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Posts Tagged ‘Little Bighorn’

I meant to put these up ages ago. These jpgs have been sitting on my computer staring at me for a looong time. So I finally got tired of being lazy and put them up.

These are off my video camera so apologies for lack of crispness.

The first video frame is of Deer Medicine Rock itself. Deer Medicine Rock currently sits on Jack Bailey’s farm just on the north side of the Northern Cheyenne Rez on the road from Lame Deer. His family has owned the land since about 1878.

Floyd Clown, Doug War Eagle, and Don Red Thunder, all of the Clown family, scraped together the gas money to go see Crazy Horse’s carving of his vision of his death. It is at the Deer Medicine Rock Sun dance grounds. The three had never been to the sun dance grounds but had only heard of it and Crazy Horse’s carving in stories that their grandfather, Ed Clown, had told them. Jack Bailey, who has seen literally thousands of visitors at his farm who come to see Deer Medicine Rock, greeted them. They told him they were there to find Crazy Horse’s death vision and that it was on the belly of a rock that was shaped like an owl. After all these years, and Jack is in his 70s, nobody had noticed or commented that the rock in question looked like an owl. But indeed it does.

On the belly of the owl is carved the story of his death. This was new to Jack who had always heard the Cheyenne version saying it was a priest that was talking to the Indians. But after this particular visit he doesn’t believe that anymore. In shot one Doug points out how the horse hooves are standing up. That means life or he was alive at the beginning of the carving.

In the next part of the carving their are two spear like objects entering Crazy Horse’s self portrait about the liver and kidney area. This represents the stab wounds inflicted by the bayonet.

As we study the drawing further, Doug points out a sign within the carving that he would be betrayed or that it would happen behind his back. We also see the first horse hoof laying sideways just underneath the two spears.

In this portion of the drawing we see a long line of horse hooves laying down. This means he lost his life. Standing on top of the horse hooves is a white man with a hat. This is what the Cheyenne thought was a priest. But the Clown family says this is Dr McGillicuddy, the doctor that tried to save his life. To the right of the man with the hat is another figure standing directly in the fallen horse hooves. He represents Little Big Man according to the family.

And here’s a picture of Dr McGillycuddy blown up from a group photo taken at Camp Robinson in 1877. I stumbled on this earlier this year. Notice the hat and the coat.

In the last part of the carving is the private who stabbed Crazy Horse. Although it is tough to make out due to the light and some of the carving is shallower than other parts, the private is on a parallel line with Little Big Man.

This is just a little closer look at the private with a line representing a bayonet.

Back on Deer Medicine Rock here is a calendar documenting their stay. The circle represents a day. The line divides the circle into day and night. There are six lines drawn from the circle. This means they camped at the Sun Dance ground for six days. Doug War Eagle is the source.

Here’s another drawing on Deer Medicine Rock that pertains to their family. I wasn’t able to include this picture in the documentary as I seem to have more info than room on my DVDs. Maybe I’ll switch sides and write a book (lol). This is supposed to be Bear With Horns. He was mortally wounded at the Battle of the Little Bighorn and was kept alive for four days with ‘bear medicine’ and died at Slim Buttes. The bear is considered the healing animal for the Lakota. It is the animal that lead them to their medicines. When a bear was sick and it showed in his feces, then they would follow to see what roots he would dig up to cure himself. This would cue the Lakota to use the same medicine on themselves. So inside Bear With Horns is another bear. It represents the bear medicine given to him by a medicine man who had followed a wounded bear and knew what medicine would keep him alive, albeit temporarily.

This next picture is just Rosebud Creek for all of you who have never seen it. A beaver decided to ham it up for my video camera.

And finally here is what the Little Big Horn River area looks like in the early morning. I took this shot just after dawn on June 25. I thought it interesting because I had never read anyone talking about the morning mist when looking off at the village from the Crow’s Nest.

For those who wish to visit Deer Medicine Rock you have to call Jack Bailey first. He’s been an outstanding caretaker of this treasure and if his family ever sells the land I would hope the state or feds would step in to purchase the Deer Medicine Rock area. When I have more time I’ll post Ernie LaPointe’s stories and pictures off the video from the Smithsonian.

— Brock

In  June 1876, a young warrior named White Swan was one of six Crow scouts assigned  to the 7th Cavalry. The outnumbered Crow had aligned themselves with the U.S.  government against their traditional enemies, the Sioux and Cheyenne, in  exchange for a promise from General George Armstrong Custer of a return to their  old way of life, and a return of land stolen from the Crow by other  tribes.

