The Native American tribes had pet names for George Armstrong Custer. The Crow called him Child of the Morning Star, the Cheyenne labeled him Yellow Hair, but the Lakota Sioux referred to him as Long Hair, even though a barber had cut off his curly blond locks, days before his Last Stand.

A major general when the Civil War ended, but a Lieutenant Colonel during the Indian Wars in the Dakota’s and Montana, Custer harbored more lofty ambitions than only serving in the U. S. Army.

At least that is what Stephen E. Ambrose, a late twentieth-century U. S. historian, hinted at in his dual biography, Crazy Horse and Custer.

A strong Democrat, Custer was tired of seeing Republican administrations control the White House. Abraham Lincoln was first elected in 1860, then again in 1864, but then his Vice-President, Andrew Johnson, completed his second term after John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln.

Former Army General U. S. Grant, a Republican, won election in 1868 and again in 1872, but his administration was marred by appalling scandals that soured the American public.

In the spring of 1876, the Democrats decided to hold their Presidential convention out west, in St. Louis, and scheduled it to begin on June 27. This time they wanted to pick a winner, and a few of the delegates began to think that a winning boy general, like Custer, only thirty-six, stood a fair chance.

Americans love their generals, men like George Washington, William Henry Harrison, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, and U.S. Grant, who all became a U.S. President.

Although anchorman in his graduating class of 1861, at West Point, 34th out of 34 graduates, Custer proved himself during the Civil War. He was at the first battle at Bull Run, at Antietam, at Gettysburg, in the ferocious Wilderness battle, and at Appomattox, the final battle.

He achieved fame by his daring style, by taking immense chances in battle and winning, and by riding his horse out in front of his famous 7th Cavalry.

Custer understood that he needed a decisive battle over the Sioux now, “if he wanted to stampede the Democratic Convention,” in St. Louis late in the month. Hence, he drove his men and his horses hard, mile after mile, day after day in those hot June days, into Montana.

“He told his favorite scout, Bloody Knife, and the Arikara scouts that he was planning to become the Great White Father,” in other words President of the United States.

When near the Sioux, Bloody Knife rode ahead and saw the enemy congregated on the Little Bighorn. He came away aghast, and told Custer to exercise caution, that “there were more Sioux ahead than the soldiers had bullets, enough Indians to keep the 7th Cavalry busy fighting for two days.”

Custer waved caution aside, and said that “the largest Indian camp on the North American continent is ahead, and I am going to attack it. I could whip all the Indians on the Continent with the 7th Cavalry.” The day was June 25.

That same day, Crazy Horse declared to his men, “It is a good day to fight! It is a good day to die!”

Instead of keeping his 611 men together, Custer divided them into four parts, a decision that proved a mistake, because the Sioux had as many as 3,000 warriors, and they were waiting for him.

Plus, Custer’s men were exhausted. Sitting Bull saw them and later said, “they were too tired. When they rode up, their horses were tired, and they were tired. When they got off from their horses they could not stand firmly on their feet. They swayed to and fro.”

Custer fought his final battle on a bluff above the Little Bighorn, renamed Custer’s Hill. The next year, a reporter from the New York Herald quizzed Sitting Bull who said, “Long Hair stood like a sheaf of corn with all the ears fallen around him. He killed a man when he fell. He laughed.”

The reporter asked, “You mean he cried out?” “No,” the chief said, “he laughed. He had fired his last shot.”

Stephen E. Ambrose wrote, “Custer had gambled all his life. It was a winner-take-all game, and Custer would have played it again if given the chance. He laughed. Then he died.”

Would a daredevil like Custer have made a good President? Ambrose wrote, “Custer probably would not have been much worse than the men who did hold the job for the remainder of the nineteenth century. The country would have survived.”

A quote that I read years ago, but could not find today, suggests that “the intelligence levels of the Presidents who followed Lincoln disproves evolution, the idea that a species progresses into a better, more capable living being.” It was not so with Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, and Harrison.

