The Indian Memorial is located at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana. Photo: Visions Service Adventures
Boys at the Battle of Greasy Grass, aka Little Big Horn
By Victor D. Swallow
Native Sun News Today
nativesunnews.today Before reservations were created the Lakota were nomadic. They lived off the land, dwelled in tipis, hunted buffalo, picked berries, and dug up roots. During that time the Lakota people took care of themselves and their young. Always planning for the future whether they were drying buffalo meat or making dried berry patties for the winter. Decision were always made with consideration for the young and old and how each choice will affect their future. I have two short stories about two Lakota men named Jim Comes Again and Joe High Eagle. My mother told me when both were boys about the ages 10 or 11 they were at the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876. Both boys lived to be more than 80 years old. Jim was my mother’s uncle, we called him Grandpa Jimmy (Kaakaa Jimmy). Later in life, I was around Grandpa Comes Again and he was a little old humped over man with skinny braids. My brother John Swallow Jr. told me when he was ten years of age, they were butchering and Grandpa Comes Again was overseeing the butchering. My brother said he pinched the skin on the neck of the cow and cut the jugular vein. He then cut the liver out and squeezed some bile on it on and ate some of it. A storm was coming from the West and would be there less than an hour. Butchering takes at least a few hours and a rain storm would make things harder. Grandpa Comes Again took what my brother said looked like a soft stone maybe clay he thought out from his pocket and put it into his mouth. He chewed it and put the spit onto the inside of his arms from the elbow to his wrists. He then prayed making parting motions with his arms towards the coming storm. When my brother told me this story he was only ten and didn’t say if the storm parted or not. I just remembered him telling me that story. Later my cousin Ed Two Bulls Jr. who was about 9 years old at the time told me Grandpa Comes Again and Joe High Eagle where two old men then and they were sitting on the ground in the shade with sticks in their hands. It was years after the Battle of Little Big Horn and they were drawing diagrams in the dirt with their sticks showing where Custer’s men were and where they were at when they were attacked. My grandmother Mary Alice One Crow-Two Bulls who was Comes Again’s Sister-in-Law was a few years younger than both men was listening to them. After a bit she walked through their diagram dragging her feet showing them that she was not impressed.
Read the rest of the story on the Native Sun News Today website: Boys at the Battle of Greasy Grass, aka Little Big Horn (Victor D. Swallow was born in 1939, Oglala Lakota, U. S. Navy Veteran, 50 year member of Bricklayers Union, Optimistic realist and fair) Copyright permission Native Sun News
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