History would have  been altered had Gen. Custer followed the advise of the Crow scouts who urged  him not to lead his forces into the valley of the Little Big Horn. In the  ensuing battle, White Swan was severely injured, and after a long recovery,  returned to Crow Agency seriously disabled.

In 1894 White  Swan, crippled and unable to hear or speak, created a series of drawings on  pages from an accounting ledger book to explain his role in the famous battle to  his friend, the pastor at the Congregational Church.

—  Billy Markland

The  photo below is White Swan around 1899 taken at the Crow Agency, Montana, by  Arthur M. Tinker, an inspector for the Indian Office and amateur photographer.

National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum®

Another photo of  White Swan holding his war club:

TMI number 00466, Photograph by F. A. Rinehart, 1898, © Omaha Public Library, 1998

TMI number 00467, Photograph by F. A. Rinehart, 1898, © Omaha Public Library, 1998

Painted at Crow Agency, 1897 by Elbridge Ayer Burbank

Joseph Henry Sharp (1859 - 1953) oil on canvas

Sharp moved to the West,  establishing homes in Montana and New Mexico, in order to live among the  subjects he wanted to portray. Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Whitney Purchase  Fund (18.61)

— Grahame Wood

White Swan was at  the battlefield with some of the survivors of the LBH battle on June 25th  1886:

http://sirismm.si.edu/naa/4605/01605403.jpg

— Dietmar  Schulte-Möhring

By De Lancy Gill, 1913

Charles Milton Bell

By Charles Milton Bell (Two Moons, second from left, American Horse, third from left)

By Richard Trossel, 1907

By Richard Trossel, 1907

Two Moons addressing council, by Joseph K. Dixon

— Dietmar Schulte-Möhring

Early L.A. Huffman Photo

Two Moons by Burbank, 1896

— Grahame Wood

Shown here are some of the Cheyenne chiefs present at the Little Bighorn battle, from left to right:

Sits in the Night; Red Cherries; Brave Wolf; Two Moons; American Horse; Buffalo Hump; Spotted Wolf; Old Wolf.

According to Frink/Barthelmess in “Photographer on an Army Mule” the photo was made at a council with General Nelson A. Miles at Lame Deer in 1889.

Two Moons was the spokesman of the Cheyenne at this council. I guess that Buffalo Hump is Bull Hump, son of Dull Knife. Spotted Wolf (or Young Spotted Wolf) and Old Wolf were both members of the 1873 delegation to Washington.

— Dietmar Schulte-Möhring

This was taken at Little Bighorn in 1909.

— Grahame Wood

Two Moons’ grave in Busby, Montana:

— Diane Merkel

The Indian holding the star-spangled banner on the right of Two Moons (on his left) looks like Laban Little Wolf.

— Dietmar Schulte-Möhring

Two Moons at Little Bighorn

A different view of the 1909 shot:

Taken by Joseph Kossuth Dixon, 1909

— Grahame Wood

Wanamaker photo:

Two Moons and Major McLaughlin dated circa 1900:

— Henri/”apsalooka”

By Dixon

This photo is also in Powell’s “People of the Sacred Mountain”. It was made in 1908 at a great gathering in the valley of the Little Bighorn. Two Moons and other Cheyennes along with representatives of other tribes assembled some thirty years after the battle. Wooden Leg also described the gathering in Marquis’ book about him.

— Dietmar Schulte-Möhring

— Henri/”apsalooka”

By Edgar S. Paxson from 1902

— Agnes

Two Moons (left, facing the camera) and other Cheyennes at the Little Bighorn monument.

Two Moons by Joseph Henry Sharp. Painted at Lame Deer, Montana

— Grahame Wood

There were two prominent Cheyenne named Little Hawk.

• The first one was a Southerner, a member of the Dog Soldier band, who was also called Young Bull Robe.

• The other Little Hawk was a Northern Cheyenne, who was a Elkhorn Scraper society member. He was fighting in the battles at the Rosebud and Little Bighorn when he was twenty-eight years old. He left his account to Grinnell in 1908 (see Jerome Greene: Lakota and Cheyenne and Peter Powell: People of the Sacred Mountain).

Here is a photo labeled Little Hawk, Northern Cheyenne, 1880s:

Little Hawk

Because there are several Indian individuals named Little Hawk, it is not definite that this is the Cheyenne. Instead this also could be a Brule of that name.

— Dietmar Schulte-Möhring

LittleWolf and Dull Knife, 1873

Dull Knife (or Morning Star, as he was called by the Cheyennes) was not at the Little Bighorn. He was one of the few Northern Cheyenne Council Chiefs that had remained close to the White River Agency to show the whites that he wished to remain at peace. Other Chiefs who stayed at the agency were Turkey Leg, Standing Elk, Spotted Elk, Living Bear, and Black Bear.

