Billings: The City and the People

This unique book details Montana's largest city and financial center, from its days as cattle town and railhead, through the 1970s oil boom, up to today. Area attractions are included.

From the book: In late June of 1876, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his Seventh Cavalry loped toward destiny, while Indian forces under Lakota chief Sitting Bull gathered on Lame Deer Creek. At the Little Bighorn River, these two larger-than-life warriors colided.

Cinematic reincarnations would distort the images of Custer and Sitting Bull. Each, in turn, would be remembered as hero and villain. Custer, mourned as a tragic hero in 1876, became the object of 20th century ridicule and the symbol of American genocide. Sitting Bull, perceived first as a blood-thirsty savage, evolved into today's notion of the noble Native American.

The stereotypes are not without a grain of truth, but even the best of them fit poorly. Sitting Bull and Custer were, if anything, worthy adversaries. In war's context--where a person is measured by the strength of the enemy--each makes a giant of the other.