Rain in the Face was a Hunkpapa Lakota chief and fighter whose name had become legend among both his own people and the white soldiers who feared him. He was renowned for courage in combat and was widely believed to have carried a personal grievance against Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, accusing him of killing his brother and sister in an earlier conflict. Some narratives held that Rain in the Face was among the warriors who overwhelmed Custer’s unit at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, and that he may have struck the fatal blow. Historians dispute that claim, and the exact circumstances of Custer’s death remain uncertain.
Rain in the Face eventually surrendered to United States troops, served a prison term, and after his release became an advocate for Native American rights and a performer in Wild West shows, where he told of his wartime experiences. But for many years, Rain in the Face refused to speak publicly about the battle itself. Army officers and government agents tried every approach, kindness, offers, even direct threats, and none moved him. He was known as the man who killed Custer, and the poet Longfellow had even composed verse about him.
So it came as a shock when Rain in the Face at last agreed to give an account of the great fight to a man named McLaughlin, who recorded his words directly. Rain in the Face began his story two years before the major battle, when the chiefs Gaul and Sitting Bull established a camp at Standing Rock. Every Indian present was opposed to the government. They were Hunkpapa Sioux and they feared nothing.
The Yanktonais were friendly Indians who lingered near the agency hoping to obtain food and provisions. But the hostile camp had its own abundance: buffalo, deer, and many ponies, and the men passed the time dancing, racing, firing weapons, and playing games. Rain in the Face was well liked by the girls, who would provoke him to make him lose his temper, because when he grew angry he desired to fight. One evening a girl challenged him to go to Fort Lincoln and kill a white man.
He told her it was too risky, with soldiers on duty and scouts in the vicinity. She answered that a courageous man is not scared, and if he were a coward, she would ask another who was not afraid, someone who had danced in the Sun Dance. That was a provocation he could not refuse. The other girls laughed, but the young men were afraid of him, and he would have killed them for laughing.
He went to his lodge, painted his face black, and gathered his gun, his bow, and his pony. Slipping out of camp under cover of darkness, he traveled the forty-five miles to Fort Lincoln and waited two days for a chance to shoot a soldier. There were opportunities to kill a woman or a wood cutter, but he wanted to bring back a soldier’s brass buttons to the girl who had laughed at him. He rushed up, shot the storekeeper, struck the horse doctor with his war club, filled them with arrows, and cut off some buttons before a man he called Long Yellow Hair heard the shot and charged back.
Rain in the Face had no time to scalp the men he killed. He jumped on his pony, yelled at the soldiers to catch him, and they chased him to the Cannonball River. The next winter he went to the agency store at Standing Rock but received no rations because he had not signed the peace treaty. The storekeeper, whom he called One Arm, was there.
Rain in the Face was not afraid of him or of the thirty soldiers he called Little Hair. They snuck up behind him, piled on him, threw him into a wagon, and held him down until they reached the guard room at Fort Lincoln. Chained and given a single blanket, he spent the winter with snow blowing through the cracks onto him. On one occasion Little Hair released him and the soldiers instructed him to run.
Rain in the Face understood they wanted to shoot him in the back. He told Little Hair that he would break free, cut out his heart, and eat it. He was shackled to a white man, and one night they managed to escape. The soldiers shot at them, but the pair hid on the bank of the Heart River.
The white man sawed through the chains with a knife, but he was captured the next day. Rain in the Face got away and returned to Sitting Bull and Gaul, but they were too frightened to take him in. He sent Little Hair a picture of a bloody heart drawn on buffalo skin, a reminder that he had not forgotten his promise. The next time he encountered Little Hair, he said, he took his heart.
The men listening confirmed that most of this matched the government’s report on the deaths of the settler and the surgeon Huninger. But they wanted to hear about Tom Custer’s heart. McLaughlin presented Rain in the Face with a drawing of Custer’s final charge and asked if it resembled the battle. Rain in the Face examined it and laughed aloud.
The image was false, he said. The soldiers had not fought with sabers but with rifles and pistols, and they had fought on the ground, with every fourth soldier holding the horses. The Indians fastened themselves to their ponies and fought in a circular formation, removing their clothes and painting their bodies and their horses. The picture showed them with bows and arrows, but they had superior weaponry.
The soldiers’ rifles could only fire once, with cartridges jammed inside. Rain in the Face said he had seen dozens of firearms on the battlefield with shells still lodged in them. When the Indians saw the soldiers’ guns were failing, they used their war clubs to strike them down. It was simple, he said, like slaughtering sheep.
Some soldiers pleaded for their lives, but no quarter was given. He flipped the paper over and sketched a large sideways S with a pencil. This was the Little Bighorn River. The lodges were all along the banks, arranged like a curved bow.
