A Cheyenne warrior who fought at the Battle of the Little Bighorn left behind a detailed personal account of the 1876 clash, offering one of the most complete Native American perspectives on the event. Wooden Leg, whose Cheyenne name was Canito, was a respected Northern Cheyenne fighter. He earned his English name after a leg injury that required a wooden prosthesis. He took part in several engagements against the U.
S. Army, including the battle where Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer’s Seventh Cavalry was destroyed. His testimony, recorded by historians and preserved in books and archives, describes the fight from the perspective of an ordinary warrior inside the camp that Custer attacked. Wooden Leg was asleep when a sudden noise startled him awake.
Something in the sound frightened him. He sat up and listened. His brother, Yellow Hair, also woke. Chaos was breaking out across the camps, and gunshots rang in the distance.
The shooting seemed to come from the upper end of the village. People were scattering in every direction. Women screamed, warriors yelled, and elders shouted warnings that soldiers were coming. He grabbed his lariat and revolver and ran toward the horses.
Three young herders were nearby. One was catching grasshoppers; the other two were roasting fish. Wooden Leg shouted the news and asked about the horses. Without speaking, they jumped onto their tethered ponies and galloped toward camp.
His father, Many Wounds, had already taken his favorite horse from the returning herd. Wooden Leg emptied his war bag and prepared for battle. He changed into new clothes, including a shirt that had been a gift from an Oglala Sioux. He put on beaded moccasins and carefully painted his face with a blue-black circle filled with red and yellow.
His father urged him to hurry. He left his hair unbraided and rode out after the other warriors. He followed the crowd of mounted fighters surging forward. They pushed past the Oglala camp, where hundreds of riders swarmed around soldiers who fired continuously.
The warriors replied with a hail of arrows. Wooden Leg rode with the Sioux, flanking the soldiers until their retreat was blocked. The soldiers took cover in trees. Some had Crow or Shoshone scouts with them.
Most had already run. Warriors pressed closer, shooting arrows into the timber. Gunfire answered, but the Native forces held their position. More fighters arrived, surrounding the grove.
Dead soldiers lay in the grass and sagebrush. Some Sioux crept forward with torches, ready to burn the woods. Suddenly the soldiers burst from cover on horseback. Wooden Leg was near where they broke out.
He pulled his horse around and spurred into a frantic run like the others. But the soldiers were not charging. They were running for their lives across the open valley toward the river. The warriors paused only a moment before giving chase.
Their horses were slow and tired; the warriors’ horses flew like the wind. Wooden Leg fired four shots. He did not know if they hit. Nearby, a Sioux warrior sank an arrow into a soldier’s skull.
Another soldier took an arrow in the shoulder and fell from his saddle. More fell to arrows, spears, or stone war clubs. Wooden Leg and a warrior named Little Bird focused on one soldier wearing a trailing war bonnet. They flanked him, Little Bird on the right and Wooden Leg on the left, whipping his horse from behind.
The soldier twisted in his saddle and shot Little Bird in the leg. Angry, Wooden Leg swung the elk-antler handle of his whip against the soldier’s head. The blow stunned him. Wooden Leg grabbed the rifle strapped to the man’s back and pulled it free as the soldier slumped to the ground.
He left him there, not knowing whether he was alive or dead. The wave of warriors carried him forward. He now held a soldier’s rifle but had no cartridges for it. Three cavalrymen broke from the confusion and galloped back up the valley.
Sioux and Cheyenne riders chased them down. According to what the pursuers later told, one soldier turned toward the river and disappeared into the trees. The other two raced south. One was trapped in a gully and killed.
The last man bolted toward Reno Creek, then doubled back to the timber and hid in brush. He fought hard, emptying his revolver before falling. Crooked Nose, a Cheyenne, and several Sioux chased a warbonneted scout allied with the soldiers. The chase led on foot through a swampy area and into the northern woods.
After an exchange of gunfire, the enemy scout was killed. Wooden Leg missed that fight. He was too occupied chasing soldiers fleeing into the river. Warriors crowded the banks, clubbing and shooting as troopers struggled in the water.
He swung his stolen rifle like a club, knocking two soldiers from their saddles into the current. Some warriors, including Wooden Leg, pushed across to the far side. There, a Cheyenne named Whirlwind crashed into another warbonneted scout. Both fired at point-blank range.
Both fell dead on the flatland east of the crossing. Nearby, a second scout hid behind a sagebrush mound, firing at the warriors. They flanked him, and a bullet dropped him. As they moved in, he weakly raised his rifle.
Wooden Leg smashed the barrel into his skull, and others finished him with knives and clubs. Wooden Leg took the scout’s gun, which was longer than his first captured rifle. A Sioux warrior asked for one of the weapons, so Wooden Leg gave him the longer gun and kept the shorter. The Sioux had already taken the dead man’s ammunition belt and gave him none.
As the Sioux scalped and stripped the body, Wooden Leg walked away with only the gun he had just given up. Returning across the river, he learned that many soldiers had died there. He moved with a group circling north toward the soldiers’ position. From a hilltop, he fired a few shots with his new rifle toward the mass below, though the distance was too great for real harm.
Then a voice shouted that more soldiers had appeared on far-off hills downstream. Word spread quickly. Warriors split up. Some rode along the ridgelines; others crossed the river to flank through the valley.
Wooden Leg chose the valley route. His horse slid down the slope, splashed across the river, and rode through the camps toward the Cheyenne circle. Most women, children, and elders had fled west into the hills. Only his father remained at their lodge.
Wooden Leg told him of the battle upstream and showed off the rifle and cartridges. His father nodded and said he had fought bravely, then told him to rest. Wooden Leg refused. He argued that the gun made him stronger and he was going back.
His father frowned, noting that his horse was tired. Wooden Leg said he would take the other one. His father let go of the exhausted mount and roped the second horse from the herd, blessing it with protective medicine. Across the river, the new battle raged.
The soldiers had formed lines along a ridge, while the warriors spread across the lower slopes, flanking them. Wooden Leg’s father gripped his arm. He said the brother was already there and asked whether both his sons had to risk themselves. He told Wooden Leg he had no shield, no flute, and urged him to stay back and shoot from a distance.
Nearby, two younger warriors hesitated. Wooden Leg jangled his cartridges and boasted of the plunder the warriors had taken: guns, tobacco, even a dead man’s clothes. Their hesitation disappeared. They joined him as they forded the river at the wide shallows east of the creek.
As they neared the fighting, the mass broke into individual paths. Though every warrior had arrived on horseback, most dismounted and crept forward through gullies on foot. Hundreds still crisscrossed the battlefield, some repositioning, others charging recklessly before the soldiers’ lines to prove their courage. Wooden Leg angled left up a gulch, following other Cheyenne fighters.
Though tribes naturally clustered, the lines blurred. Sioux, Cheyenne, and others fought side by side. The soldiers had advanced along a high ridge east of the camp before turning onto a lower spur where most would meet their end. Earlier, scattered Sioux and Cheyenne had traded long-range shots with them from the distant ridge.
According to the account, Bobtail Horse, an Elk Society warrior, along with three Cheyenne and four Sioux, were the first to cross the river and engage. Warriors took cover in gullies and behind sagebrush mounds. Bows outnumbered guns. Arrows arced high from hiding, raining down on men and horses alike.
Gun users had to expose themselves, while arrows found their mark silently, sticking in horses’ backs and sending them rearing into the troopers. This slow fight lasted about ninety minutes. The soldiers on the ridge could not spot the warriors slithering through brush, popping up to fire, then vanishing. Few warriors fell in this phase.
Then came a sudden shift. About forty soldiers broke from the ridge’s eastern end, galloping toward the river and the hidden mass of Cheyenne and Oglala warriors. The warriors retreated into a deep gully as the soldiers dismounted on the low ridge they had abandoned. Then Lame White Man, the Southern Cheyenne chief, galloped up and rallied the warriors, telling them to turn back because they could finish them all.
