Custer Speaks

Custer Speaks


"My voice is for war."
---George Armstrong Custer, age seven


1.
I knew from the beginning. I was just seven years old
when I received my name but not by the same vision as the
Indian, Crazy Horse, who starved himself for his. I was
beautiful and large in town hat and carved hair watching
a military parade: all the shine, the fine men with swords
drawn, and raised straight into the air, on horseback,
pointing the way toward heaven. I raised my arms above my
head and shouted down the entire world grown smaller beside
the man I would become.

2.
Listen: every part of me is for battle, the charge, that
perfect moment between fear and glory.
Sweet Jesus, don't you see? It all belonged to me, the
Civil War was my war, the war to free
my soul. At Bull Run, I was first riding down the hill,
leading young and old, holding
my saber. Goddamn, saber is a beautiful word. Saber, saber,
saber. Nothing
can be more beautiful
than leading thousands of men into the fight, carrying
their lives on my shoulders,
and when they fell, they fell beside me and I promise you
I knew the name of every man.
That name was the same as mine. General George Armstrong
Custer,
I remain, I remain.

3.
I see by your eyes when you think of me, of my surprise ride
into Black Kettle's camp on the Washita River.
It's easy to blame me, to call it a massacre. But it was no
Sand Creek, no The Great Indian Fighter who cut down women
and children, ordered them shot as they sought cover, shot
them in the back.
But I was forced to do that. They attacked us with everything,
everyone they had. It was maddening to see an Indian girl
pick up a rifle from a blood-soaked snow and fire at my
men, at me.
It doesn't change anything, make the fight mean less.
Just because Black Kettle's camp was on the reservation
doesn't allow it to be called anything short of victory.
They had to be removed to make Kansas, the West, safe.
They were barriers to progress.
You call it genocide. I call it economics.

4.
If you want reasons or definitions, you can look at the
history books. If you want the truth, I will tell you
exactly why I fell in love with all those Blackfoot, Sioux,
Crow. It was because they made a better hunt than the
buffalo ever did, but you must remember every drop of
Indian blood spilled was a political act, another building
block toward the Presidency, the White House, all the
headlines screaming my name in three inch print.
Please, in a time which required heroes,
I was only a man.

5.
Crazy Horse, O my beautiful Crazy Horse. The first time I
saw him he attacked my camp at the mouth
of the Tongue River. It's an ironic name for that dry and
dusty place
where Crazy Horse and I first stared across battle lines,
eye to eye, heart to heart, but he didn't stand apart from
the others.
He was plain, a single feather in his hair, unpainted body,
but I knew instantly who he was, he looked like me.
Not in the physical way, it was his presence that seemed
to say,
to shout his name across my chest. Crazy Horse and I
were twins
the best kind of men, the men who always win.
It was a revelation, almost Christ come back on horseback
to chase
a dark-skinned Lucifer across the plains, both of us
recreating the universe but he escaped me that day
and every other day
until I could only whisper his name
in my sleep.

6.
Don't misunderstand the kind of man I really am.
If it was me, threatened by the loss of everything I had
ever known
If it was me, frightened by the thought of being left alone
in a prison cell called the reservation, if it was me
I would go to hell
before I would give up the fight, the right to be free
on the open plain.
I felt for their pain, their dreams, their lives.
Do you really think I could order the slaughter of 800
ponies and not cry?

7.
The last time I saw Crazy Horse, I rode my stallion,
retreating at the Little Big Horn
that small and beautiful river where I was born.
I rode to the top of a bluff
named after me now, to the top of Custer's Bluff,
where he was waiting for me, Crazy Horse,
my dear brother, and a thousand other warriors.
I dismounted
counted the number
of bullets and men I had left, and knew
it was over. I cried
and fought, shouted
the names of everyone I lost.
I raised my arms straight up
directly into the air
and watched a solitary man with long hair
and blue eyes ride toward me
alone, and then I was gone.

8.
I was born again in Hiroshima.
I was born again in Birmingham.
I was born again in the Triangle Shirt Factory.
I was born again in Chile.
I was born again in Saigon.
I was born again in Iraq.
I was born again in Hollywood.


Sherman Alexie........from Old Shirts & New Skins