MY CONTRIBUTION to the Henry Holden debate stems from a year long trip to America in 2002 when I toured the country in a small mobile home.

The trip was funded with compensation from a long legal battle. I came back flat broke but you cannot put a monetary value on the experience. As well as the Little Big Horn, I visited a number of other famous sites.

Although I speak out against the atrocities committed against the natives by the US army, it must be remembered that they were hardly paragons of virtue themselves. Their whole culture was based on tribal warfare in which stronger tribes were constantly driving weaker tribes off their land.

Ultimately all the Native American Indians lost their land to even stronger tribes in the shape of the European immigrants, with their greater numbers and better weapons.

They may have lost their way of life but they ultimately gained peace and security. That is why there are more Native Americans alive today than at any other time of their history.

This led to an amusing incident. Walking through the town of Captain, famously the home of Billy the Kidd, I was approached by the two men, and two women asking for directions. They fell about laughing when they discovered that of all the people they could ask, they had chosen a British tourist who had only just arrived himself.

One of the men told me that he was not American, but native American Indian. I asked what tribe and he replied: “I am Navajo but my wife, she is half savage, half coyote”.

At this point his wife gave him a clout around the neck. He looked at me very sheepishly and said “My wife is also Chief.”

Stuart Bower, Hallyburton Road, Hove