Robert M. Utley: Western Military Historian and Former Chief of the National Park Service
Utley's position on Washita can be observed throughout his distinguished writing career. The following passage is in his 2004 memoir:
"At my first meeting of the secretary's advisory board, held in October 1964 in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, I painfully discovered that undiplomatic candor could get one into serious trouble. The issue was the significance and park potential of the Washita Battlefield in Oklahoma, where General Custer won a signal victory over the Cheyennes in 1868. Here was a subject I knew much better than Frank Masland, a mustachioed, distinguished-looking carpet mogul from Pennsylvania and long a power on the board. When he gave his opinion that the Washita was a terrible massacre of women and children, I stood to say that, to put it bluntly, Frank Masland did not know what he was talking about."
"At my first meeting of the secretary's advisory board, held in October 1964 in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, I painfully discovered that undiplomatic candor could get one into serious trouble. The issue was the significance and park potential of the Washita Battlefield in Oklahoma, where General Custer won a signal victory over the Cheyennes in 1868. Here was a subject I knew much better than Frank Masland, a mustachioed, distinguished-looking carpet mogul from Pennsylvania and long a power on the board. When he gave his opinion that the Washita was a terrible massacre of women and children, I stood to say that, to put it bluntly, Frank Masland did not know what he was talking about."