Standing in the Shadows of Impossible Choices: Little Bighorn National Monument

Most of our journey across the American West has focused on open spaces and natural wonders—towering mountains, sprawling prairies, and desert skies that stretch beyond imagination. But there are places where the beauty of the land is inseparable from the pain in its past. At Little Bighorn National Monument, the wind carries not just the scent of sagebrush, but the echoes of a clash between two worlds—between expansion and resistance, between orders and oaths, between survival and sacrifice.

This wasn’t just another stop for us—it was a moment to pause and reckon with history.

The Battle of the Little Bighorn is etched into American memory as Custer’s Last Stand. But what’s often forgotten in the schoolbook summaries is how nuanced, and human, the story really is. George Armstrong Custer wasn’t a general at the time—he was a Lieutenant Colonel. He didn’t command thousands. He led just 600 men, with only 230 around him in his final moments. And this wasn’t his first time in these hills. Years earlier, he’d sat in peace with the Lakota and Cheyenne. Smoked the pipe. Promised non-aggression.

So how did we get from peace pipes to breastworks built from the bodies of their beloved horses?

The truth is, this was no simple confrontation. The Native warriors—led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse—weren’t just spoiling for a fight. They were defending ancestral hunting grounds, their right to exist outside arbitrary boundaries drawn up in faraway government offices. Yes, they were technically off the reservation. But the reservation itself was a boundary born from broken promises.

Custer, for his part, was acting under orders. When he encountered a force of warriors more than double his own, he made decisions that have been analyzed and second-guessed for nearly 150 years. Should he have waited? Retreated? He was stuck—both literally and morally—between duty to his men, loyalty to his word, and the crushing weight of military command.

The Native Americans were no less caught in a tangle of impossible choices. Refuse to stand up, and watch their heritage erased. Resist, and face overwhelming retaliation. There were no clean exits, no tidy victories. Only loss and memory.

At the site, we stood on those same exposed hills. The markers dotting the landscape showed where soldiers and warriors fell—white stones for U.S. troops, red for Native Americans. It's not a battlefield frozen in time, but a story still whispering through the prairie grass.

We also talked about the "what-ifs" of history. If it hadn’t been American expansion pressing westward, would it have been the British? The Spanish? The French? We don’t know what alternate timelines may have held, but we do know this: these were real people, with names and families, honor and heartbreak, trying to make the best choices in a world that left them few.

So we remember. Not just the battle, but the broader struggle. The weight of decisions made under pressure. The dignity of people defending what they loved. The consequences that rippled out long after the guns fell silent.

We walked away from Little Bighorn not with easy answers, but with a deeper respect for the complexity of history. And a hope that teaching our kids to reflect on these moments helps them understand that even when choices seem impossible, empathy isn’t.