Paul Turner: A special quiet at the Little Bighorn battlefield

The National Park Service refers to it as “a place of reflection.”

It’s certainly that.

The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument makes you wonder.

What if that bloody conflict had turned out differently? Would it have made any difference? What would the West be like today?

When you look out over the tall grass ridges and ravines where the battle unfolded, it’s not unusual to experience what others have described as a special kind of quiet.

On days with a few clouds, the sun’s spotlight shifts from one pleasing vista to another. It’s easy to forget what happened there.

Then you remember. And you can feel an impulse to take off your hat, even if you aren’t wearing one.

The anniversary of the 1876 battle in Montana is this week. But the Little Bighorn site is a perpetual reminder.

There were native people out here long before us. They tried to preserve their way of life. They lost, an eventual defeat all but sealed by their greatest victory.

How you react to the national monument depends in large part on the outlook you bring to your first visit: Do you regard what happened to the outnumbered 7th Cavalry as a tragedy of the first order? Or do you think they pretty much got what they deserved?

There’s something about being there, though. The serene beauty of the place all but demands that you ask: Couldn’t there have been some other way?

Historians and authors can debate that. Perhaps there was no reliable middle ground between the traditional ways of the free roaming tribes and a future filled with shopping malls, SUVs and interstate highways.

Touring the grounds of the national monument is not a one-size-fits-all experience. But I can tell you this: A second visit, years later, can nudge you toward a greater appreciation of what the tribes were up against.

What would you do if mounted soldiers attacked your village and your families?

The Battle of the Little Bighorn has come to represent an irrevocable change in our perception of the West.

Native Americans were previously pushed aside in the East, South and Midwest, of course. But it is out in our part of the country where the final conflicts defined a clash of cultures we sometimes rationalize as inevitable.

For descendants of the prevailing side, it might seem disingenuous to second-guess the course of history and wring our hands about what America became. But when you visit the Little Bighorn Battlefield and gaze out over the solemn scene of long-ago carnage, it’s hard to fault the Indians some of us grew up regarding as the bad guys.

They were here first.

Now we’re here.

If invaders try to remove us by forcibly erasing our way of life, I assume we will resist.

There are different ways to salute. One is to pay attention to the past.

Sometimes the breeze that ruffles the tall grass has a few things to say. If you listen, you might hear whispers.

They walk

among us

There’s nothing about our appearance that gives us away.

It was decades ago, so our fingernails are usually pretty clean now.

But did you know that in our midst every day are men who once regarded themselves as the undisputed Night Crawler King?

It’s true. For some industrious youths, harvesting worms after dark was almost more satisfying than going fishing the next day.

Little boys who generally approached chores with an attitude that might generously be characterized as lackadaisical would be all business when it came to gathering worms.

Everything had to be just right. You would water shady sections of the lawn early in the evening. Really give it a good soaking.

Then, a few hours later, you would go back and patrol the yard with a flashlight. Upon finding a long, pinkish night crawler, you would reach down and, quick like a bunny, pinch it to keep it from going subterranean. Then you would place it in a coffee can three-quarters full of moist dirt. Then you would clap on the lid, perforated with air holes.

The next day, out on the lake, your grandfather might praise the quality and generous supply of the bait.

And you would smile from here to next summer.