Day 12 - Sheridan, Wyoming

Earthship Le Van Gogh Diary

Day 12 - Sheridan, Wyoming

I crossed into Wyoming today - or yesterday, I should say because it’s 1:53 a.m. on the 13th as I write this. I also couldn't get a signal so this will be late. Sigh.

On the way to Sheridan I couldn’t help but stop at the Custer Museum where they had all kinds of artifacts on display from the Battle of Little Bighorn and in general from that era. Fascinating! There was an Indian war shirt and an Indian spirit shirt, the first being of tanned leather and embroidered heavily with beads, quills, and human hair. The spirit shirt was hand-sewn of some kind of textile that sure did last well! It looked like either cotton or linen and there were no tears or shredded areas. Pretty amazing. There were beads on this shirt also but on the front in faded dyes were faint outlines of spirit animals seen as guides to this particular warrior.

There were beaded moccasins for both men, women and children, all heavily and beautifully beaded on the top and bottom of the shoes. And beaded bags for everything from sewing quills to tee-pee skin holders. Gorgeous pipe bags and a lovely Sioux woman’s dress for ceremonial wear. This latter was also tanned leather and heavily and intricately beaded with fringe. Fantastic! There was also an arrow holder with a skunk skin on the front. I would not have wanted to be the woman who had to skin that baby!

Did you know that bull elk each have two ivory teeth in the back of their mouths? I didn’t either. These teeth were highly prized for wear by the Sioux and since it could be years before enough could be gathered to make a decent necklace, they came up with a way to dye regular elk teeth to look like the ivory teeth. These were also carved and shaped to the same form of the ivory teeth and voila! A fine looking ivory tooth necklace for both the Sioux warrior and his wife.

There were several large paintings by artists of that time depicting the battle in which Custer lost his life (as well as the lives of all of his men). One was pretty accurate and based on the account of Curly, an Indian scout who worked for Custer and his guys (I‘m not sure which tribe Curly was from). He witnessed Custer’s death and described it as thusly: Chief ...(heck, I just whited out the name of this Chief) was wrestling with Custer for his gun since Custer was earnestly trying to shoot him with it and finally got it away from him. He then bashed Custer on the head three times with the gun and shot him with it in the head and the heart. I can well imagine that Custer would have died from those wounds. Anyway, Curly, the scout, managed to slip out of the crowd, “borrow” a Sioux horse and get the heck out of Dodge. He was the only one of Custer’s group to survive.

One of the paintings was by artist who had taken great poetic license with the facts of the battle and had come up with a pretty hilarious version of what happened. The painting shows the vain Custer with golden locks tousled by the gentle breeze and standing nonchalantly in his officer’s dress uniform with a natty red cravat (which was not what he wore into battle) at the top of the hill, one hand on his hip, one leg bent with the shiny booted foot on a rock. He appears to be shooting every so often as the opportunity arises just for sport before he walks back to the Officer’s Mess to have a spot of lunch. Around him are his soldiers shooting poorly armed Indians who wield only hatchets and knives (not so, the Indians were shooting repeating Winchester rifles or the outcome would have been different). All of the Indians are bare-chested in the painting when in truth they were wearing their warrior shirts because of their belief that these provided a spiritual protection from the soldiers’ bullets. This wasn’t true either since a large number of Indians perished or were injured that day but it made the painting very, um, typical of the white man’s general lack of understanding then (and sometimes now) of the Indians’ culture and customs.

To polish off this rather silly painting, there is a chicken wandering around in the bottom right corner and looking rather confused, as it should, since no self-respecting chicken would have wandered that far from its coop which was waaaaaayyyyy far away from the battle scene. I doubt that the chicken survived that day either, especially since it was looking pretty healthy and appetizing. It was most likely dinner that night for one of the celebrating and victorious Indians. Not that there were any chickens of any kind any where near the battle scene, which makes it all the more silly for one to be there and adds nothing aesthetic to the painting except as a compositional balance, I suppose. Who knows what the artist was thinking but since very little else was accurate in the painting, why not throw in a chicken? Why gum up the work with accuracy, for cryin’ out loud!

Anyway, I tore myself out of the museum after an hour or so of examining all kinds of fun stuff and moved on toward Sheridan, leaving Montana behind me and a strong desire to return and visit the state in its entirety. Wyoming is just as beautiful and, of course, has the Yosemite National Park which I will return to later. The land is just plain gorgeous in this area and words are a poor substitute for the scenic wonders around me. And this is just around I-90. Just think of how much more beautiful it is off the beaten track!

Tomorrow I’ll be in Gillette, Wyoming, and then on to South Dakota. Too brief of a stop but indeed, if I stayed longer I might never leave. Onward I push, however, still planning the day when I can return and explore to my little heart’s content.

Lessons Learned:

That when you lean over the bed in the night to pour more water into the kitties’ bowl, make sure that it’s the water bowl you’re pouring into.

That the kitties won’t drink kitty food soup.

That I don’t blame them.

Yuck.

Observations:

Wyoming has roads that are a deep reddish-purple that matches the red in the hills on both sides of the highway. Coincidence? I think not. I hope not, anyhow.

While passing a field with many beautiful horses grazing, I see one lone mule standing in the middle of the herd and smiling at the sun.

A prairie dog up on the shoulder of the road sniffing around and just begging to be turned into road kill. Just like the scattering of smished bodies of his brethren seen periodically along the route.

What I thought were odd looking deer grazing were actually some kind of antelope from around these parts. I didn’t think deer came in that shape and color…

An older couple whom I have seen off and on throughout my voyage smile and wave to me as we pass each other in the campground. They are heading to Minnesota so we take the same path for a ways.