The Roses of Prose would like to welcome today's guest blogger, SS Hampton, Sr.
“Mythology: 2: a body of myths: as a: the myths dealing
with the gods, demigods, and legendary heroes of a particular people”and “4: a
popular belief or assumption that has grown up around someone or something”
(www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mythology).
Mythology, particularly Greek and Roman mythology, has
been a rich source mined by generations of painters, writers, and moviemakers. For
example, Proserpine, the Roman
goddess who lived “in the underworld during Winter” as painted in 1874 by
English artist Dante Gabriel Rosetti of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proserpine_(Rossetti_painting). William Shakespeare
wrote Troilus and Cressida, set
against the backdrop of the Trojan War: “Troilus, a brother of Paris, falls in love with Cressida. She loves
him, too, but plays hard to get…” (www.william-shakespeare.info/shakespeare-play-troilus-and-cressida.htm).
And of course, who can forget the story of the search for the Golden Fleece by Jason and the Argonauts (1963), produced
by Charles H. Schneer and special effects maestro, associate producer Ray
Harryhausen (www.imdb.com/title/tt0057197/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast).
Today, mythology is a thing of the past, relegated to
cultures long gone. Even when one considers the various myths of a country’s indigenous
population, they are not accorded the same status as those of Egypt, Greece,
Rome, or even India.
Thus, mythology is a thing of the distant past, right?
Maybe, maybe not.
The Alamo (February 23-March
6, 1836) probably comes close. With all due respect to those doomed defenders,
there is another battle that may approach the category of an American Western
Myth.
The Battle
of the Little Bighorn. June 25, 1876. George Armstrong Custer. The 7th Cavalry
Regiment. Companies C, E, F, I, and L. Calhoun Hill. Last Stand Hill. Sitting
Bull. Crazy Horse. Rain-in-the-Face. Until recently General Custer’s movements
after dividing his command was an enduring mystery that can largely be traced
to ignoring the eyewitness statements of victorious Native warriors who fought
the cavalrymen.
“Nearly 134 years after his last stand, a military
debacle that cost the lives of all 210 men under his immediate command, George
Armstrong Custer remains such an iconic figure in the American pageant that
mere mention of his name evokes an entirely overromanticized era in the
American West” (“The Last Stand by Nathaniel Pilbrick”, Bruce Barcott,
www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/books/review/Barcott-t.html?pagewanted=all).
To catalogue the various paintings, films, television
programs, radio programs, fiction, and even music spawned by the Last Stand
would be a near impossible task—a Herculean task.
When I was a little kid I sometimes sat up at night and
stared at a lithograph of a painting placed on the wall above my bed. In the
moonlight that streamed through the window I counted the blue-clothed forms of
cavalrymen and studied their faces; a few were fighting, most were dead or
dying, and all were being overwhelmed by numberless warriors charging through
dust clouds. Custer stood in the center in buckskins, reversed pistol in one
hand, a saber in another. Fading into the distance behind him and a wall of
mounted warriors riding toward him was a rolling plain with portions of a river
visible.
“Custer’s Last Fight” originally painted by Cassilly
Adams in 1884, and “revised,” so to speak, by Otto Becker in 1896 and
distributed by the Anheuser Busch Brewing Association
(www.westernartandarchitecture.com/articles/western-art-and-architecture/april-may-2012/188/custer-s-last-fight.html)
was my first introduction to the Battle
of the Little Bighorn.
Many years later I visited the battlefield. And I
returned…again, and again. Perhaps half a dozen times in all. Before the
battlefield was closed, I walked down to Deep Ravine where the bodies of
Company E troopers had been seen (for whatever reason, I always had a strong
interest in Company E). Sometimes I walked along the road on Battle Ridge that
looped around Calhoun Hill. Sometimes I stood by the fence and studied the
cluster of gravestones that marked the Last Stand.
As a photographer, I have photographed at the battlefield
while working on a photographic autobiography (due to a family dispute, a
number of years ago the entire mounted and framed exhibit ended up in the city
dump except for one photograph—the person who found that photograph in a
storage unit e-mailed me to verify that I was the photographer, and then she
disappeared). As I writer I have touched on the Little Bighorn though none of
the stories have been published yet.
One thing stands out regarding my visits to the Little
Bighorn.
Whenever I visit the battlefield I always have a strong
sense of inner peace. I don’t know why.