The most important Cheyenne Chief Little Wolf only arrived shortly after the battle ended.

Most of the other 44 Council Chiefs of the Northern Cheyenne were at the Little Bighorn at the time of the battle. The two Old Man Chiefs Old Bear and Black Moccasin (a/k/a Limber Lance) were regarded as the principal Chiefs. (See Father Peter Powell: People of the Sacred Mountain.)

In some Indian accounts you can find the name Dull Knife. Often he is confused with Lame White Man. I guess the other reason is that Dull Knife’s son Bull Hump, often called Dull Knife himself, was in the battle.

— Dietmar Schulte-Möhring

Apparently Dull Knife was either unlucky or did not have enough skill as a leader.

It was his village that was attacked in November 1876 by the military that broke the back of the Northern Cheyenne. This after several warriors insisted that the village stay put and celebrate all night over some minor victory over other Indians.

It was Dull Knife and Little Wolf that separated the band. Dull Knife’s people were eventually captured and sent to an army fort and imprisoned in barracks after they refused to go to another reservation. They broke out of barracks on a winter night after the military refused them food, water, and heat only to have most of them shot down. Little Wolf’s band hid out for the winter and eventually surrendered under better conditions.

— Crzhrs

Dull Knife was one of the most peace-loving chiefs of the Cheyenne. He was elected as a council chief in 1854 when he was some forty-six winters old. Although he was a brave warrior in his younger days, he by then already possessed the wisdom of years. He was a strong peace man, who believed that the Cheyenne and the Whites must get along together. 

— Dietmar Schulte-Möhring

I read in Joe Starita’s book about the Dull Knife family that Chief Dull Knife (or Morning Star by his Cheyenne name) had one son (Bull Hump, his eldest) and four daughters with Pawnee Woman, his first wife, who he had stolen once from the Pawnee.

He had a second wife named Short One (or Slow Woman) who bore him three sons and three daughters.

So altogether he had four sons and seven daughters, who were called the “Beautiful People” by the army troops.

His wife Short One, his son Little Hump, and two daughters were killed on the flight back north in 1879.

His youngest son was George Dull Knife, born in 1875. Because he was only about three years old in 1879 and too weak to travel the hard way, he was left behind at the Darlington agency in Oklahoma with some Cheyenne relatives. He came to Pine Ridge in 1883 with 300 other Cheyenne and settled down in Yellow Bear’s Oglala camp. Since then George Dull Knife and his family is rated as Lakota not Cheyenne.

— Dietmar Schulte-Möhring

This is often said to be a photo of Dull Knife. Perhaps it’s Buffalo Hump, his son:

Dull Knife or perhaps his son Buffalo Hump

— Grahame Wood

Bear Who Walks on a Ridge or Ridge Bear was a little chief or headman of the Kit Fox Society among the Northern Cheyennes.

He was in the village at the Bighorn Mountains that Reynolds attacked in early 1876, fighting there together with Two Moons, another Kit Fox little chief. Like all the other warrior society headman of the Northern Cheyenne, Ridge Bear was present at the Little Bighorn in June 1876. In spring 1877, he was among those Cheyennes surrendering to General Miles at the Yellowstone.

Some other sources indicate that Ridge Walker was another name for Bear Who Walks on a Ridge.

Ridge Walker was known to be an army scout in the 1880s. Later he and Porcupine were the Cheyennes who visited the prophet Wovoka to learn something about the Ghost Dance.

Does anybody know if these men are one and the same?

Here are two photos of Ridge Walker:

Ridge Walker

— Dietmar Schulte-Möhring

Elva Stands In Timber, Northern Cheyenne Tribe:

I believe myself to be a bearer of the Cheyenne sacred traditions. They were taught to me by my Grandfather Robert Ridge Walker and Grandmother Ethel Ridge Walker. Both were born close to the time of the Little Big Horn fighting. My Grandmother Ethel was born three days after the battle, as the victorious Cheyennes were moving South to hunt buffalo, where Sheridan, Wyoming is today.

Ridge Walker was a bit older, and later he joined the Cheyenne Scouts at Fort Keogh. A strong traditionalist, he was one of the Piercing People. He offered the sacrifice of his own flesh eight times, twice the sacred four times, to bring Maheo’s blessing to our people. Later, he was Stock Association Manager for the Northern Cheyenne Tribe. Strong in the old holy ways, he and his Grandmother carried that strength through-out their lives of nearly a century each.

The name “Ridge Bear” was also known among the Arapaho at Darlington.

— Grahame Wood

A list of Arikara scouts was published by Rhoda M. Star in Little Bighorn Remembered by Herman J. Viola.

