The Twisted Saga Of...
THE STORY of the U.S. Army's scouts at the Little Bighorn is easily the most confused part of the whole tangled tragedy. Going on two centuries after the battle, it's still impossible to answer basic questions about the scouts who were with George A. Custer on June 25, 1876 -- such as what were their names, how many were killed, and what were the identities of the dead.
On the Indian side, Horn Chips said Crazy Horse told him that five of the Seventh Cavalry's Indian scouts were killed by the Sioux and Cheyenne at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The eye-witness record of the battle indicates that the truth is probably closer to what Crazy Horse said than the Americans. Eye-witness accounts by Sioux warriors Eagle Elk, Turning Hawk, White Cow Walking -- and the pictographic history of Oglala Sioux by Amos Bad Heart Bull -- indicate that nearly a half dozen unidentified U.S. Army scouts died with Custer. Here are five unidentified Seventh Cavalry scout fatalities (apparently three Ree and two Sioux) reported in eye-witness accounts from Astonisher.com's 100 Voices, the largest and most complete collection of eye-witness accounts of the Little Bighorn ever assembled:
This is unidentified Seventh Cavalry scout fatality #1. 2) Besides, the Accepted Consensus View of the Battle is that Bobtailed Bull was also the scout killed by Turning Hawk, even though Turning Hawk clearly and specifically stated he killed a Sioux scout named Brush on the east side of the river. There is no one named Brush (Sioux or otherwise) on Varnum's Scout Roster, but there is an Arikara named Bush. Could this be the person Turning Hawk killed? Either way, the Stripped Man and Turning Hawk can't have killed the same person in different encounters! This is unidentified Seventh Cavalry scout fatality #2. 3) White Cow Walking, the son of Horned Horse, said he killed a "soldier scout" named Crow Flies High in the valley fight. There is no scout named Crow Flies High listed on any of the known scout rosters. This is unidentified Seventh Cavalry scout fatality #3. 4) There is a slight possibility that the "Hunkpapa who was with the soldiers" killed by Sioux woman warrior Moving Robe could have been Isaiah Dorman (the black former slave who married a Lakota woman and was befriended by Hunkpapa Sioux chief Sitting Bull) as the Accepted Consenus View of the Battle has it, but more likely he was one of half dozen or more mercinary Sioux who were scouting and/or interpreting for Custer's Seventh Cavalry on June 25, 1876. The Arikara Narrative states that four Sioux scouts acccompanied Custer's Arikara scouts, and gives their names as Ca-roo or Karu (Cards), Ma-tok-sha (Red Bear), Mach-pe-as-ka (White Cloud) and Pta-a-te (Whole Buffalo or Buffalo Body or Buffalo Anscestor), but only two of these names appear on Varnum's Seventh Cavalry Scout List, and one of them (Caroo or Cards), was supposedly discharged prior to the battle, according to the U.S. Army records cited by Walter Mason Camp, who stated that Caroo was also known as Bear Running In The Timber, even though his own Scout List has Bear Running In The Timber as another Sioux mercinary named Matochun Way A Ga Mun. David Humphreys Miller gives the names of the four Sioux mercinaries as "White Cloud, Buffalo Ancestor, Red Bear (not to be confused with the Arikara scout of that name), and Caroo," and said they were all "married to Arikara women."
And Arikara scout Red Bear mentioned the presence of the "half-breed Dakota interpreter, E-esk," who is on none of the scout lists. E-esk is sometimes identified as half-breed interpreter Billy Cross, but there is disagreement among primary sources on this point. Was one of these Sioux mercinaries the "Hunkpapa who was with the soldiers" killed by Moving Robe? There is no way or knowing at this point, but there are certainly plenty of reasonable possibilities without having to turn a black man into a Hunkpapa. This is unidentified Seventh Cavalry scout fatality #4. 5) Finally, in his Pictographic History of the Oglala Sioiux, Amos Bad Heart Bull depicts his father, Bad Heart Bull, killing another unidentified Army scout. This is unidentified Seventh Cavalry scout fatality #5. The tragi-comic problem that the Accepted Consensus View of the Battle of the Little Bighorn faces here is that there are more dead bodies lying around in the eye-witness record of the battle than it has identities to cover them. Because conventional American authors are all wedded to the peculiar, unsubstantiated notion that only three Indian mercinaries died with the Seventh Cavalry at the Little Bighorn, they are forced to play an endless game of "The Sheet's Too Short" with the identities of the Indian dead, making Bobtailed Bull the scout killed by the "Stripped Man" until he's needed to be the scout killed by Turning Hawk, etc. Then there's the amazing story of Chat-ka (see below). And who knows -- there may even be more. But whatever their number, these unknown men gave their lives for America, where they remain unsung and unhonored to this day. Somehow, over the last century and a half, an ungrateful America never found the time to identify all the Native Americans who died fighting for the United States on June 25, 1876. * * * BURIED IN the scout annals is one of the most poignant of all the Little Bighorn stories, that of the Sioux warrior Chat-ka, who also scouted for Custer and the Seventh Cavalry. Chat-ka was discharged shortly before the battle and joined the huge encampment of free Sioux and Cheyenne Indians on the Little Bighorn. Whatever warning Chat-ka brought did little good, though, because Custer pushed all night on June 24 - 25, and threw his tired men and horses into battle immediately, which the Sioux and Cheyenne did not expect, for all their keen scouting intelligence and the Cheyenne decoy / scouts that Crazy Horse scrambled that morning when he learned from Fast Horn that Custer was at the Crow's Nest at dawn. When Custer attacked, Chat-ka fought for the free Sioux and Cheyenne against his former comrades in the Seventh Cavalry, and was killed. Arikara scout Young Hawk found Chat-ka's corpse afterwards in the abandoned Indian village:
