A warrior who fought Custer

"A warrior who fought Custer" by Wooden Leg is a firsthand historical memoir written in the early 20th century. It offers the Northern Cheyenne perspective on life, warfare, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, with an interpreter-editor assembling and corroborating accounts from multiple veteran warriors. Readers can expect a vivid blend of personal biography, tribal customs, and a corrective to popular frontier narratives.

The opening of the work frames the project through the interpreter’s statement: white survivors left no account of Custer’s last battle, so he learned sign-talk, hosted Cheyenne veterans, and cross-checked their testimonies, centering Wooden Leg’s life story. The narrative then begins with Wooden Leg’s boyhood—family and naming customs, how he earned his uncle’s name for endurance, early horse taming and hunts, brutal intertribal raids and reprisals against Crows and Shoshones, encounters around frontier forts, and portraits of leaders like Little Wolf. Subsequent opening chapters depict roaming the Powder, Tongue, and Little Bighorn country; horse thefts and skirmishes; great buffalo hunts; sacred treatment of rare animals; camp dances; contests of skill; and strands of folklore (e.g., Bear Lodge tales). They also outline Cheyenne governance via warrior societies (Elks, Crazy Dogs, Foxes), their policing of camp moves and hunts, strict discipline and punishments, and practical details of hunting and weaponry, especially arrows and their tribal styles. (This is an automatically generated summary.)