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Military History Quarterly |
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“Unlikely Recruits"
Military History Quarterly
Brandishing a sheath knife and revolver, Wooden Leg fought with
other Cheyenne warriors against the Seventh Cavalry at the Battle
of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876. Barely eighteen years old,
he was to come of age as a warrior that day by taking his first
scalp and killing his first enemy soldier. When the battle was over
he removed the scalp of an officer who had been killed by another
Indian. Long afraid to discuss what he had done to the officer's
corpse for fear of reprisals by whites, he admitted years later
to his biographer, Thomas Marquis, “I took one side of the face
and half of the chin, so as to keep the long beard.” In fact, Wooden
Leg did not kill a white soldier that day, but he did kill an Indian.
During the battle he clubbed to death one of the Army's Indian scouts
with a captured rifle and then returned to the battle, a melee he
described as how ‘thousands of dogs might look if all of them were
mixed together in a fight…'
Spring, 1999
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