If history is written by the victors, it was the case at one battleground site in North Dakota. For all the years I’ve lived in North Dakota, I’d never visited the Whitestone Hill State Historic Site near Kulm. We went yesterday (09-14-20) for the expressed purpose of seeing it. It couldn’t have been a more perfect day as far as weather - 60s, sunny, breezy, no bugs. Right beside the site is a nice blue water lake and we sat eating our picnic lunch under cottonwood trees where we liked listening to the rustling of the leaves in the breeze.
And sometimes it’s good to be where there are no other people, which was the case here. Except for a friendly, young site supervisor named Stewart, no one else was there. We asked him if there are many visitors, to which he replied, “Some days there might be three cars.”
At the top of the hill a tall monument stands and around it there are 20 stones, each listing the name of one of the troopers killed. This is where history being written by the victors comes into play. Very little indicates the death of hundreds of Indians or 150 taken prisoner or the tons of winter supplies destroyed. I
asked Stewart about the near-absence of Indian commemoration, and he said there was a small one. I didn’t go back up there to see if he meant the one made with a couple rocks, but there is a small bronze plaque at the base of the hill. Bronze weathers and the inscription on this one could hardly be read. He said there are plans for some updating of the site, which of course it needs to bring it more into line with modern proclivity.
Stewart told of a group of Indians who’d come on horseback in a ceremonial gesture of forgiving, and he thought they planned to return in the future. I presume it was them who’d tied the medicine bundles to the flagpole.
The site will be open yet through October and a trip to it could prove satisfying for the historically curious, as it did for us.
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