The Badass Woman Warrior Who Took Down Custer

Historic drawing of the 1876 Battle of the Rosebud:

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Howdy folks and greetings from the Great Plains of North Texas!

I started a story in yesterday's post about a female Cheyenne warrior named Buffalo Calf Road Woman.

Her and her husband, Black Coyote, joined Crazy Horse and his forces to battle the U.S. army.

The army was ordered to bring in any Indians who didn't show up on the reservation to meet about selling their Black Hills, Wyoming land.

Today's story

When the bands didn't show up at the reservation the government sent three forces led by three generals to go find them and force them to the reservation so they could force the sale which some of the Indians were refusing.

The general that Crazy Horse fought was General George Crook. I even have a photo of him:

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Gotta love that beard! I think that's cool. I wonder if Mrs. J. would let me grow mine out like that? Maybe braid the points on each side? lol.

So anyway during the battle, which was a draw basically, only because the Crow and Shoshone nations were helping the army.

They saved their butts time and again from the beginning to the finish of the battle and prevented them from marching right into an ambush from the start because of their scouts...preventing a massacre.

Wow..so anyway, in the battle, Buffalo Calf Road Woman's brother who's name was "Coming In Sight," (I kid you not), was shot and wounded and fell off his horse.

The situation looked dire because he was pinned down by rifle fire from a hill and no one was around to come to his aid. In fact, soldiers were closing in on him.

Into the line of fire

However, Buffalo Calf Road Woman was watching this and said "Oh no, he ain't goin down like THIS!"

She charged down the hill right in the line of fire with bullets flying past her head, helped her wounded brother up on her horse, then took off again and safely made it back behind the lines.

General Crook himself saw this fierce act of heroism and shouted "Damn, did you see that!?"

He was probably also wondering why no one could hit her. He had two companies of Riflemen on that hill making it very difficult for the Indians.

The best thing about this act of bravery? They changed her name to "Brave Woman" ..thank goodness.

Side note: The General was amazed

General Crook was amazed and stunned at the tactics and skill of the swarming Indians. Here's what he said about them:

"They were the best cavalry soldiers on earth. In charging up toward us they exposed little of their person, hanging on with one arm around the neck and one leg over the horse, firing and lancing from underneath the horses' necks, so that there was no part of the Indian at which we could aim."

No one knew women were there

The other major surprise that the Cheyenne revealed about Brave Woman is that she was at the Little Big Horn, also known as Custer's Last Stand.

But she wasn't just there, she was in the thick of the fighting and she was the one who knocked General Custer off his horse with her War Club!

When she did that he was quickly pounced upon and killed I think. There was also at least one other female warrior there at that battle named Moving Robe Woman but I don't know anything about her.(But I like the name).

How General Custer actually died and who killed him gets a little murky because different tribes of the attacking force have different versions.. but some say that Moving Robe Woman was the one who killed Custer by stabbing him when he hit the ground.

HOWEVER...historians and tribes agree that it was Brave Woman who knocked him off his horse.

Little documentation

Like many American Indian tribes the Cheyenne did not keep written history records so the exploits of warriors and the history of the tribe has been passed down in oral tradition for millennia, adhering to strict accuracy from one storyteller to the other.

The Cheyenne storytellers who revealed the accounts of Brave Woman are Kate Big Head and Iron Teeth. They told an author who wrote a book about her so I may be doing a detailed series on her life because there is much more to tell!

The ledger paper drawings

In yesterday's post I talked about tribe artists using buffalo hides to record the events of their tribe and when they were moved to the reservation they used the large paper sheets that accountants used.

Well, it just so happens that one of the museums has a copy of a drawing which depicts Brave Woman rescuing her brother:

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I think their paintings lose alot by having to be done on sheets of paper instead of buffalo hides! It's just wrong.

Thanks for reading folks, God bless you all!
-jonboy
Texas