Dress ends silence of battle

Clifford Eaglefeathers, of the Northern Cheyenne Nation, talks about a dress linked to the Little Bighorn used in a class.

Empire State professor includes outfit in course

By Bethany Bump

Saratoga Springs After the native tribes of the Cheyenne and Lakota Sioux defeated Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, tribal leaders made a vow: for the next 100 summers, no one will speak of the battle.

Perhaps that ’s why the dress first emerged nearly 100 years later, descendants speculate. Made by Northern Cheyenne women in the aftermath of the 1876 battle, the dress was allegedly sewn from the uniforms of enemies left dead on the battlefield and passed down through four generations of Cheyenne women.

It first appeared in public in 1975 at an old location of the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture in Spokane, Wash., and would later be forgotten as the museum changed locations and collections were retired — until one day in late 2015, when a particularly dogged SUNY Empire State College professor would track it down and design a whole course around it.

Clifford Eaglefeathers, an adjunct faculty