As the United States approaches June 25 and the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Little Bighorn—known to the Lakota and other Indigenous tribes as the Battle of Greasy Grass (Pezi Sla)—Wellesley College professor Elena Creef is sharing her scholarship to help people experience the battle in real life–from a variety of perspectives.
A professor of women’s and gender studies and a scholar of the American West, Creef has created a multimedia public humanities lecture, “Notes of an Accidental Reenactor at the Battle of Little Bighorn,” that takes people inside the annual historical reenactment of the battle, commemorating the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes defeat of Lt. Colonel George Armgstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the U. S. Army. The battle took place on June 25-26, 1876, along the Little Bighorn River in what is now southeastern Montana.
Here, Creef reflects on the battle and on her unique and ongoing scholarship into the Rashomon-like narratives surrounding this important historical event.
What happened at the Battle of Little Bighorn?
The Battle of Little Bighorn is one of the most widely mythologized battles in U.S. history, along with the Battle of Gettysburg. It was an overwhelming victory for the Lakota and their Cheyenne and Arapaho allies. It also cemented the post-mortem legend surrounding George Armstrong Custer, who, even though his troops were badly defeated in the battle, was widely hailed as a great American patriot on the eve of the nation’s centennial anniversary.
To better understand the battle, you have decided to embed as a character in the Little Bighorn historical reenactment. Why?
19th-century military history is generally studied by men—and usually by white men. I believe I’m the first Asian American female scholar to ride as a reenactor. I portray the doomed 19th-century Bismarck Tribune newspaperman Mark Kellogg, but I use my camera instead of a notebook to record stories on the battlefield.
I’ve also spent eight years working in Lakota Country – I’ve written scholarly articles and participated in dozens of memorial horse rides, designed to help Native peoples commemorate and heal from 19th-century histories of war and trauma. From my work in Lakota country, I have learned that you see things differently— and that you interact with other people differently—when you are on the back of a horse.
Why did you choose to portray newspaperman Mark Kellogg?
When I decided to participate as a reenactor, I was told I had the following options: I could portray a 7th Cavalry soldier, or an Arikira scout, or be an “unfettered woman of the West’”– that’s how they describe it in the official Cavalry School brochure. My other option was to portray Mark Kellogg from the Bismarck Tribune, the only reporter who was allowed to ride with the 7th Regiment. I chose not to cosplay as a Union soldier or a Native scout, and while I love the idea of being “unfettered,” I didn’t want to wear a long prairie skirt. Opting to portray the civilian reporter was an easy decision and the perfect fit for my role as a writer, outsider, and observer on horseback.
From where you sit, what is the main story of Little Bighorn?
There are so many stories!
From 1876 until World War II, the dominant story was that of Custer as a great leader alongside patriotic soldiers who were sacrificed on behalf of the nation. But in the 1960s and 1970s, during the era of the Vietnam War, historians (and artists and filmmakers) found themselves revisiting the narrative of the Battle of Little Bighorn and asking new questions about the victors and the vanquished.
I’m always suspicious of one-sided narratives. The Battle of Little Bighorn has always struck me as a palimpsest – a text you can write over and over from across a multitude of perspectives–Native versus non-Native, military versus civilian, and male versus female. Like Akira Kurosawa’s iconic film Rashomon, something happened on June 25, 1876. But there are literally dozens of ways to tell the story from across dozens of perspectives. We need to ask: Whose stories are we hearing? And whose have we been missing?
Whose stories are we missing?
The story of the Battle of Little Bighorn has predominantly come from military records, court proceedings, and historical analyses over the past 150 years. Native eyewitness accounts have long been recorded but have taken a back seat to these other forms of documentation. Yet, the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Arikira, and Crow have always had their own stories of what happened that have been recorded or passed down through family memory and oral traditions. And finally, you have stories from the land itself–which continues to hold memory and occasionally reveals its secrets of what happened in 1876.
You’ve created a multimedia presentation designed to tell the story of the battle. Why did you choose this format?
I’m a visual person—I document my rides with photographs, and I take photos at re-enactments [when I’m watching from the stands]. But I’m also a visual culture scholar, a story collector, and a storyteller. So I created this 60-minute public humanities lecture, “Notes of an Accidental Reenactor at the Battle of Little Bighorn,” as a creative way of taking people inside the world of historical reenactment itself – to give them a sense of what it looks, sounds, and feels like to actually be there.
Why does the Battle of Little Bighorn matter today?
We live at a time when our national memory is being contested. The stakes right now are so high. And, at the same time, in 2026, we’ve lost the ability to listen to each other across the political divide. We’ve become very invested in our own perspective, and we’re often only interested in winning the argument.
But what we see at the Battle of Little Bighorn—at Greasy Grass—is the Rashomon effect: Something happened. And it happened in this place. And the story of what happened is filtered through different voices and through different perspectives. How do we derive the essence of what happened? And how can that help us understand each other?