Half Yellow Face

Half Yellow Face led a group of 11 Crow, including a young warrior called Two Leggins, on a horse stealing raid against the Shoshonis.

[7] Half Yellow Face was the "pipe carrier" or leader-chief of the six Crow Indian scouts who were assigned to General George Armstrong Custer in June, 1876.

The Army recognized Half Yellow Face's role of leader-chief of the Crow scouts by giving him the rank of corporal.

on June 24, the Crow scouts sent word back that the trail of the large Sioux-Cheyenne village had left the Rosebud and gone over into the Little Bighorn Valley.

Three Crow scouts continued ahead of the troop while Half Yellow Face guided the 7th cavalry on the June 24–25 night march that took them to the Rosebud/Little Bighorn divide.

Custer feared that if he delayed an attack the encampment would be warned of his presence and scatter into many smaller units, thus avoiding the decisive military confrontation the army was seeking.

[4][5]Some historians recount the statement as being made by Bloody Knife, but that is contrary to the stated recollection of the Crow scout, White Man Runs Him, who was present.

[9] Whether the remark attributed to Half Yellow Face was made on the morning of June 25, 1876 through an interpreter or by sign language, two things about it are true.

First, the remark, though possessing poetic power, probably made no impression on Custer who continued with his plan to divide his troops into separate units and attack the Sioux/Cheyenne encampment.

As the battle began, Half Yellow Face and another Crow scout, White Swan, went with Major Reno's detachment and took a direct and active part in the initial combat at the south end of the village on the valley floor.

Half Yellow Face crawled back and got the help of an Arikara scout named Young Hawk and together they dragged White Swan into some timber.

[10] Eventually Half Yellow Face got White Swan on a horse and then led the horse through the timber and across the river and up the steep trail to the relative safety in the Reno hilltop entrenchments,[2][3][4][7] arriving at about 5 p.m.[11] This movement by Half Yellow Face and White Swan out of the valley was possible in the late afternoon because after driving Reno's troopers from the valley earlier in the afternoon, the Sioux had detected Custer and the other five troops coming toward their village from the east, and the main body of Sioux warriors left the valley to attack Custer's detachment, to protect the Sioux village from this new threat.

[10][12][13] After engaging the 7th Cavalry in combat on June 25, and after continuing to besiege the Reno/Benteen contingent in their hilltop entrenchments on the 26th, the Sioux/Cheyenne force became aware of Gibbon advancing on them from the north, and late on the 26th they took down their village and went south up the valley of the Little Bighorn River.

On the 27th after the Sioux had left, Half Yellow Face made a special travois and moved the wounded Crow Scout White Swan twelve miles down the valley to the "Far West" steamship[7][3][2] so that White Swan got medical care with other wounded soldiers in a temporary hospital near the mouth of the Big Horn River.