Chat-ka's name does not appear on any surviving Seventh Cavalry scout list. If Car-oo was actually present at the battle, as Arikara scout Strikes Two said, then Chat-ka may be another name for one of the Sioux scouts identified as Broken Penis, The Shield or Left Hand in Walter Mason Camp's notes, since these three Sioux scouts were likewise apparently discharged from the U.S. Army shortly before the battle. Another point of confusion: W.A. Graham names the Ree scouts killed at the Little Bighorn as Bloody Knife (a guide, actually), Bobtailed Bull and Stab, but Stab apparently didn't die in the battle. (Here are descriptions of Stab arriving safely at the Powder River on June 26 by Arikara scouts Strikes Two and Little Sioux.) Hardorff and most recent writers name the third dead Ree scout as Little Brave, but the name Little Brave isn't even on Graham's list of Arikara scouts. You get the idea. To try to shed some light on The Twisted Saga of the Unsung Seventh Cavalry Scouts, Astonisher.com offers the Seventh Cavalry Scout Lists of two respected, early Little Bighorn scholars, Walter Mason Camp and W.A. Graham. Click here for further discusssion... -- Bruce Brown from The Custer Myth by W.A. Graham... On 25 June 1876, therefore, Varnum had in his Scout detachment, forty-one Arikara Indians, whose names, as gathered from available authentic sources, were as follows: 1. William Baker 2. Barking Wolf 3. Bear 4. Bear Come Out 5. Bears Eyes 7. Black Calf 8. Black Fox 9. Black Porcupine 10. Bull 11. Bull in the Water 12. Bush 13. Climbs the Bluff 14. Cross William 15. Curly Head 16. Foolish Bear 17. Forked Horn 18. Good Elk 19. Good Face 20. Goose 21. Horns in Front 22. Howling Wolf 23. William Jackson 24. Laying Down 25. Long Bear 26. One Feather 27. One Horn 28. Owl 29. Rushing Bull 30. Round Wooden Cloud 31. Sioux (Little Sioux?) 32. Soldier 33. Stab (Stabbed?) 34. Strike Bear (Red Star) 35. Strike the Lodge 36. Strikes Two 37. Wagon 38. White Cloud 39. White Eagle 40. Wolf Runs 41. Young Hawk To the above, however, must be added the names of "Bloody Knife," known as Custer's favorite scout, and of Bob-tailed Bull, both of whom were members of a separate detachment, though nominally under Varnum's command on 25 June. These two scouts were killed during Reno's engagement in the valley, as also was the scout "Stab." The records indicate that about half of the detachment disappeared during the battle, but rejoined the command on 28 June 1876, which would appear to disprove a statement frequently made that those who left for parts unknown during the battle were not seen again until months thereafter. It is noteworthy, and a circumstance for which no explanation is apparent, that several of the Arikara Indians whose stories appear in the "Arikara Narrative," are not identifiable by name as members of Varnum's detachment. These, however, may in 1876 have been known by other and different names, or they may, like Bloody Knife and Bobtailed Bull, have been members of another detachment. It is impossible to say which, if either, explanation is correct. The Custer Myth: A Source Book of Custerania, written and compiled by Colonel W.A. Graham, The Stackpole Co., Harrisburg, PA 1953, p 27 - 31
from Custer in '76 by Walter Mason Camp...
Custer in '76: Walter Camp's Notes on the Custer Fight, edited by Kenneth Hammer, Brigham Young University Press 1976 p 282 - 288
In addition to the Indian and half-breed scouts mentioned by Graham and Camp, there were also white scouts Lonesome Charley Reynolds and George Herendeen (the former was head scout, the later was assigned to the Seventh Cavalry by Custer's commanding officer, Gen. Alfred Terry), plus Fred Gerard, nominally an interpreter but actually a scout much of the time, and Isaiah Dorman, the Black interpreter / scout. Bouyer (or Boyer), Reynolds and Dorman died at the Little Bighorn.
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Today, the Accepted Consensus View of American Little Bighorn scholars is that three Ree (or Arikara) scouts for the U.S. Army were killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn -- 
1) The Accepted Consensus View of Little Bighorn scholars is that Bobtailed Bull was the Ree scout Eagle Elk described the "Stripped Man" grappling and then 
But actually there were more Sioux with Custer that day. In addition to Matochun Way A Ga Mun, Camp's Scout List mentions another Sioux scout, 
"He had on a white shirt, the shoulders were painted green, and on his forehead, painted in red, was the sign of a secret society. In the middle of the camp they found a drum and on one side lying on a blanket was a row of dead Dakotas with their feet toward the drum... 
Lt. James H. Bradley, in command of Crow scots of the Seventh Infintry, further attests that the following Crow scouts were turned over to the Seventh Cavalry on June 21, 1876:
