Hugh Strait's True Tales & Cowboy Stories "Custer's Last Stand"

One of the best things about going back to Montana is seeing Hugh again. Hugh Strait was born in 1927 somewhere on the high plains near Belt, Montana.

His father had homesteaded a place coming out originally from Iowa. To make ends meet on that hardscrabble ranch he hired out as a teamster hauling freight with a tandem wagon outfit to the small towns and outlying ranches. Whenever he hit a steep grade he would have to unhitch the rear wagon, haul the front wagon up the grade, unhitch the team when he got to the top, bring it back down to hook up to the second wagon and haul it on up. He devised a set of chock blocks that hung on chains behind the rear wagon wheels so whenever the team got tired on a grade the blocks would engage and prevent the wagon from rolling back.

When Hugh was just a few years old the family picked up stakes and moved to Mission (St. Ignacius, Montana) on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana, there he grew up with various Native Americans for neighbors. This story involves one of them.

The Battle of the Little Bighorn —also known as Custer's Last Stand and, by the Native Americans involved, the Battle of Greasy Grass Creek—was an armed engagement between combined forces of Lakota and Northern Cheyenne against the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army. It occurred on June 25 and June 26, 1876, near the Little Bighorn River in eastern Montana Territory, near what is now Crow Agency, Montana. (from Wikipedia)

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• Hugh Strait
• Battle of the Little Bighorn
• Custer's Last Stand
• Battle of Greasy Grass Creek
• US Montana History