Custer at Little Bighorn: A Deep Political Hypothesis

[Charles Drago]

Just a little factoid that I found..


Buffalo Calf Road Woman

Buffalo Calf Road Woman, or Brave Woman (b. c. 1850s? -d. 1878), was a Northern Cheyenne woman who saved her wounded warrior brother Chief Comes in Sight, in the Battle of Rosebud (1876) (as it was called by the United States.) Her rescue helped rally the Cheyenne warriors to win the battle. She fought next to her husband in the Battle of the Little Bighorn that same year...... In 2005 Northern Cheyenne storytellers broke more than 100 years of silence about the battle, and they credited Buffalo Calf Road Woman striking the blow that knocked Custer off his horse before he died.

History

During the Battle of the Rosebud, the Cheyenne and Sioux, allied under the leadership of Crazy Horse, had been retreating, and they left the wounded Chief Comes in Sight on the battlefield. Suddenly Buffalo Calf Road Woman rode out onto the battlefield at full speed and grabbed up her brother, carrying him to safety. Her courageous rescue caused the Cheyenne to rally, and they defeated General George Crook and his forces. In honor of Buffalo Calf Road Woman, the Cheyenne called the Battle of Rosebud "The Fight Where the Girl Saved Her Brother".

Buffalo Calf Road Woman is documented as also having fought at the Battle of Little Bighorn. There she fought alongside her husband Black Coyote. In June 2005, the Northern Cheyenne broke their more than 100 years of silence about the battle. In a public recounting of Cheyenne oral history of the battle, tribal storytellers said that Buffalo Calf Road Woman had struck the blow that knocked Custer off his horse before he died in the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Custer was said to have bad medicine, so the women took revenge.

Buffalo Calf Road Woman died of malaria in 1878.

Source: Wikipedia

Keith,

There is enduring controversy regarding where and when Custer was mortally wounded.

Relatively early in the final sequence of the battle, a commander dressed in a buckskin jacket led a troop down Medicine Tail Coulee to a ford that would have provided tactically advantageous access across the LBH and into the camp at approximately its midpoint. A small group of what is said to be Cheyennes were on the western bank and fired into the cavalry column, gravely wounding its leader.

The column abruptly retreated -- perhaps with the stricken man in buckskin in tow.

Was it Custer who was shot at the ford?

Other officers were wearing buckskin that day, and there is no consensus to date regarding the identity of the ford victim.

As for the story of Buffalo Calf Road Woman, to me it reeks of revisionism/political correctness. It is a very attractive tale on very many levels, but for now I'll consider it to be as apocryphal as a couple of dozen other to-juicy-to-be-true stories relating to seminal events -- real and imagined -- taking place during what for me remains the most intriguing North American military engagement of the 19th century.