalry and good guys who fought for the First Nations. Some settlers were vice ridden racists and some were pious and helpful. Some Indian nations were empire building and dreadful, some were not. The search for a good side and a bad side in the contact between First Peoples and those immigrating to what was a new world to them is impossible.

This much is true: nothing so became George Custer as his death.  George Armstrong Custer is an interesting man, he served his country well in the Civil War, but he is no hero. US Grant was right. Custer squandered his men in an ill conceived maneuver. Still, he died like a man and there is something in that. The Indian Wars are a bad period in US history and there is little to celebrate. Nothing was gained by killing Custer and winning, as the USA did, never justifies theft, treaty breaking, and ignoring the rules of war. My heart still stirs to the sound of Gerry Owen, but the defeat of Custer is just one more sad event in a wicked war.

Oddly, my heroes turned out to be cowboys after all. The cowboys were not political and were of all races. They did a tough job and they did it well. If the “myths” of the West were not all true, enough are that I can still look up to them. As for “Indians,” by my time the Lone Ranger had taught me to judge a person by their character, not their race. The shows are not PC now . . . but I got a good message from them and my “action figure” (dolls for boys!) including Geronimo.

As I turn fifty-three and look back at history and how it was marketed to me . . . and how complicated it turned out to be, I am reminded that we do the same thing today. Major media has causes it celebrates and groups it demonizes. Just now my causes are not celebrated and much that I believe is demonized. Yet once Custer was Errol Flynn and an unmitigated hero, then I read books where he was a demon. Finally, I have found a welter of “back and forth” on Little Big Horn. I must pray, think, and do the best I can to live by the eternal Will of God as revealed in His Word and the life of His church..

What is left? Love all people . . . don’t make heroes easily . . . and don’t be surprised if the “judgement of history” changes. History is a complicated thing and there is none righteous, no not one.


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