Little Big Horn

Finished putting the last entry onto the blog before we left at 1100 along the 2 going east over Marias Pass and onto Browning. The scenery suddenly changed from what you have seen (wooded mountains) to much more open expansive prairie. Travelling on down the 89 the landscape became flatter and dryer. We carried on the 89 after Great Falls to just past Monarch where we pulled off the road onto a Forestry track and found a beautiful camp site next to a stream. Jillie cooked up spaghetti and mushroom soup, which is very good and one of our staples while I through petrol on the fire to get it going. Worked a treat. The next day we stopped at Neihart for petrol to be told that it didn't open until 1100 and it was just before 0930 so with fingers crossed we pulled up the 12 miles to Kings Hill Pass at 7393 feet before cruising down 30 miles to White Sulphur Springs. Made it just as we turned onto second reserve tohave the choice of 3 petrol stations.. Joined the 12 going east through Checkerboard, Two Dot, Shawmut and Roundup before turning onto the 310 towards Musselshell. After 12 miles we came to this sign and after a short rest proceeded 27 miles on a gravel road to Cluster. We camped that night by a Café on the 47 just by the 94 interstate along side a row of RV's. Met Charlie and Jim who drive double articulated trucks of 60 tons gross weight and they were kind enough to let us sit in theirs and go broooooom-broooooom. Ate steak in the Café before retiring and experiencing a thunderstorm that lashed down wind and rain, but the tent stayed up and didn't leak. In the morning drove about 30 miles to Hardin where we set up camp at KOA and once we had unloaded headed off To the 'Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument'. I found this place immensely sad. The Indians had been told to stay in their reservations as the 'white man' wanted all the resources of the land, which destroyed their way of life, so they 'disobeyed' and were given to a certain date to go back to the reservation or they would be seen as 'hostile'. The reservations destroyed their nomadic way of life following the buffalo and the seasons, although by this time 60 million buffalo had been shot in the last 50 years and they were on the verge of extinction. The 'hostile' Indians, whole families of women and children, all 10,000 of them, were camped out at Little Bighorn when they were surprised and attacked by Col. Custer and his 260 troops. Vastly outnumbered the whole of Custer's lot were killed and the next day the Indians left and went into the mountains where most of them died of starvation over the winter. The Indians may have won a battle but they lost the war. The end of a way of life. Hope you can read this picture. The Americans talk about the land that God has given them but in truth it is the land they have stolen from the Indians, and what a lovely land.. The Indian reservations that we have travelled through have all been characterised by lots of rubbish. Their houses are often old trailers, dilapidated and cobbled together with anything found useful, surrounded by old, rusting cars. In the towns
the ditches are littered with debris. The Indian people keep themselves to themselves and I get the sense that there is a lot of discrimination towards them. They have a lost look in their eye and are likely to ask if you have any change. But the reservation are under the Indian law so they all have casinos to attract the white man whose laws forbids him to gamble.