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Dr. Joe Medicine Crow
Crow Tribal Historian
&
Author of Custer's Last Stand Reenactment Script
JOE MEDICINE CROW PH.D
"HIGH BIRD" - DAGAK BAKO
CROW TRIBAL HISTORIAN
GRANDSON OF CUSTER'S LAST SCOUT, WHITEMAN RUNS HIM
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The reenactment in Hardin is a drama. Told
as an Indian first-person narration, it is driven by a series of
historical events leading to the climactic Battle of the Little Bighorn.
The script was derived from one written by Dr. Joe Medicine Crow, 89, Crow
Tribal Historian and anthropologist.
Medicine Crow is the real deal as both an Indian warrior and a Custer
dramatist. He tells a story about earning a Crow war honor nearly as great
as counting coup. Near the close of World War II, Medicine Crow and
another soldier helped their infantry company capture fleeing SS officers
holed up at a farm by stealing the horses the Germans had been riding.
In 1939-40, while going to graduate school at the University of Southern
California, he was recruited to work on the script of one of the defining
movies of the Custer legend, "They Died With Their Boots On."
Medicine Crow, who grew up near the battlefield, had long heard stories
about it from his grandfather and other scouts who had worked for Custer
and witnessed his end. Medicine Crow says he did not put a sufficiently
glowing spin on Custer, though, and he was fired. "I said, 'Some day
I'm going to write my own Custer production and tell it like it is.'
"
In 1964, he got the chance. As part of the Montana Territorial Centennial
celebration, the Crow Tribe directed him to do the re-enactment script
that remains the foundation of Hardin's show.
One-hundred-and-twenty-seven years after the Battle of the Little
Bighorn, reenactors here are still borrowing from that past to try
and shape the future.
A goal attained
This reenactment strives to tell the story of the settlement of the
West and the defining Battle of the Little Bighorn from an Indian
perspective, Medicine Crow says he can still identify the moment he knew
he was right to pursue such a goal back in 1964.
"I remember thinking, 'If I can put the audience on the west bank of
the Little Big Horn River in the Indian camp and they see something coming
to destroy them, I will have sent a message,' " he says.
He had written a scene in which Sitting Bull fell into a trance at a sun
dance and woke with his famous prophesy of pony soldiers falling upside
down into the Indian village.
"Henry Oaks was the actor at that time," Medicine Crow
remembers. "He pitched forward, and I watched the audience. There was
a little white boy, about 5 years old. He jumped up when Sitting Bull hit
the dirt.
" 'Mama. Mama. What are we going to do now? Sitting Bull is dead.'
"His mother teared up, and I got a lump in my throat.
"For one psychological moment, I had made a white man an
Indian."We are proud to have Joe Medicine Crow as our Living Historian and Author of
the Script for the Reenactment. Joe has been ever so faithful to attend and lead
us in Prayer. Joe is a very accomplished writer and historian.
Dr. Joe Medicine Crow
This photograph was
taken at the
Little Big Horn Battle Field National Cemetery at the grave site of his
Grandfather "White Man Runs Him." |
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