Then the soldiers broke. Instead of firing at the warriors, they turned their weapons on themselves. By the time the warriors reached them, every man lay dead by his own hand. Wooden Leg retrieved his horse and circled east of the ridge.
When he arrived, the remaining soldiers there were already corpses. Warriors told him most had killed each other or themselves. One Cheyenne described four troopers trying to escape along their original trail. Three fell quickly.
The fourth crossed a gully before his exhausted horse faltered, then raised his revolver to his temple and fired. Riding north of the ridge, Wooden Leg joined warriors surrounding another band of soldiers. He fired two long-range shots before stopping, wary of friendly fire from the swarming warriors. Then these soldiers, too, turned guns on comrades or themselves.
None lived to feel the warriors’ blades. Hundreds of boys and elders watched from safe distances. When one soldier broke ranks and sprinted northward, hidden warriors intercepted him. He paused in mid-flight and ended his own life.
A warrior named Young Big Beaver raced down, claimed the dead man’s revolver and ammunition, then galloped back to safety. As Wooden Leg surveyed the field, a two-spirit warrior grabbed his arm and pointed to the soldier chief giving orders. But stampeding horses churned up dust before they could point clearly. The moment, and perhaps Custer himself, was lost in the chaos.
As Lame White Man shouted the charge, the warriors began their deadly dance, leaping up, surging forward, ducking down, inching closer with each movement. Wooden Leg noticed a Sioux warrior staggering away from the battle toward the gully, collapsing and rising repeatedly. As the man passed near him, Wooden Leg recoiled in horror. The warrior’s entire lower jaw had been shot away.
The sight made him vomit. He never learned the man’s fate or identity. For most of the prolonged fighting, Wooden Leg followed his father’s advice and remained mounted, keeping his distance while circling the battlefield. Only when soldiers charged toward the river did he dismount briefly to join the advance.
By then only one group of soldiers remained, taking cover behind their dead horses at the ridge’s western edge. Hundreds of warriors silently closed in from all sides. From his position in a gully, Wooden Leg could see warriors blanketing the north slope. He fired toward the dead horses that marked the soldiers’ position.
A warbonneted Sioux lay ahead of him behind sagebrush. As the man peered up to fire, a bullet struck him square in the forehead. His limbs jerked violently before he went still. Suddenly a lone soldier on horseback emerged behind the advancing warriors, galloping eastward.
A group of Sioux gave chase. Wooden Leg assumed they caught and killed him. Then the soldiers’ gunfire ceased. Warriors creeping closest shouted that all the white men were dead.
A chaotic surge followed as warriors, boys, and elders rushed forward in a cloud of dust and smoke. Many claimed these last soldiers, too, had turned guns on themselves, though Wooden Leg could not verify this. Seven soldiers made a final dash down the creek toward the river, but surrounded warriors cut them down. Later accounts suggested some may have committed suicide.
In the aftermath, a bizarre moment occurred when one seemingly dead soldier propped himself up on his elbow with a dazed expression. As startled warriors recoiled, a Sioux brave seized the man’s pistol and shot him through the head, followed by blows from others. Wooden Leg believed he was the battle’s final casualty. This last man was powerfully built, with a stubby black beard and a distinctive curled mustache.
He fell near where the white stone markers now stand. Though some Cheyenne later claimed he wore officer’s bars, Wooden Leg noted no insignia at the time. Another corpse drew particular attention. Allegedly wearing buckskin when killed, the man was now stripped and decapitated.
Intricate blue and red tattoos decorated his chest and arms, including an eagle design. A leather packet on his arm contained papers, leading some to speculate he was the leader, though none could confirm. The fighting had lasted from mid-morning until early afternoon. Among the dead, one fair-bearded soldier caught Wooden Leg’s eye.
His exceptionally long yellow facial hair inspired Wooden Leg to take an unusual scalp. He carefully skinned one side of the man’s face to preserve the beard, then mounted it on an arrow shaft as a trophy. Word came that a warrior named Noisy Walking lay severely wounded. