NFPA Journal - Summer 2023 - 120

Looking Back
FIRE INCIDENTS AND
OTHER NOTABLE EVENTS
FROM SAFETY HISTORY
The Little Bighorn Battlefield
National Monument in
Montana, circa 1960. Surveys
of the site following a 1983
wildfire helped provide a
more accurate description
of the 1876 battle and largely
supported long discredited
Indian accounts of the event.
burn since the creation of
the monument in 1879, three
years after the famous battle
where 263 US Army soldiers,
including Lt. Col. George
Custer, died when they were
overwhelmed by a vastly superior
force of Lakota, Cheyenne,
and Arapaho warriors. Soon
after the 1983 fire, observers
at the site began finding artifacts
laid bare on the ground,
including bullet casings. The
battles that had occurred in
the area on June 25-26, 1876,
had long been surrounded by
REVEALED
BY FIRE
40 YEARS AFTER THE
LITTLE BIGHORN WILDFIRE
By Scott Sutherland
T
he summer of 1983 was hot and
dry in southeastern Montana,
and the Little Bighorn Battlefield
National Monument baked
under the August sun. When a
visitor flicked a cigarette from the window of
a moving car, it wasn't difficult to ignite the
roadside grasses, sagebrush, and yucca that had
been dried to a crisp. A small fire rapidly grew
into a fast-moving wildfire, sending visitors and
National Park Service employees running for
their lives. The visitor center and the Custer Battlefield
National Cemetery were spared, but the
fire scorched about 600 acres of the site, burning
off the vegetation down to the dirt.
The blaze was initially viewed as a catastrophe,
but not for long. The site hadn't experienced a
120 | NFPA JOURNAL * SUMMER 2023
questions-including why Custer and his men of the 7th Cavalry had moved
and taken up the positions they did-and historians recognized that these
newly revealed artifacts could hold clues as to what may have occurred.
A series of archaeological surveys of the site were conducted, and the artifacts-especially
the spent bullet casings-indeed told a story. Using metal
detectors, researchers located and identified casings used by the US Army soldiers
and by the Indian fighters, and mapped patterns in the casings' dispersal
that indicated skirmish lines and other important points of engagement.
Researchers also identified marks made in the casings by a weapon's firing
pin-a unique signature that helped them determine that Indian fighters had
retrieved US Army weapons from the decimated forces at Little Bighorn and
used them to fight other federal troops miles away.
Modern historians have scoffed at the notion that there were " no witnesses "
to Little Bighorn as a result of Custer's troops being wiped out to a man-in
fact, there were as many as 2,000 eyewitnesses in the form of the Indian
fighters. A wealth of this eyewitness testimony existed, but for a century it was
given little regard due to deep-seated biases against Native Americans. But
the surveys conducted of Little Bighorn following the 1983 wildfire suggested
a series of events that largely corroborated the Native American accounts.
Questions remain, but the historical record of Little Bighorn has been forever
altered; at the battlefield monument, the focus of its programming shifted
and the interpretive program was changed, with a greater emphasis on the
Indian account. The fog of war may not have lifted, but in certain spots, at
least, it might not be quite as dense.
THE NFPA LIBRARY AND ARCHIVE holds a rich collection of books, reports, and photographs that
document important moments in fire history. To provide better electronic access for researchers and
to preserve our unique archival holdings, work has begun to digitize the files of the Fire Record Department,
the original NFPA department responsible for collecting and analyzing information and compiling
statistics about key fires and other events. The incidents featured in " Looking Back " are drawn from this
collection and will eventually be part of NFPA's online archive. For information, visit nfpa.org/library.
HARVEY MESTON/ARCHIVE PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES

http://www.nfpa.org/library

NFPA Journal - Summer 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - Summer 2023