On June 25, 1876, Chief Gall of the Hunkpapa Lakota had only a few hours’ warning before Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer’s Seventh Cavalry arrived at the Little Bighorn River. A battle-hardened warrior of 36, Gall had already killed American soldiers and rival warriors to earn his standing among the most skilled fighters of his people. His importance was such that Chief Sitting Bull had made him a younger brother and trusted counselor.
When word of Custer’s approach reached the camp, Gall was among the first to learn. He could not know this confrontation would be unlike any other—a day he would recount for the rest of his life, and one of the first Native American accounts of the battle to reshape the story of Custer’s Last Stand.
That morning, Sioux scouts discovered ration boxes dropped by Custer’s troops a few miles from the village. American soldiers saw the scouts and frightened them off, but Custer understood they would alert Sitting Bull. Believing he must strike swiftly before the camp could flee, Custer divided his force.
He took five companies to march across the bluffs and attack from the north. Major Marcus Reno would lead three companies to strike from the south. A third force under Captain Frederick Benteen would cross far to the south and encircle the village from the west.
The plan was to block every route of escape.
Sitting Bull and the other leaders decided the best course was to break camp and flee before the attack. But they misjudged the Seventh Cavalry’s speed. Before they could move, Reno’s men were seen crossing the river and charging through the timber toward the village.
The Hunkpapa Sioux portion of the village sat on the southern edge, directly in Reno’s path. Gunfire erupted, sending bullets through tents and scattering the people inside. Warriors rushed for their horses while women and children ran south.
Gall’s first concern was his family—his two wives and three children. He did not have to search long. All five were dead when he found them, killed in the assault or caught in the crossfire.
“They were slain there by the pale-faced warriors, and it made my heart bad,” Gall later said. For the Sioux, this phrase described grief, hopelessness, and a desire for vengeance. “After that, I killed all my enemies with the hatchet.”
To discard a gun and use a hatchet was to accept death in return for greater brutality upon a foe. It was the decision of a warrior filled with fury who valued his enemy’s agony more than his own life. The price the Americans would pay for killing Gall’s family would be immense.
Reno’s men had tied their horses in the timber and advanced on foot within several hundred feet of the camp, forming a line and opening fire. Gall joined the warriors resisting the assault. Although Sitting Bull’s name is most famously linked to the battle, he did not participate in the fighting.
He stayed in camp to make medicine—a kind of magic meant to fortify the warriors and bring them success. It was men like Gall and the Oglala warrior Crazy Horse who led the combat.
The Sioux warriors responded with a cavalry charge. Reno’s men totaled only about 150, facing hundreds of Sioux with more arriving every moment. Among Reno’s troops were Native American scouts from the Crow and Arikara peoples, traditional enemies of the Sioux.
The Sioux targeted them specifically. This included Custer’s chief scout Bloody Knife, who was half Arikara and half Hunkpapa Sioux—the same tribe as Gall and Sitting Bull. Gall and Bloody Knife had grown up together and harbored a profound hatred for each other.
Gall’s distrust of Bloody Knife’s half-Arikara background had driven the man to leave the tribe and join the Americans. The two became sworn enemies, and Gall had killed Bloody Knife’s brothers and one of his sons.
Bloody Knife was on his horse beside Major Reno when he was suddenly shot in the head. Since Gall had no rifle, it was not his shot, but one of the other Sioux must have recognized the old enemy and finished him. The death terrified Reno and was the final event that made him order a retreat.
Reno’s men pulled back into the timber where their horses were tied, then attempted to flee across the river. The retreat was disorderly and lethal. Gall and the other Sioux pursued them, pulling men from their horses and shooting them in the back as they rode for the river.
At least 32 Americans died before the survivors scrambled to safety on the hills across the river. Gall was keen to chase them, but panicked cries from his fellow Sioux stopped him. A second American force was preparing to attack in the south.
If they entered the village, they would capture the women and children, and it would be over.
Gall hurried north with three fellow warriors to meet Custer’s advance. His account of what followed differs from most other Native warriors. He said he led a small scouting party along the bluffs on the east side of the river to track Custer as he neared the village.
They halted on a hill some 600 yards from Custer’s men, watching and determining their next move. One officer rode out ahead, scouting with binoculars. Custer had cut his famous long golden hair short for this battle, so Gall did not recognize the man the Sioux called Long Hair.
Only later did he realize who he must have been.
“No one knew him from anyone else,” Gall later said. “We could not tell him from any other.”
In Gall’s version, Custer became hesitant when he saw the village and stopped to wait for the rest of his command. Gall believed this was the moment Custer realized he had taken on more than he could handle. According to Gall, it was the Native Americans who attacked first, charging Custer as he crossed the bluffs about three-quarters of a mile from the river.
Custer’s final battle was not a failed attack but a failed defense.
Other Sioux warriors said Custer’s attack began almost immediately after Reno’s men were driven back. Gall probably arrived to find Custer’s men already forced into a retreat up the hills on the east bank and mistook it for the start of the battle. It was not an organized withdrawal.
Lines of American bodies found after the battle tell the story of a chaotic retreat, with men falling every few meters.
The Americans fought desperately. Their Springfield carbines tended to jam under intense use, and Gall saw many men throw down their jammed rifles and draw revolvers instead. Many soldiers ran out of ammunition mid-fight and were easily run down by warriors armed with hatchets.
The Native Americans created chaos by using blankets and loud shouting to frighten loose horses into the American lines, making the soldiers’ mounts bolt in terror. The charging horses panicked the Americans and stole their only chance of escape.
“It was a slaughter. We took no prisoners,” Gall admitted. “Our hearts were bad, and we cut and shot them all to pieces.”
According to Gall, Custer’s remaining men were driven back toward the top of the bluffs, where they split into at least two groups. What remained of C and F companies stayed with Custer and his brother Tom as they withdrew toward the peak now called Custer Hill. Gall did not see Custer’s last moments, and unlike many other warriors, he never claimed to have killed Long Hair.
He also believed Custer’s group were not the last men standing.
Gall said warriors pursued Custer’s men up the hill, overtook them, and surrounded them at the top of Custer Hill, cutting them down in minutes. According to Gall, the actual last stand happened to the southeast, where a second group under Custer’s brother-in-law, Lieutenant James Calhoun, with L Company, and Captain Miles Keogh with I Company, had gone after splitting from Custer. Gall insisted these men were the last ones standing.
“They never broke, but retired step by step all the way up the hill,” he said.
When they realized they were surrounded, Calhoun’s men dismounted and fought on foot to the last man. Captain Keogh and his men tried to link up with Custer along Battle Ridge, but Keogh was shot off his horse en route, and his men were soon overwhelmed. The bodies of his company were found piled together nearby, having fought side by side until the bitter end.
“They fought strong,” Gall later said of Custer’s men, “but it did not save them.”
The Custer fight lasted less than an hour, but the battle was far from over. Gall turned south to finish off Reno and avenge his slain family. Reno’s men had retreated to a hill to the southeast, where they awaited reinforcements from Captain Benteen and the pack train, which arrived around 4 p.
m. With the combined force of the remaining seven companies, they began marching toward Custer’s last known position. But Gall confirmed Custer’s men were already dead by then.
After finishing off Custer, the Sioux and Cheyenne rallied to attack Reno. They rode over the bluffs and found the Americans on the move. When the Americans spotted the swarm of enemies shouting and shooting, they retreated to their hill and dug in.
Numbering over 400 men, Reno and Benteen’s troops established a defensive circle on Reno Hill. For the next several hours, the Native Americans charged and probed the defenses but failed to break through before nightfall.
Gall and Crazy Horse ordered the warriors not to continue attacks through the night, as that would only get people killed. They kept the Americans awake with sniper fire while the warriors rested. “Time will do the work for them,” they said.
“It will fall into our hands when the thirst burns in their throats and makes them mad for a drink.”
The water situation on Reno Hill was dire. Summer heat and the dehydration of wounded men consumed the water supplies quickly, and they were all out by the morning of June 26. Gall posted snipers on the hills across the river to shoot at American water parties trying to fetch water from a nearby ravine.
The Americans eventually posted their own shooters to suppress Gall’s snipers and secured a safe route, a feat that earned several men Medals of Honor.
Later that afternoon, Sioux scouts spotted dust clouds kicked up by an approaching American force. This was General Alfred Terry and General John Gibbon, arriving for their planned rendezvous with Custer. Gall called it “the big dust” and agreed it was a sign to leave.
The Native Americans broke off their attack on Reno and packed up their lodges for a hasty withdrawal. By sunset, Sitting Bull’s village had escaped west toward the Bighorn Mountains.
It was a tremendous victory for the Sioux, but it would not last. The Americans renewed their campaign in the following months and ultimately forced the Sioux to surrender. Gall, Sitting Bull, and many others fled north to Canada.
Eventually, Gall and Sitting Bull fell out, and Gall chose to take his followers and return to U. S. territory.
Gall settled at the Standing Rock Reservation, converted to Christianity, and befriended the American officials running the reservation. In 1886, they convinced him to attend a 10th anniversary ceremony at the Little Bighorn. His presence was a surprising but celebrated feature, and it allowed Gall to meet survivors of the battle.
America had only ever heard the battle from the perspective of its soldiers. At the event, Gall provided one of the first accounts from the other side, using a mix of Lakota, English, and sign language.
There are multiple versions of Gall’s story from different sources. The version published in Chicago on June 26, 1886, differs from one published a month later in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, in which Gall was at the north end of the village at the start and never fought Reno’s men.
In another account from 1890, he was in both fights again but made no mention of his dead family. Whether Gall changed his account for different interviewers, or whether the interviewers misunderstood or falsified his words, has been debated by historians for almost 140 years.
No matter which version is believed, Gall’s account was one of the first times American media tried to listen to the voices of the other side of the battle. Even if some details are disputed, his words remain essential to understanding what happened at one of the most famous battles in American history.