You can find many names mentioned in the list in Orin G. Libby’s book The Arikara Narrative of Custer’s Campaign (University of Oklahoma Press). I found there the following information about some of the Arikaras:

Boy Chief: brother of Red Bear; photo of him in the book. (I didn’t find if he was named Black Calf also.)

Red Star: (a/k/a Strikes the Bear) born 1858 at Fort Clark; father: also Red Star; mother: Women-Goes-Into-Every-House; fought with Reno; from 1898 to 1901 he was on police duty. He changed his name to Red Star after the Little Bighorn battle! (His detailed narrative, his biography, and a photo are in Libby’s book.)

Bull-Stands-in-the-Water: also named Bull in the Water; leader of the Arikara Da-roch-pa Society.

Charging Bull: captured a horse herd during the battle together with Bull, Red Wolf, and White Eagle.

Red Wolf: see Charging Bull

Scabby Wolf: he and Left Handed were sent back to Fort Lincoln with mail when the Custer column was in the Little Missouri region and later returned with mail from the fort.

Tall (High) Bear: was enlisted by F.F. Gerard among several others of Chief White Shield’s police force; had a dispute with Reno during the march to the Little Bighorn. Reno ordered some scouts to stay behind because their horses were worn out. Tall Bear protested and even started for Reno with his knife. Bloody Knife sprang between and saved Reno. (This incident is also described by Ben Innis in Bloody Knife – Custer´s Favorite Scout.)

Pretty Face: when the mule train with supplies was left behind, Pretty Face was detailed on the duty of looking after it; after the Reno battle the scouts assembled what to do and by then Pretty Face had already joined the others from the pack train.

Charging up the Hill: no information.

— Dietmar Schulte-Möhring

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.

— Dietmar Schulte-Möhring

There are several photos of Bloody Knife; this one from wyomingtrails.com I like the best:

Bloody Knife

http://www.wyomingtalesandtrails.com/custer5.html.

— Dietmar Schulte-Möhring

Bloody Knife was born in 1840 to an Hunkpapa Sioux father and a Ree mother. He spent his first 16 years with his father but was frequently taunted, beaten and abused for being a “half-breed.” At age 16, he left the Sioux camp with his mother but returned in 1860 to visit his father. Bloody Knife was still despised by the Sioux and was almost killed during his visit. Chief Gall, a leader of the Hunkpapa, killed Bloody Knife’s two brothers in 1862. Bloody Knife was married to She Owl in 1866.

In 1868, Bloody Knife enlisted as a scout in the U.S. Army and was assigned to the 7th Cavalry. He quickly became George Armstrong Custer’s favorite scout. He was insolent toward whites and ridiculed them. He often amused Custer by ridiculing his marksmanship. Custer never got angry and often gave gifts to Bloody Knife.

In 1874, Bloody Knife guided the Seventh Cavalry through the Black Hills. He was with Custer in the Little Bighorn campaign and told Custer there were too many Indians to fight, a warning Custer ignored. Bloody Knife, in turn, ignored Custer’s plea for him to stay out of the battle. Bloody Knife was assigned to Major Marcus Reno during the Battle of the Little Bighorn and was killed by a shot to the head as he was standing beside Reno in the battle. Reno was attempting to ask him what the Indians were doing when he was shot and his blood splattered Reno’s face. Reno then lost all inhibition and barked out orders that did not make sense before fleeing. It has been speculated that Bloody Knife’s blood splattering put Major Reno in a state of shock.

Bloody Knife was beheaded by the Sioux, who took the head to their camp. From one of Libbie Custer’s books:

Bloody Knife was naturally mournful; his face still looked sad when he put on the presents given him. He was a perfect child about gifts, and the general studied to bring him something from the East that no other Indian had.

He had proved himself such an invaluable scout to the general that they often had long interviews. Seated on the grass, the dogs lying about them, they talked over portions of the country that the general had never seen, the scout drawing excellent maps in the sand with a pointed stick. He was sometimes petulant, often moody, and it required the utmost patience on my husband’s part to submit to his humors; but his fidelity and cleverness made it worthwhile to yield to his tempers.

— Crzhrs

Bloody Knife was not “assigned to the 7th Cavalry” in 1868. His first enlistment as a scout was at Ft. Stevenson, Dakota. The Seventh Cavalry was in Kansas then. Bloody Knife’s first scouting duties were likely with one of the infantry regiments, such as the 22nd. He worked as a mail runner prior to this; carrying the mail between the Missouri River posts. Bloody Knife didn’t hook up with Custer until Ft. Lincoln was built in 1872.

— stevewilk