This spring, the popular cemetery walking tours will start up again and history buffs will file through the headstones in the graveyard on York Boulevard behind a guide who will point out the markers and vaults of Hamilton’s famous people of yesteryear.
The Lands, Beasleys and scores of other builders of our city will garner the rapt attention of the camera-clicking crowd.
One bleached and rather simple stone with a five pointed star on it will, however, cause the cameras to click and zip rapid-fire. Under the star reads the inscription, “William Winer Cooke, Colonel, 7th. U.S. Cavalry. Killed in action, Little Big Horn, June 25th 1876.”
The tour guide will tell you of that grotesque battle where Col. George Custer, commander of the 7th Cavalry, fought and died there. He, along with William Winer Cooke, his second in command, stood firing their pistols till the last man fell.
Chief Sitting Bull and his Sioux and Cheyenne warriors scalped and ravaged the bodies of 262 Long Knives. In the chief’s own words: “These men who came with long hair, were as good men as ever fought!”
U.S. policy at the time was to uproot native tribes across the west and push them onto reservations. In the process, Custer went over the line on many occasions such as the massacre at Washita and and Sandcreek, where every man, woman, child, horse and dog were butchered.
Little Big Horn was retribution for Custer’s deceit and murderous assault on native people. How odd it is that we feature the headstone, life and times of William Cooke, expat Canadian from Mt. Pleasant and Hamilton, who plunged his sabre into Indian women and blew the heads of old men with his big Colt revolver. Wonder if Paul Bernardo’s grave will get the same attention after his murderous life is ended?
It shames me terribly that we would frame Cooke as some sort of legendary, dashing Cavalry officer when in fact, the Civil War that he enrolled in was over and he returned a few years later to join his weird friend Custer on a bloody trail of butchery and carnage under the pretext of helping the government put all Indians on reserves.
Sitting Bull and his band found sanctuary in Canada with the Great White Mother Victoria, safe from the ruthless Long Knives.
As the tourists trickle along amongst the stones, none are told of some real heroes that lay there unnoticed, their inscriptions worn away with time and lack of care. They are, but a few of Hamilton’s real heroes from a short war that came to Hamilton’s doorstep.
Two  young victims of the Fenian Battle at Ridgeway in 1866 were buried here, Pte. Daniel Laker and  Pte. James Cahill of the old XIIIth Battalion. Pte. Laratt Smith, also XIIIth, was buried in Toronto and Pte. James Henry Morrison, XIIIth, only 17, was buried in St. Luke’s churchyard in Burlington, all with full military honours.
These four young men, who were all treated at our Auchmar House, died of fatigue and exposure caused by lack of good equipment provided by the government.
These boys, first casualties of Hamilton’s volunteer militia, deserve recognition. Next article to feature Pte. Morrison’s sad story. Tune in.
Mountain historian Colwyn Beynon can be reached at crsw389@sympatico.ca.