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Custer's 'Last Flag' sold for $2.2 million 
BILLINGS, Mont. – The only U.S. flag not captured or lost during George Armstrong Custer's Last Stand at the Battle of Little Bighorn in southeastern Montana sold at auction Friday for $2.2 million.

The buyer was identified by the auction house Sotheby's in New York as an American private collector. Frayed, torn, and with possible bloodstains, the flag had been valued before its sale at up to $5 million.

Since 1895, the 7th U.S. Cavalry flag — known as a "guidon" for its swallow-tailed shape — had been the property of the Detroit Institute of Arts, which paid just $54 for it.

Custer and more than 200 troopers were massacred by Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors in the infamous 1876 battle. Of the five guidons carried by Custer's battalion only one was immediately recovered, from beneath the body of a fallen trooper... 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101210/ap_on_re_us/us_custer_s_last_flag (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101210/ap_on_re_us/us_custer_s_last_flag)

What an awesome piece of American history.  I hope it winds up somewhere that the public can view it someday.

And, that even more people see Little Big Horn for what it really was-the last great battle for the American West.  From the Great Plains and the Midwest, every American Indian nation united for the land they loved. And rightfully so.

And sadly, it also led to the shameful deeds of the Indian agency later on, as Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were murdered by reservation police, and the Lakota wrongfully massacred at Wounded Knee for their refusal to stop The Ghost Dance (among other things.)

When I think of the American Indian, the word "mistreated" is an understatement. 

And when SITTING BULL was shot to death, his horse reared up, trained in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show to do so at the sound of gun shots, and to the Native American witnesses, SITTING BULL's horse performed the Ghost Dance. 

Yes, such was said.

The Paiute shaman Wovoka was resp. for prophesizing The Ghost Dance as the magic that would cause the buffalo to return, and for the ways of The People to return also.

Much of it spoke of pure desperation, for want of  anything to work in their favor. While it failed, it did unite the people and give them one last surge of pride in who they were and what they meant to the land. 

And that has been passed on into today. As it should be. They have not forgotten their unique heritage or their exclusive roles in American history.  More than any other people, the American Indians truly gave North America it's history.