In August of 1938, an elderly Oglala Sioux man named Joseph White Cow Bull sat on the Montana plains near the Crow Fair and prepared to tell a story he had carried for sixty-two years. He was wrapped in a threadbare trade cloth blanket, his gnarled hands resting on a cottonwood cane, his pale blue eyes still sharp despite his frail frame. He had come from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota to revisit the battlefield of the Little Big Horn one last time before his death. His name, he explained, was a mistranslation.
In Lakota, his name referred to a male from the white man’s semi-domesticated longhorn cattle, but an interpreter struggling with English had rendered it as White Cow Bull. He had earned that name at fourteen when he felled a stray longhorn bull with a single arrow. As he spoke, he recalled the summer of 1876, when he was twenty-eight and camped with a vast gathering of Sioux and Cheyenne along the Little Big Horn River. The encampment stretched for miles.
The Santee were farthest north, the Oglala just southeast of them, with the Brulé in a smaller circle nearby. Then came the Sans Arc, the Miniconjou, the Blackfoot Sioux, and finally, farthest south near the river, the Hunkpapa. White Cow Bull, though Oglala, spent most of his days with the Cheyenne, whose language and customs were as familiar to him as his own. There was one woman he desired above all others, a Cheyenne named Monahsetah, whom he affectionately called Mayoi.
She was in her mid-twenties, beautiful, and unmarried, though she had a seven-year-old son. His Cheyenne friends explained why she had never married. She was from the southern branch of the tribe and was merely visiting the northern camp, and tribal law prohibited her from marrying because she had a son born out of wedlock. The boy’s father, they said, had been a white soldier chief, either George Armstrong Custer, whom the Sioux mockingly called Long Hair, or his younger brother Captain Thomas Custer, whom they called Little Hair.
Eight winters earlier, this man had killed her father, Chief Black Kettle, during the Washita Massacre, then taken Monahsetah captive and claimed her as his second wife. His first wife, a white woman, discovered the arrangement and forced him to release her. The boy, named Yellowbird, stayed close to his mother, and White Cow Bull would wait until nightfall to approach her. She knew he wished to court her, but she only spoke to him through the tepee cover, never stepping outside to meet him.
On the morning of the great battle, many Oglalas still slept, tired from the scout dance held the previous night to celebrate their victory over General Crook at the Rosebud a week earlier. White Cow Bull awoke hungry and went to a nearby tepee, where an elderly woman gave him food. As he ate, she quietly warned him that attackers were coming that day, but she offered no further explanation. After finishing his meal, he saddled his best pony, an iron gray gelding, and rode to the Cheyenne camp circle.
He spent time looking for Monahsetah and finally spotted her near the river carrying firewood, the boy with her. He smiled, said nothing, and continued on to visit his Cheyenne friend Roan Bear, a Fox Warrior who had guard duty that morning, stationed near the Cheyenne medicine tepee where the sacred buffalo head was kept. The morning passed quickly as an Elk Warrior named Bobtail Horse joined them to share tales about his chief, Dull Knife. They did not realize trouble was brewing until after midday, when they saw dust rising and heard gunfire far to the south near the Hunkpapa camp circle.
An Oglala warrior rode into camp shouting that Sioux soldiers were coming and a large group of white men were attacking. White Cow Bull translated the warning into Cheyenne, and Cheyenne Chief Two Moon hurried in from the river leading several horses, shouting for everyone to grab their horses. The warriors responded with their war cry and gathered, waiting for Two Moon to lead them. He gave them a rallying speech, telling them not to run, to stand their ground and fight, and to watch him, for he would stand firm even if it meant his death.
After Two Moon’s warriors left to face Major Reno, a new danger emerged. Custer’s detachment moved down Medicine Tail Coulee toward the river and the Cheyenne camp. White Cow Bull and his companions set off to meet them, joined by an older warrior named Mad Wolf, who tried to stop them, warning that there were too many soldiers and they should wait for their brothers to return. Bobtail Horse replied that only Earth and Heaven endure forever, and if the four of them could prevent the soldiers from reaching the camp, their lives would have meaning.
They reached a low ridge and dismounted, finding whatever cover they could. From there, White Cow Bull saw five Sioux warriors racing down toward the river, dodging bullets from the soldiers. Bobtail Horse pointed to a bluff where three figures stood, dressed in a way that suggested they were Crows, guiding the soldiers. He fired at them, and White Cow Bull joined in with his repeater, covering the Sioux warriors as they dashed through the Ford.
Looking across the river, White Cow Bull saw the soldiers halt at the water’s edge. It was the first time he had ever seen white soldiers, and he noted how pink and hairy their skin appeared. One man in particular caught his attention. He had a mustache, wore a broad hat and a buckskin jacket, and rode a striking sorrel horse with a blazed face and four white stockings.
