General Custer Rides Again Via McDonald"s Happy Meals

McDonald's has begun selling Happy Meals complete with a toy of General Custer. Why are Indian activists disturbed by this idea?

Those wonderful people at McDonald's must have completely lost every fiber of sensitivity when they began selling Happy Meals, in the Dakotas, with, of all things, a gift, a toy, a Custer toy. The accompanying card read, " Ever heard of Custer's last stand? It was named after George Armstrong Custer who lead his troops into the battle at Little Big Horn."

Belva Morrison, Indian child welfare specialist for the Lakota Law Project, said, "It is insensitive for local merchants to hand out these dolls where there is a large Indian population. They should have thought twice about promoting these figurines. I don't believe we're overreacting. I think we are not tolerating things like this anymore. They're targeting young kids whose minds are easily impressed."

So what's the big deal? It seems that ole "Golden Hair" Custer went on an Indian killing raid with his Cavalry in Indian Territory ( Oklahoma) , killing Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Cherokee back in 1868. ( I hate dates, too, but stay with me on this.) Eight years later, Custer and 700 men of his 7th cavalry were wiped completely out by the Lakota at a place called "Little Big Horn" at Montana, just a rock's throw from South Dakota.

Make no mistake the Lakota (Sioux) had a complete history of what happened in Oklahoma at the Battle of Washita, but they also knew full well that Custer was responsible for the discovering of gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota that led to the theft of over $120,000,000 of that precious asset on sacred land that has never been returned.

So one can imagine the disturbing sight of having a child reach into to his/her Happy Meal only to find a figurine that would anger any Native American parent who wasn't asleep in history class or listened intently to his family oral history

At last report customers in the Rapid City area were told there were no more Custer dolls in the Happy Meals. Sadly, the PR folks at Mickey D's didn't have the corporate sense or historic knowledge to correct such a huge mistake