The Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876, remains one of the most significant Native American victories in American history, pitting General George Armstrong Custer’s Seventh Cavalry against a large coalition of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors. While Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse are the most famous figures from the fight, Native and U. S. Army accounts single out another warrior as the most feared man on the field that day.
Rain in the Face, a Hunkpapa Lakota warrior, was described by both allies and enemies as a fighter of tremendous physical strength and almost supernatural ferocity. Accounts say his war-painted face and fixed stare could instill dread in soldiers before he even raised a weapon. To many Lakota, he was a thundercloud on the edge of battle; to the U. S.
Army, he was something closer to a living boogeyman. He was born in the early 1830s near the confluence of the Cheyenne River in present-day South Dakota. Like most Lakota boys of his era, he learned to ride horses almost before he could walk, and was trained to track, hunt, and endure hardship without complaint. His first bow was a child’s toy; his second was a true hunter’s weapon.
By his teenage years, he had likely completed a vision quest, a rite of passage involving fasting, isolation, and seeking communion with the spirit world. He earned the name Rain in the Face during a confrontation, possibly a skirmish with a Crow war party or a raid into enemy territory. Native accounts say he returned from battle with his face marked by streaks of blood and water. Some claimed it was his own blood mixed with cold rain; others said it was the blood of adversaries, streaked by weather into sharp lines like war paint.
An elder warrior witnessed him and gave him the name Itomagazu, which translates to Rain in the Face. Among the Lakota, names were declarations of identity, and this one fit him like a second skin. By the mid-1860s, Rain in the Face had already gained notoriety. He was likely involved in Red Cloud’s War from 1866 to 1868, particularly in assaults on forts such as Fort Phil Kearny, where the Lakota and their allies resisted construction of the Bozeman Trail.
Some accounts suggest he may have participated in the Fetterman Fight of 1866, though his exact role remains unclear. In 1873, he fought at the Battle of Honsinger Bluff near the Yellowstone River. During that confrontation with Custer’s forces, he reportedly killed Dr. John Honsinger and a farrier named Augustus Baliran.
He was later apprehended for those killings by Captain Tom Custer, George Custer’s younger brother, who reportedly supervised the shackling of Rain in the Face at Fort Abraham Lincoln. According to Rain in the Face’s own account, Tom Custer physically assaulted him while he was restrained and locked him in a desolate room with only a thin blanket through the harsh winter months. He described the experience as torturous and degrading, and he never forgot the humiliation. After escaping the fort, he spent the following years consumed by thoughts of revenge.
That revenge came in the summer of 1876. The Battle of the Little Bighorn was the violent culmination of years of tension and broken promises. The U. S.
government, driven by the belief in Manifest Destiny, pushed further into Indigenous lands. The 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie had delineated territorial boundaries for the Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and other groups, but it was disregarded almost immediately as settlers encroached and railroads cut through buffalo ranges. The treaty was renewed in 1868, promising the Lakota exclusive rights to the Great Sioux Reservation, including the Black Hills, a site of profound spiritual importance. Those rights were meant to last “as long as the grass grows.
” In exchange, the Lakota were to remain on the reservation and halt hostilities. But in 1874, an expedition led by Custer discovered gold in the Black Hills, and prospectors flooded the area almost immediately. Instead of removing the intruders, the federal government tried to buy the land. When Sitting Bull and other leaders refused to sell, the U.
S. government labeled all non-reservation individuals as hostile and ordered them back to designated agencies by January 31, 1876. Many chose not to comply. Instead, they gathered in what was estimated to be the largest Native encampment ever seen on the plains, with thousands of men, women, and children settling near the Little Bighorn River in southeastern Montana.
On June 25, 1876, the Seventh Cavalry entered the camp. George Custer led more than 600 men in an aggressive maneuver meant to trap and scatter the Native forces. Overconfident and dismissive of Native strength, he divided his regiment into three columns to strike quickly and prevent escape. He failed to recognize that the camp was not a small group of fugitives but a formidable fighting force.
As Custer’s column approached from the east, warriors surged out of the encampment in counterattack rather than retreat. The battle erupted abruptly and with great violence. Custer and his immediate contingent of roughly 210 men were isolated and heavily outnumbered. Warriors on horseback, led by figures such as Crazy Horse, Two Moons, and Rain in the Face, executed rapid assaults amid swirling dust, gunfire, and screams.
As the soldiers were overwhelmed, they tried to form defensive positions along a ridge now known as Last Stand Hill. The exact role Rain in the Face played in the final moments of Custer’s command is difficult to verify. But his own account, recorded in later years, claimed that he recognized Tom Custer on the battlefield and sought him out specifically. According to Rain in the Face, he confronted the man who had humiliated him at Fort Abraham Lincoln and killed him during the fight, cutting out his heart as an act of vengeance.
This claim is recorded but, like much of what happened in the chaos of that day, it cannot be independently confirmed. The battle ended with the complete annihilation of Custer’s immediate command. The victory, however, was short-lived. The U.
S. government responded with overwhelming force, sending thousands of additional troops to the region. Within a year, the Lakota and their allies were scattered and forced onto reservations. Sitting Bull fled to Canada but eventually surrendered in 1881.
Crazy Horse surrendered in May 1877 and was killed later that year at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. Rain in the Face survived the battle and the wars that followed. He eventually settled on the Standing Rock Reservation, where he lived for the rest of his life. In his later years, he told his story to writers and artists, including the sculptor Cyrus Dallin, who used him as a model.
He remained defiant about his actions, expressing no regret for the revenge he took at the Little Bighorn. He died on September 14, 1905, at Standing Rock. His name, which once struck terror into soldiers and warriors alike, now belongs to the history of the Plains Wars.
Among the many warriors who fought at the Little Bighorn, he remains one of the most feared and least examined figures of that battle.