Flanking him were two other soldiers, one carrying a flag on a gray horse, the other a smaller man on a dark horse. The man in the buckskin jacket stared directly at them, then shouted an order, and the soldiers charged across the Ford. Bobtail Horse fired the first shot, hitting a soldier on a gray horse and knocking him into the water. The leader fired his rifle rapidly, and White Cow Bull raised his repeater, took aim, and fired.
He saw the man fall from his saddle and hit the water. The fall of their leader halted the soldiers’ charge, and they gathered near where he had fallen. White Cow Bull shifted his aim to the flag bearer and fired again; he went down, and another soldier seized the flag. The air grew thick with gunsmoke.
When it cleared slightly, White Cow Bull witnessed a peculiar scene: some soldiers had dismounted in the Ford and appeared to be retrieving something from the water, while those still on horseback continued firing. Suddenly battle cries echoed behind them, and hundreds of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors charged toward them. They had defeated the soldiers who attacked the Hunkpapa camp and were now racing to help. The soldiers noticed them too, retreating to the far bank.
Bobtail Horse rushed to his pony, shouting for them to chase the retreating enemy. White Cow Bull and Bobtail Horse led the charge across the Ford, with the others following closely. During the pursuit, a warrior named Yellow Nose, a Ute raised by the Cheyenne after being captured as a boy, displayed incredible bravery. He galloped ahead, dangerously close to the soldiers, then raced back to safety.
The relentless shouts and noise frightened the soldiers’ horses, causing them to scatter. Seizing the moment, Yellow Nose charged again, grabbed a small flag planted in the ground, and rode off with it, striking a soldier with its sharp end, counting coup with even greater courage than taking a life. The soldiers divided into two groups, most on foot and firing as they retreated to higher ground. White Cow Bull found cover and began firing with one of the few repeating rifles among them, watching as five soldiers fell from his shots.
One Cheyenne warrior in a spotted war bonnet and a mountain lion robe rode out alone, sprinting toward the Long Ridge where a group of soldiers had taken a defensive position. He galloped so close to them that he seemed almost within reach, rode circles around them, and then raced back to safety as the warriors erupted in cheers. Even among the enemy, there was valor. One lone soldier on a sorrel horse broke away from his companions and fled down the ridge.
Two Cheyenne warriors and a Lakota gave chase, firing at him as they pursued. White Cow Bull watched him draw his revolver, but instead of turning to fire at his pursuers, he pressed the weapon to his own head, pulled the trigger, and fell lifeless to the ground. This soldier might have been Second Lieutenant Henry M. Harrington of Company C, whose body was never conclusively identified.
Before long, White Cow Bull’s ammunition ran dry. The soldiers lay motionless, and the battle was decided. Victory cries erupted all around them, and the women and children emerged onto the ridge, stripping the fallen soldiers of their belongings and capturing their horses. Some women, having lost husbands, brothers, or sons, butchered the soldiers’ bodies in grief and rage.
White Cow Bull joined in searching the fallen for ammunition and weapons. Near the top of the ridge, he came across a naked body. Turning it over, he saw a face dusted with fine hairs, a face he recognized. It was the white man who had worn the buckskin jacket and fired at him across the Ford, the same one he had shot from his horse.
Recalling how close his bullets had come to hitting him, White Cow Bull decided to claim the medicine of his trigger finger, hoping it would make him a better marksman. He drew his knife and began to sever the finger. At that moment, he heard a woman’s voice behind him. Turning, he saw Monahsetah, Yellowbird, and an older Cheyenne woman standing together.
The older woman gestured toward the lifeless body and said he was their relative, then motioned for him to leave. White Cow Bull looked toward Monahsetah, smiling, but she did not return his smile. Wondering if she thought it dishonorable for a warrior to tamper with the body of an enemy, he stepped away, feigning interest in searching for bullets. He stole a glance back.
Monahsetah stood silently looking down at the body while the older woman drove her sewing awl deep into each of the white man’s ears. She explained, so that Long Hair would hear better in the spirit land. It was then that White Cow Bull first understood that Long Hair was the soldier chief they had been battling, the very white man he had aimed at during the skirmish by the Ford. Following the victory at Little Big Horn, the tribes dispersed.
White Cow Bull never saw Monahsetah again after that summer, and perhaps because of her, he never took a wife. Years later, after that day in Montana, the interviewer encountered the old man several times at Charlie Thunder Bull’s cabin near Oglala, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge reservation and painted three portraits of him before his passing in 1942. As the sun dipped below the horizon, casting long shadows over the rolling plains, the echoes of White Cow Bull’s tales lingered in the still air. His voice had transported his listener to a time when the grasslands were alive with the thunder of hooves and the cries of warriors defending their way of life.
Though his body was frail and time had worn him thin, his spirit remained unyielding, a living testament to a history often silenced. In the years that followed, the teller of his story would return to it again and again, sketching not only his portrait but the essence of a man who embodied resilience in the face of loss, his legacy interwoven with the fields of Montana and the battlefields of history.
