Wooden Leg: A Warrior Who Fought Custer
Wooden Leg: A Warrior Who Fought Custer is a 1931 book by Thomas Bailey Marquis about the life of a Northern Cheyenne Indian, Wooden Leg, who fought in several historic battles between United States forces and the Plains Indians, including the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where he faced the troops of George Armstrong Custer.
These include tribal organisation, the warrior societies, sport, religion and mythology, their friendship and cooperation with the Sioux, arrow recognition, warbonnet entitlement, and much more.
The book describes Wooden Leg's participation in the important battles of the war of 1876–1877, when the Cheyenne, Sioux, and other plains tribes fought the United States.
Wooden Leg's description of the Battle of the Little Bighorn caused controversy when the book was first published, particularly his claim that many of the US soldiers committed suicide.
[1] The book was written in the first person in the style of an autobiography by Thomas Bailey Marquis, who translated and edited Wooden Leg's stories, placing them in chronological order.
Wooden Leg himself relates the attitudes of the Cheyenne at a peace feast organised to commemorate the 30th anniversary (1906) of the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Marquis slowly broke down the barriers and eventually persuaded all the Cheyenne survivors he was in contact with, not just Wooden Leg, to open up to him.
For all of the intervening period of more than fifty years between the battle and Marquis' interviews, the Cheyenne had lived in Montana at sites overlooking the battlegrounds.
The book is an amalgam of material from Wooden Leg along with support and corroboration from many contributors, including most of the seventeen Northern Cheyenne participants of the Battle of the Little Big Horn still alive at the time of the interviews.
[7] The hardships of hunting in the snow with minimal clothing as a boy are described, as are the unique Indian methods of transport during camp moves.
One tale recounts a Cheyenne version of the story of the great bear which is supposed to have put its claw marks on the side of Devils Tower, a feature later seen in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
[9] Much else of Cheyenne life is documented, as the book includes a guide to arrow recognition and information on marriage customs and the entitlement to wear warbonnets, amongst many other subjects.
[13] Wooden Leg believed that the chiefs had gathered the tribes in one place for defence, not to prepare to make war on the whites, though many of the young men were keen to do just that.
While on a scouting mission, Wooden Leg and his group spotted soldiers coming from the south[n 5] towards their camp on the Rosebud River.
The commotion was caused by US soldiers under Major Marcus Reno attacking from the south-east on the orders of Lieutenant Colonel George Custer.
Wooden Leg was torn between his desire to quickly join the battle and the need to first put on his best clothes and paint his face (it was the Indian custom to always look one's best if there was any possibility of ending up in the afterlife).
[19] The Indians drove back and pinned down Reno's soldiers, but then spotted additional troops making their way along the hills to the east of the encampment.
Initially firing without success from the high ground, Wooden Leg descended into the gulch to lie in wait for soldiers coming to fetch water.
When a new column of soldiers was observed approaching (the main force of infantry under Brigadier General Alfred Terry), the council of Chiefs decided not to continue the fight.
Wooden Leg's father had died in the south, but he and the rest of his family departed for Pine Ridge and later relocated to the Tongue River country, where most of the tribe were living.
The following year the Cheyenne scouts were involved in a campaign against rebellious Sioux, and Wooden Leg was present at the Wounded Knee Massacre.
After ten years, clearly struggling with his conscience, Wooden Leg resigned the post, but was later persuaded to take it on again by a new Indian agent.
[29] Wooden Leg is an important original source of information on the Cheyenne and Plains Indians in general and on the Battle of the Little Big Horn in particular.
Books on social issues and archaeology also find usable material in Wooden Leg on the topic of Plains Indians.
[38] Littlebear is most struck by the rapid transition of a free and independent people to a society restricted to reservations and dependent on the federal government.
[40] Ted Rising Sun's humorous claim that the alliance with the Sioux was only because the Cheyenne "needed someone to hold the horses" only emphasises their friendship.
[41] Ted Rising Sun is a descendant of Chief Dull Knife, a major figure in Cheyenne history and a contemporary of Wooden Leg.
[42] The theory that Custer's soldiers committed suicide en masse toward the end of the Battle of the Little Bighorn has been controversial right from the very start, and the discussion still continues today.
In later life Wooden Leg changed his mind and subscribed to the whisky theory after experiencing the effects of alcohol first-hand.
[48] Another suggestion is that the Cheyenne warriors, pressed to recount details of the Custer battle, were still reluctant to admit to killing soldiers for fear of punishment.