When asked how many lodges there were, he answered that the Indians were as numerous as blades of grass. The camp held roughly four to six thousand Indians, meaning at least a thousand lodges. Sitting Bull had performed powerful magic on a hill, brought it back in a pouch on a coup stick, and delivered a great speech, telling them the Great Spirit had said the soldiers were approaching but the Indians would overcome them. The speech filled them with joy.
The following day scouts reported the soldiers were coming. Sitting Bull had the women construct empty lodges to deceive the scouts, while the brush and the river’s curve concealed the real camp. Then Sitting Bull departed to perform more medicine and did not return until the battle was over. He was a great leader, but he did not take part in the fighting.
Gaul was the principal war chief. Crazy Horse commanded the Cheyenne. Rain in the Face was not a head chief, but he guided a group of fierce Hunkpapa warriors. The soldiers’ horses were exhausted, and they were deceived by the vacant lodges, believing they faced only a small party.
The Indians were prepared. When the soldiers divided their forces, they had made a fatal error. Gaul led the majority of the Indians up the river to block the soldiers’ path. When the warriors saw that the scouts had remained behind with Long Yellow Hair, they were pleased.
They let the soldiers come over the bluffs, and some of the young men isolated them from the rear. Then the Indians revealed their line, and the soldiers attacked, then retreated under the gunfire. The young men behind them began to shoot. The officers were seen conversing and gesturing, but they all looked alike.
Rain in the Face said he did not see Long Yellow Hair then or afterward. The warriors tightened the circle, surging forward like an ocean wave upon the shore. They shot the horse holders and spooked the ponies by shaking blankets. The animals were weary, and the women captured them.
Rain in the Face charged in and seized the soldiers’ flag. His pony was killed beneath him. He cut the strap, leaped up, struck the flag bearer with his war club, and ran back carrying the flag. He was filled with pride.
The warriors shouted approval, and the fight continued. The soldiers’ blood and brains splattered on his face, feeling hot and tasting bitter. Consumed by fury, he found a fresh pony and charged in again, shooting, cutting, slashing. When that pony was shot, he acquired another.
Then he saw Little Hair and remembered his promise. He was in a frenzy, afraid of nothing, certain his white weasel tail charm would keep him safe. He could not say how many he killed trying to reach the man. Little Hair knew who he was.
Rain in the Face laughed and screamed at him, and saw his lips forming words, but the din was too great to hear. When he was near enough, he shot him with his revolver. He leaped from his pony, cut out the man’s heart, bit a piece from it, and spat it into his face. Then he rode away, waving it about.
He was content and weary, and he did not take the scalp. He had kept his promise, and that was the only thing of importance. He did not return to the battleground. The women arrived later to finish the wounded, taking possessions, cutting off boots for the hide, and severing fingers to remove rings more quickly.
They looked for Long Yellow Hair’s scalp but could not identify him, for he wore no officer’s coat and had shortened his hair. That evening there was a feast and a scalp dance. Sitting Bull addressed everyone, saying his magic had been strong and had given them courage, and he claimed responsibility for the victory. Gaul contested this, arguing that the warriors were the ones who fought while Sitting Bull only performed magic.
The friction between the two chiefs kept them from destroying the remaining soldiers on the hill. Both wanted to be the sole leader, and the Indians were divided in their support. Rain in the Face was unconcerned. He commanded his own band and followed neither.
He had grown tired of fighting and wished only to dance. Word came that more soldiers were approaching with large cannons, so the camp moved north. The pursuit continued until they crossed the border. Rain in the Face remained there until Sitting Bull came back, and he returned alongside him.
He was happy to be home. When he finished, McLaughlin asked him, if he did not kill Long Yellow Hair, then who did? Rain in the Face answered that he did not know. Nobody knows.
It was like battling in the darkness. Asked why Long Yellow Hair was not scalped like the rest, Rain in the Face said no one is too courageous to be scalped, and the women were puzzled they could not find him. He must have been concealed beneath other corpses. As for Curly, the Crow scout who claimed he got away, Rain in the Face called him a liar.
Curly, he said, did not participate in the battle. His pony gave out, and he fled like someone without courage. Rain in the Face was then about sixty years old, the only surviving chief who could recount the Custer engagement. He could sign his name in English but did not understand its meaning.
He knew only a small number of English words, yet he could grasp most of what was spoken to him. He remained powerful and physically impressive, looking like the very image of the Indian of Cooper’s stories. It took great patience to secure a commitment from him, but once given, his word could be relied upon.
His account had never before been shared with white men, and he was pleased that he had finally told it.