GREASY GRASS - Chapter Four

 

I suspect it was the most normal thing to happen on that Sunday, 25 June, 1876.  A young Sioux brave was trolling the Cheyenne village, hoping to "accidently" run into a particular young woman. He was an  alpha male in his prime - 26 years old -  and his name was White Bull (above, ten years older).  

Both his father and grandfather were leaders of the Minneconjou band of Northern Sioux. His mother was sister to the Hunkpapa Sioux medicine man Sitting Bull (above). White Crow had survived 19 fights, 10 against white soldiers. He had counted 7 coups, taken 2 scalps, killed 3 enemies, wounded another, rescued 6 wounded Sioux and under fire recovered a dead fellow Sioux warrior.  

White Bull had captured 45 horses, 10 on a single raid, and twice willingly endured the tortures of the Sun Dance (above). He had been invited to join three warrior societies, choosing to become a Fox Warrior.  

Just a week earlier, at the Battle of the Rosebud (above) - 17 June, 1876 - he had fought man to man against a Shoshone , scouting for the white soldiers.  After dismounting his opponent  White Bull had "ridden him down" and counted coup again, leaving the man crippled with a sliced tendon in his right leg. 

But today, White Bull was looking to convince the reluctant young southern Cheyenne woman named Mona Setah, to walk with him under the marriage blanket. So far she would only speak with White Bull in private through the buffalo hide of her family's lodge. Finally, " I...saw her carrying firewood up from the river....(Her son) was with her, so I just smiled and said nothing. I rode on to visit with my Cheyenne friend Roan Bear....We settled down to telling each other some of our brave deeds in the past."

The stories were interrupted when a man rode into the Cheyenne circle shouting an alarm. Soldiers were attacking the Sioux circle a mile to the south. White Bull jumped on his horse and rode to the camp of his uncle Sitting Bull. Seeing that his own family were all safely mounted on his pony herd, and that Sitting Bull had entered his lodge to make magic, White Bull rode off to defend the Sioux pony herd from the White Man's Indian scouts. 

High up on the bluffs, near the head of Medicine Trail Coulee, the French man Mitch Boyer solemnly ordered the scouts White Man Runs Him, Hairy Moccasin,  Curley and Goes Ahead, "You need go no further. You have guided Custer here, and your work is finished. So you had better go back to the pack train and let the soldiers do the fighting." Boyer then rode away over the ridge to join Custer down Medicine Trail Coulee.  But Curley stayed to watch what happened down below, at the river crossing. 

White Bull (above) helped drive off the Crow scouts who tried to capture the pony herd, and then chased the soldiers into the river. But just as he reached the water, "I heard someone behind me yelling that soldiers were coming...to attack the north end of the camp...We all raced downstream together."

Arriving back in the Cheyenne camp White Bull saw the soldiers coming down the Medicine Tail Coulee, He dismounted and, with a handful of other warriors, took cover behind the berm along the river's edge, ready to defend the women and children to his death.

Then, according to White Bull, "...the soldiers had stopped at the edge of the river...One white man was wearing a big hat and a buckskin jacket...On one side of him was a soldier carrying a flag and riding a grey horse, and on the other was a small man on a dark horse. This small man didn't look much like a white man to me, so I gave the man in the buckskin jacket my attention." 

"The man in the buckskin jacket seemed to be the leader of these soldiers, for he shouted something and they all came charging at us across the ford. "Bobtail Horse fired first, and I saw a soldier on a gray horse fall out of his saddle into the water. The other soldiers were shooting at us now. The man who seemed to be the soldier chief was firing his heavy rifle fast. I aimed my repeater at him and fired. I saw him fall out of his saddle and hit the water."

Up on the bluffs above, Crow scout Curley saw two men leading Custer's command fall into the river. And suddenly the attack stopped.

And everything that was about to happen, most of the mysteries of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, also known as Custer's Last Stand could be explained if the white man who was shot and fell into the river was George Armstrong Custer - shot in the chest, and badly wounded. That quickly the head of the royal family had been cut off. All that was left was for the body to twitch and fall. 

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