“The Ferryman.” Ed. Mel
Jacob. Melange Books, Forthcoming
July 2012.
ISBN:
978-1-61235-414-9
BLURB: Sometimes even
a servant of the gods may become curious and intrigued by other possibilities
beyond their assigned role, which threatens to upset everything. Charon the
Ferryman witnessed an act of love when a little girl offered him a song bird to
pay for her grandfather’s shade to be ferried across the Styx.
And the shade of a barbarian woman taught him that there was more than the
underworld…
EXCERPT: Strong
sunlight faded to a pale shadow of itself as if drained of life to create deep
shadows along the sloping floor and the uneven walls of the long cavern
entrance. Long, narrow stalactites hung from the cavern roof and stalagmites of
various heights and thicknesses angled upward from the floor, resembling the
scattered, uneven teeth of a monstrous dragon’s mouth. Flowstone along the
widening cavern walls had once oozed onto the cavern floor to form rolling
stone waves that became a wide, sandy beach to disappear into the shadows.
The cavern roof arched upward, lost
to sight save for the pale tips of hanging stalactites. The scattered
stalagmites marched into the rippling surface of dark waters. A thick gray mist
coated the water that splashed onto the beach. The mist swirled into strange
formations caused by a moaning, chilly wind that swept out of the darkness and
up the long tunnel.
From deep within the darkness of the
gigantic cavern came the ghostly notes of pipes and the echoing steady rhythmic
beat of a drum. Torches along the beach burst into flickering life as their
flames danced to the ghostly rhythm of the pipes.
The torchlight revealed pale shades,
the spirits, of weeping men, women, and children, who shuffled through the sand
along the edge of the waters of the River Styx. The river was one of the dark
rivers of Hades, the underworld of the dead. The sunlight filtering into the
cavern rippled with the shadows of weeping shades descending the length of the
cavern entrance. A gilded figure with torch held high lit the way before them.
The music grew louder. A dark shape,
lighter than the darkness, appeared in the distance. The gathering shades
milled at the water’s edge and waited as the bow of a boat fitted with a bronze
beak sliced through the misty waters. A large red eye rimmed in black decorated
each side of the polished wood bow. On both sides of the bow square wooden
boxes dangled bronze anchors. Behind that lay a narrow platform from a tall,
narrow, wooden walkway rose into the chill air. An angled black bow sail and a
large black square sail behind it strained with the moaning wind…
SS Hampton, Sr. is a
full-blood Choctaw of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, a divorced grandfather to
13 wonderful grandchildren, a published photographer and photojournalist, and a
member of the Military Writers Society of America. He is a serving member of
the Army National Guard with the rank of staff sergeant, with prior service in
the active duty Army (1974-1985), the Army Individual Ready Reserve (1985-1995)
(mobilized for the Persian Gulf War), and enlisted in the Army National Guard
in October 2004, after which he was mobilized for Federal active duty for
almost three years. Hampton
is a veteran of Operations Noble Eagle (2004-2006) and Iraqi Freedom
(2006-2007); he has recently been told that he must retire from the Army
National Guard on 1 July 2013. His writings have appeared as stand-alone
stories and in anthologies from Dark Opus Press, Edge Science Fiction &
Fantasy, Melange Books, Musa Publishing, MuseItUp Publishing, Ravenous Romance,
and as stand-alone stories in Horror Bound Magazine, The Harrow, and River Walk
Journal, among others. Second-career goals include becoming a painter and studying
for a degree in photography and anthropology—hopefully to someday work in and
photograph underwater archaeology. After 12 years of brown desert in the
Southwest and overseas, he misses the Rocky Mountains,
yellow aspens in the fall, running rivers, and a warm fireplace during snowy
winters. As of December 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada, Hampton
officially became a homeless Iraq War veteran.
Melange Books
Musa Publishing
MuseItUp Publishing
Amazon.com Author Page
Amazon.com. UK Author Page
Goodreads Author Page
4 comments:
I love the history of the American West and studied it in college. Thanks for sharing with us today!
Jannine,
Some aspects of the history of the American West I enjoy. No matter how many books and magazines I read about the Little Bighorn, I remain fascinated about the battle, and probably always will. Thanks for visiting!
Interesting post! I've never studied much about Custer, or that battle, but you intrigued me enough that I did some reading. Thanks!
Leah,
Well, thank you! I'm glad you liked the post. Thanks for visiting, and have a great week!
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