Who places are named after matters

Bison in Custer State Park in South Dakota in early June. (Image: Kathryn Reed)

Naming things after a person is a dicey proposition.

That person isn’t always as honorable as we first thought, isn’t as worthy with the distance of time and perspective of history.

Take Custer State Park in South Dakota for example. It’s named after George Custer (1839-1876). He was a Union calvary officer in the Civil War and a commander in wars against the Indians in the Great Plains. His 1874 expedition is credited with the gold rush in the Black Hills—which was on land owned by the Lakota.

The treaties with the Lakota and other Sioux became worthless as white people trampled on those words and worse as they desecrated the sacred land of the Black Hills all in the pursuit of gold.

Custer was a lieutenant colonel when he was killed in the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876. Some historians have called that encounter between the U.S. government and native peoples the “worst American military defeat ever.”

Some also call this battle Custer’s Last Stand.

For decades history books taught us that Custer was a great man, a great warrior, while at the same time belittling the Indians, discarding their heroism and grit.

He was a notorious Indian killer.

This Time article from 2023 delves into the real story.

The National Park Service’s website says, “The battle was a momentary victory for the Lakota and Cheyenne. The death of Custer and his troops became a rallying point for the United States to increase their efforts to force native peoples onto reservation lands. With more troops in the field, Lakota hunting grounds were invaded by powerful Army expeditionary forces determined to conquer the Northern Plains Indians. Most of the declared ‘hostiles’ surrendered within one year of the fight, and the Black Hills were taken by the U.S. government without compensation to the Lakota.”

In 2022, there was an unsuccessful push by South Dakota state lawmakers to rename Custer State Park.

“I would say that for a significant part of our population, the name Custer is offensive,” then Senate Democrat leader Troy Heinert said at the time in Keloland.com.

Custer became South Dakota’s first state park in 1919, and is still the largest state park. A city and the county were named after Custer before the park came into being.

My family has had its reunions as this park since 1992. I’m done. I don’t need to go back to a place named after this Indian killer. Where we spend our money matters. Who we name places after matters.