History, the Truth

How important is it that we know history and geography. This weekend I heard a scary statistic that only 23% of college graduates know where Iraq, Israel, and Iran are on a map.

I thought of the FedEx commercial where a guy was asked to stick a pin on China. He doesn’t know where China is. Yes, I think it is a funny commercial because I guess I knew the 23% is probably true. Just think of the four people in the commercial, really only one knew where China was on the map.

The goal of this Blog is to put history and geography back in our lives. History is about the truth. Or, that should be our goal. We hear the argument that the American Civil War was really a War Between the States. We hear the argument, it was a war never about slavery. Even today, I had a friend tell me that the Civil War was about “states rights.”

Again, history is not right or left. It is about the truth.

We read about Custer and the Little Big Horn. What is the truth? Where Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse these American Indian military geniuses? Was Custer trapped into battle?
Did you know that in the Army movement against the Sioux and the other tribes organizing, that Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse fought another Army general at Rosebud. They did not wipe out his command. But, General Crook had to reorganize his command. The two fights were only about 30 miles apart and a week apart. Both men came up upon a new situation in the American Indian fight. They were not used to fighting large forces in the American Indian wars. After the Little Bighorn, the American Indian tribes separated and went back to small unit fighting. Even though they had two major military victories, fighting in large units.

Going through school and studying American History, I knew about Custer. Moving to Arizona and reading about Crook in Arizona History and his biography did I learn about Rosebud. Why was Crook and the Rosebud not taught with Custer?