Second battle of the Little Bighorn

The roaring cloud of cursing and yelling tongues drowned out my thoughts as I looked into the darkened eyes of the kid standing only a few feet away from me. We didn’t know each other and there was no hostility between us; we were standing toe to toe because we didn’t fit in. He didn’t fit in because he was from an age-old rival in the Crow tribe and I didn’t fit in because I was as white as a piece of notebook paper. We were the spectacle and the crowd of young Northern Cheyenne kids wanted to find out who would be the winner and the loser.

The outcome of the fight would be immaterial.

I grew up the youngest child in a comfortably middle-class family in the fairly liberal town of Missoula, Montana. I came of age in the 1980s and no lie- best of all decades. I had it all, as far as my young mind was concerned and I was wholly ignorant as to how my life was about to change.

Fast forward to the mid-nineties, where my mom, sister, and I had become the family surrounding a migrant teacher in my father. My father’s search for a new job landed us in a little town called Busby, on the Northern Cheyenne reservation in eastern Montana. The school he would teach at was built on the site of the old Tongue River Boarding School- only twenty five miles east of the site of the Battle of Little Bighorn, also known as 'Custer's Last Stand.’

The throng of voices shouted deafening calls for violence and I was caught in slow motion. I was straining to maintain motor control and not stand straight up. My ideas about fighting had all been born out of repeated viewings of fights in 80s action movies. I had no idea what I was doing and neither did he.

He and I were both victims of peer pressure fueled by a few hundred years of abuse, poor treatment, and cultural genocide.

He finally threw a punch.

George Armstrong Custer was a prominent figure during the ‘American Indian Wars.’ Whether poor strategy, ego, or the absence of Reno’s cavalry were to be blamed, Custer and his whole army was wiped out at the hands of the Northern Cheyenne, Arapaho and Sioux tribes. I shared both fair skin and strawberry blonde hair with Custer so it made for some easy comparisons. My opponent was Crow- the tribe whose members served as guides for Custer and his army.

There we were, the Crow and the Custer-figure, surrounded by the Northern Cheyenne and we were about to have our own miniature last-stand.

When I moved to Busby, I had a really naive idea of what it would be like. I had seen Dances with Wolves and Little Big Man and thought that I would see buckskin clothes (no joke) and I’d hear a lot of beautiful flute music. Instead the music was by Ice Cube and the clothing of choice were baseball hats and basketball jerseys.

On the flip side, my new peers saw a very pale white boy with red hair. I was incredibly unprepared for what would come.

My opponent’s boney knuckles landed right on my chin with a crack and the contact prompted a rise out of the mob surrounding us. We didn’t want to fight, but we didn’t want to look weak. I made the group roar with laughter by asking, “Is that all you got?!” like I was in one of those action movies and not actually a vulnerable eighth grader in the midst of ‘fight or flight.’

I was a white boy who was very much unaware of the privilege he had been handed at birth. I didn’t have the foggiest clue of what it felt like to be looked upon with disdain. While I lived in Busby, I was given a small glimpse into what being marginalized really feels like- it’s awful.

We were being called upon to really throw at each other, but we didn’t. I got in close and grabbed him up and it turned into something like a pro-wrestler stalemate or ‘rest hold.’ Neither of us wanted to fight. Any kicks or punches thrown afterwards were inaccurate and inelegant.

Given the benefit of age and hindsight, I look back on not fitting in at Busby as a blessing in disguise. At the time it felt violating and I was angry, but I know it helped me grow as a person. I was able to look beyond my own worldview and feel the hurt of unjust treatment based on factors beyond my control, like so many are treated right now, even as I type this.

In the end, our fight became so unremarkable that the crowd began to disperse. Once we were alone, we dropped the act and dusted ourselves off. We shared a quiet moment of awkward eye contact before we silently walked away from each other.

Neither of us had won, but at the same time, neither lost.