Museum Sells Custer Guidon To Strengthen "Collection Of Native American Art"
12/11/2010
A+
|
a-
Print Friendly and PDF

The Detroit Institute of Arts has sold a flag carried by the Seventh Cavalry at the Battle Of Little Bighorn.

"We'll be using the proceeds to strengthen our collection of Native American art, which has a rather nice irony to it I think," said Graham Beal, director of the Detroit museum.

I don't think so. I think Beal's remark is a damned insult to the murdered and mutilated troopers of the Seventh Cavalry.

Beal, [Email him] wrote on the Institute's website that they have a rule that art is never sold to pay expenses, only to buy other art, which means that it's a straight preference for "Native American" art over American history and murdered American soldiers.

Gen Custer flag sells for $2.2m at Sotheby's auction
General Custer's flag
 
The flag was found beneath a dead American soldier following the Battle of Little Bighorn

A flag carried by Lt Gen George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry troops into their last stand at the Battle of Little Bighorn has been sold at auction for $2.2m (Â?1.4m).

The guidon is the only one not captured or lost during the 1876 battle in the state of Montana.

The flag, previously valued at $5m, was bought by a private US collector in the auction at Sotheby's in New York.

The former owner, Detroit Institute of Arts, paid $54 for the flag in 1895.

"We'll be using the proceeds to strengthen our collection of Native American art, which has a rather nice irony to it I think," said Graham Beal, director of the Detroit museum.

Gen Custer and all his soldiers - more than 200 in number - were killed by thousands of Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors during their attempt to reclaim the Black Hills region from the Lakota as part of a US government campaign.

The flag was found beneath a dead American soldier following the Battle of Little Bighorn - or the Battle of Greasy Grass Creek, as the victors of the battle named it.

The flag was renamed Culbertson Guidon after Sgt Ferdinand Culbertson, a member of the burial party who recovered it from the field.

Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were among the Lakota leaders who fought in the battle.

Print Friendly and PDF