Posts Tagged ‘Charles Varnum’
Half Yellow Face (Ischu Shi Dish) was in the valley and hilltop fights. A Crow Indian scout, he was enlisted in the 7th Infantry on April 10, 1876, for six months by Lt. James Bradley. He was the leader of the Crow Scouts. On detached service from June 21 with the 7th Cavalry, he was assigned to Major Reno’s column. He accompanied Lt. Charles Varnum on the trip to the Crow’s Nest, arriving there about 2.30am, June 25. He was one of ten Indian scouts who participated in the Valley fight on the skirmish line with the Reno column. For more details on all the Crow Scouts, see Graham, The Custer Myth, pp. 7 – 27.
(Source: Custer & Company: Walter Camp’s Notes on the Custer Fight, edited by Bruce R. Liddic and Paul Harbaugh [University of Nebraska Press, 1998], p. 72)
Graham (op. cit., p. 9) notes that “‘the official report of Col. M. V. Sheridan of 20 July 1877* [clearly indicates] that neither Curley nor Half Yellow Face, both of whom accompanied him to the battlefield in 1877, were able to furnish any information of value concerning Custer’s fight. . . .”
*Sheridan’s report on the expedition to better bury the dead of Custer’s command and recover the bodies of Custer and other officers.
Camp (op. cit., p. 118), writing of White Swan notes: “He [White Swan] was wounded in the Reno valley fight. He was deaf and after he was wounded twice, still wanted to stand and fight the Sioux, but Half Yellow Face prevailed upon him to get out of there and he did so and Half Yellow Face led White Swan’s horse up the bluffs and White Swan thus rode his own horse up. Now Half Yellow Face made a travois and took him to the boat. He sat doubled up between the two travois poles just behind the horse and was carried very nicely and many of the soldiers commented on his ingenuity.”
I’ve not been able to locate a note of Half Yellow Face’s date and place of death.
— “George Armstrong Custer”
Forked Horn was an Arikara scout who was present at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Born in 1839, Dakota Territory
Enlisted with the Seventh Cavalry on April 27, 1876
In valley and hilltop fights at the Battle of the Little Bighorn (June 25-26, 1876)
Died in 1894
— Diane Merkel
Forked Horn is mentioned in “The Arikara Narrative of Custer’s campaign and the Battle of the Little Bighorn” by Orin B. Libby (editor) several times.
He was one time the leader of an Arikara scouting party during the march to the Little Bighorn valley. Later he was in the fight with Reno, fighting in the brush along with Young Hawk.
After the fighting Forked Horn, several Arikaras, Varnum, Gerard and others went down to look for Custer’s body. Then he volunteered with Young Hawk to go to the deserted Sioux camp for dried meat. There they found the body of a scout they thought was Bloody Knife. (See narrative of Young Hawk.)
It is also stated later in the book that Forked Horn was the father of Young Hawk. He was born about 1815 (?) and he died in 1894.