Resort and Country Club

Let me be out with it--I know I risk a really bad joke by saying it this way, but I'm going to do it anyway. Getting from the stone monument beside the road (from Litchfield, MN, go east on Hwy. 12 to 9 south to County Road 18, then east for three miles where you'll find the monument on the south side of the road.) --like I say, getting from the monument where Little Crow was killed from, say, Spicer, MN, the gateway to "up-north" Minnesota, wouldn't take all that long, as the crow flies, as they say. I know, I know!--that's an impossibly bad  joke because neither of us is a crow. What I'm saying is, getting to the monument is something of a chore, especially if you're accustomed to life on the square, as it exists through most of the rural Upper Midwest. "As the crow flies" it wouldn't take long, but neither of us is a crow.

Nor  was Little Crow. What I'm saying is, getting to that lonesome monument from just north of Spicer is a trick, believe me. It's not easy getting around all those lakes--county trunks like pick-up sticks trying desperately to stay out of the water. It's not close. Not at all close--maybe an hour, even as the crow flies.

But we're not talking about crows here, we're talking about a Native headman whose people looked to him for leadership when they really needed him, when they were starving, when they were helpless victims of crooked government agents who knew darn well that taking a job with an Indian agency meant making a fairly cushy living. 

If you're thinking war paint and tom-toms, don't. When Little Crow went to church with the missionaries, he wore a suit-and-tie, as if he were a good Presbyterian, which, after a fashion, he was. And when his starving people asked him to general their uprising against the endless swarm of immigrants moving into the lakes region, Little Crow, to his credit, told his people they didn't stand a chance in hell of stopping the flow because there were so many more of them--and more a'coming--than there were Dakota warriors.

But he'd do it, he told them, even though it was a fool's errand, which it was. For about a month, the Dakota War of 1862 was sheer horror, hundreds of newly-arrived homesteaders blindly attacked and slaughtered unmercifully. But soon enough, just as Little Crow had prophesied, the whites were simply too many and too strong, even though legions of Minnesotans were somewhere down South fighting to preserve the Union. 

When it was over, hundreds on both sides were dead and the cause of peace in the brand new state of Minnesota was ruptured, not to be repaired for hateful decades. 

Little Crow lit out north to Canada, but then, just a year later, he'd returned to the  homeland and was out picking raspberries with his son when a white farmer and his son spotted the two of them, then tangled a bit before Little Crow, headman of the Wahpakute Dakota, was felled by a bullet right there at said highway marker, where you can read the story for yourself. It's not pretty.

What was left of Little Crow was prize booty for a time, in the throes of the blood lust created by what-seemed senseless killing of so many homesteaders. Parts of his body, literally, were celebrated in town picnics. 

What little remains of it is buried respectfully in the Riverview Cemetery, Flandreau, South Dakota, where his gravestone stands with dignity in a circle of his people. 

I'm bringing all of that up because just a month ago or so we stayed at a place just north of Spicer, a well-kept resort on a golf course that prides itself in being a joy, a place called--I'm not making this up--Little Crow Resort and Country Club. I'm serious. 

You can always tell something of the age of a motel by the bathroom fixtures. Little Crow Resort is no longer brand new, but the course looked fastidiously groomed. It's a pretty place. Friendly staff, too, believe me, small-town folks. 

I asked the  woman behind the desk if she had any idea where the name of the place came from--"Little Crow Resort and Country Club." Was it a nearby lake maybe?--there are, after all, dozens of them.

"Oh, shoot," she said, searching the room behind me and over my shoulder. "The boss isn't here right now--he knows about stuff like that."

I smiled and thanked her for an especially good breakfast. 

Like I say, as the crow flies, maybe a half hour away from the place the old chief died. A good bit longer if you drive.