The Democratic candidate for President in 1876, Samuel Tilden, won the popular vote, but the election was thrown out because of charges of fraud. A commission gave the presidency instead to Rutherford B. Hayes, another Republican.

Steve Jobs gave the commencement address at Stanford University on June 14, 2005. In it, he told three stories. The first was how he dropped out of Reed College, in Portland, Oregon. The second was how a manager fired him from the company that he and Steve Wozniak had started in a garage.

The third story was about his pending death, due to a pancreatic cancer diagnosis a year before.

Then, after he finished the three stories, he said, “When I was young, there was an amazing publication called “The Whole Earth Catalog,” which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand, not far from here in Menlo Park, California.

“This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like [a search engine] in paperback form, 35 years before [a search engine] came along. It was overflowing with neat tools and great notions.”

Now I wonder why Steve Jobs decided to attach those two paragraphs about a catalog from 1968, to his address to graduates at Stanford. Yet, I find Jobs’s quote most interesting.

I remember, when in high school in the late 1960’s, I glanced once or twice at “The Whole Earth Catalog,” but I never ordered anything from it. I do remember the distinctive picture of planet Earth on the catalog’s front cover, taken by an ATS-3 satellite, but I fail to remember any of the listings inside.

On the internet, in recent days, I found a copy of the first edition from 1968. Subtitled “Access to Tools,” it is 62 pages long, and is a cut and paste catalog. Each listing gives a picture of an item, its price, an address where a buyer can mail a check, plus a review of the listing.

For example, on page 5 is the book, Cosmic View: The Universe in 40 Jumps. Priced at $3.75, the review says, “It is the bestseller of the Whole Earth Catalog.”

There are books on how to build a tipi, or a Japanese-styled house, or design Aladdin Kerosene lamps, set up bee-keeping, find mushrooms, perform yoga, play a game called Dr. Nim, or build computers. On page 55, a listing offers “700 Science Experiments for Everyone,” at a price of $4.00.

A buyer could buy catalogs that offer Brookstone Tools or Jensen Tools, plus a Miners Catalog, and a Blasters’ Handbook, and Glenn’s Auto Repair Manual, published by Chilton. There are listings on self-hypnotism, psycho-cybernetics, a Yaqui Way of Knowledge, etc. Something for everyone.

A free L.L. Bean Catalog is offered on pages 47-48. The reviewer says, “The Bean catalog is the model for the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG.” Tandy Leather & Crafts Catalog is found on page 31.

The final listing is on page 61, and is “The I Ching, or the Book of Changes.”

Looking at it today, the “Whole Earth Catalog” resembles an on-paper form of the internet. At the time though it was “a counterculture magazine that stressed self-sufficiency, a do-it-yourself mindset, and alternative forms of education.” Hippies and flower children loved it.

Stewart Brand lives on. He is 83 years old, an old hippy who resides on California’s coast in a houseboat, and today he is found working on a “Clock of the Long Now,” a timepiece that will reside inside a cave within a mountain in southwest Texas. Its intent: track time for 10,000 years.

Brand shies away from the title of futurist. Instead, he moves and explores in terms of “long-term thinking.” He is “unwavering in his optimism about the future,” certain that “humanity’s future lies in our ability to develop technology.” “Progress,” he says, “consists of adding more options.”

Twenty years ago, Brand changed his mind about nuclear energy, after he discovered that some experts believed new nuclear technologies would be found to use what is now considered nuclear waste. That changed the way he thought about the future in general.”

Some time ago, Brand tweeted: “Interesting: how much bad news is anecdotal, and good news is statistical, and how invisible the statistical is.” I struggle with what he means, but I guess Brand intends to say that bad news is an anecdote, a recent news item that catches our attention and then fades away.

The good news though, he says, is buried unseen in the statistics, in the accumulation of multiple numbers of anecdotes that point upwards, indicating a positive human-benefiting trend. Hence, his healthy optimism about the future.

Steve Jobs dropped out of college, but he learned calligraphy there. He lost his job, but he met the love of his life, his wife, and he formed his own company that his previous company then bought. He was back. It was most misfortunate though that cancer ended his life on October 5, 2011.

At the end of his speech to Stanford’s graduates, Jobs said he remembers that on the back cover of the final issue of the “Whole Earth Catalog” there appeared the words, “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

Jobs says, “I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.”

Tony Hillerman grew up in Oklahoma, and attended St. Mary’s Academy, a boarding school intended for Native American girls. One of the few boys permitted to attend, he developed a sensitivity for the various Native American cultures, mythologies, and religions.

He joined the U.S. Army in 1943, was wounded in battle in 1945, during World War II, and suffered for several months with broken legs, foot, ankle; plus facial burns, and temporary blindness.

A decade later, Tony was visiting Crownpoint, New Mexico, when he met a group of Navajos, who were riding horses, dressed in feathers, and wearing face paint. He was most curious and learned that:

“They had been holding a Navajo Enemy Way, a ceremony for a soldier, a curing ritual that exorcises all traces of the enemy from those returning from battle. Mr. Hillerman had himself just returned from the war after a long convalescence.

“ He was so moved by the ceremony and stirred by the rugged landscape that he resolved to live there,” in New Mexico.

The Enemy Way is the Navajo people’s method of addressing PSTD, attempting to heal and cleanse a soldier’s mind of memories of desperate and brutal battles in a foreign war.

All together, Navajo “singers,” perform almost 60 different ceremonies, such as: BlessingWay, Fire Dance, Night Chantway, Holy Ways, Evil Ways, and War Ceremonials. Included in each are songs, prayers, magical rituals, prayer sticks, masked dancers, and dry paintings with colored sands.

Each ceremony may last a couple of days, or as many as nine days. The singers display prodigious memory skills, reciting hundreds of words contained within the dozens of songs, prayers, and chants.

Tony Hillerman entitled his first fiction book The Blessing Way. In it, he included Lt. Joe Leaphorn.

Legends, folklores, and myths. No matter how civilized and sophisticated, a given culture retains stories of their people’s origin and progress from the distant past into the current moment. It is memory personified, and brought forward into the present.

The English refer back to Robin Hood of Sherwood forest, who outfoxed the Sheriff of Nottingham, and to St. George taking on a dragon. Certain Celtic gods—Dagda, Oestre, and Macha—find their way into the folklore of the Scottish, Irish, and Welsh people.

For those brave in battle, Norsemen warriors were promised a throne in Valhalla, a hall in Asgard, the Vikings’ heavenly home. Americans can point with pride to the giant Paul Bunyan, his huge blue ox named Babe, and also to Pecos Bill, who ropes and rides a tornado.

Brer Rabbit’s stories were printed in America, but they drew deep from African folklore.

And then there were the ancient Greeks. Their gods and goddesses were fun-loving, observant of human ways, anxious to redirect human beings’ passions, but human-like. “What is invisible is made visible.” Again, it is memory personified.

There was Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Hephaestus, Aphrodite, Hermes, Dionysius, plus Hades, god of the underworld. To get into Hades, a dead person paid a fee to a ferryman named Charon, who carried that person’s soul across the River Styx.

Myths feature battles between deities, between good and evil forces, or tell of an ordinary person expected to perform superhuman acts, and thus transform himself into a hero. An example is Hercules.

Myths attempt to explain natural events. Zeus throws a bolt from Mount Olympus, and the ancient Greeks heard thunder and witnessed lightning. Myths contain early science, early literature, and early religion, and yet they provide wonderful entertainment and delightful story-telling.

Something is lost when the myths die, as they all do.

The current month is May. Over two thousand years ago, Roman soldiers in Britain celebrated the arrival of spring by dancing around a tree, festooned with ribbons, and thanking their goddess Flora. Hence, a Maypole.

The first of May marked the Romans’ festival of flowers. Hence, a May basket, filled with flowers.

In addition, May features Mothers’ Day, but for the Navajo, a Blessing Way, an initiation ceremony, when maidens become mothers for the first time. Also, May features Memorial Day, a day set aside to honor human memory, of those loved ones who have passed on during a war or during a lull in wars.

At any given moment, we retain memories of past scenes, of people we have met, of their faces, of their emotions that we have felt. We also sense the future, a series of blank pages, each with endless opportunities. If we want, we turn our memories into lessons, and our opportunities into challenges.

This weekend, try to remember and reflect upon each of your loved ones, those who have passed on, and those who still live. We can celebrate Memorial Day.

In recent days, I have re-read David L. Lindsay’s novel, Body of Truth. In it, he describes a cruel and gruesome civil war that terrorized the people of Guatemala for thirty-six years, from 1960 until 1996. It was the federal government, then run by a series of generals, who attacked the poorest of its citizens.

A United Nations report, dated March 1, 1999, declared that, “An estimated 200,000 Guatemalans were killed during the civil war, including at least 40,000 persons who disappeared.”

David L. Lindsay says the same thing, but he resorts to far more graphic terms.

“Guatemala was a Central American country wracked by a succession of ruling generals who had gained their authority through coups and countercoups and established a tradition of political violence that became so entrenched as a way of life that the country would be forever stained by it.

“It was cruel beyond imagination, and it engendered death squads. Guatemala was one enormous killing field. Death squads operated with impunity. No matter who lived in the presidential residence, the army ruled. The generals were busy executioners.”

A principle emerges. If the civilians—presidents, lawmakers and judges—relinquish their power to the generals, one can expect mass killings to result, because no government power can stop them.

Also, in recent days, I have re-read Bruce Catton’s article, “American Traditions,” that appeared in the June 1963 edition of American Heritage. Catton was a prolific and popular mid-twentieth-century American Civil War historian, who wrote engaging accounts of the Civil War’s battles.

In “American Traditions,” four pages long, he presents a series of thought-provoking statements:

“We are just a little too fond of saying our nation draws its greatest strength from the ancient traditions of American democracy.” “We like to believe that in time of crisis, we can rely upon them.”

“They will rescue us either from the results of our own folly, or from the evils created by fellow citizens in whom the traditions never took root.”

“Sometimes it pays to see just what these saving traditions are, and where they can be found. Who are their guardians? How do the best traditions take shape? How do we know when we are doing them? Democracy’s noble traditions can be vague; what happens when we need to make them concrete?

“It is easy to become very fuzzy-minded about American traditions. The things that make democracy work are uncatalogued and various, but they arise from the faith of the individual citizen.”

“The essence of the democratic tradition grows out of this simple notion about the individual citizen’s duty, a duty that is self-imposed, that the people involved in a democratic society owe something to the society of which they are a part.”

I—like most readers I would suspect—have to re-read each of Catton’s sentences a number of times to catch and appreciate his full meaning.

Although he says that these democratic traditions are “uncatalogued, various, vague, and fuzzy-minded,” I contend that each begins with the concept of “self-rule,” that in each U.S. citizen’s home, village, town, city, county, state, and country, it is the people who rule themselves.

Not an army, not a general, not an autocrat, not a dictator. Only the people. That is liberty.

The words, “We the people,” still ring as true today, as they did in 1787, when the Founding Fathers drafted a document, the U. S. Constitution. Its Preamble declares:

“We the People of the United States in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Six reasons for a new governing document.

Catton then tells a story of one man who in a quiet way returned to America’s democratic traditions, after drifting far from them. In April of 1865, Robert E. Lee, general of the Confederacy, surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, general of the Union, at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.

Catton writes, “Lee was an aristocrat who had very little use for democracy, and he devoted his immense talents to the task of destroying the government that the democracy had established. In the end he failed.”

“A few days after Appomattox, one of Lee’s officers urged him to take to the hills with his army and carry on guerrilla warfare, but Lee rejected the advice. ‘We would bring on a state of affairs it would take the country years to recover from.’ He would let the past be the past, and work for the future.”

The democratic traditions work. Like a magnet, they pull sensible people toward them. Catton said it best. “The people deserve decent government, and they will insist on getting it once qualified people show them how to do it.”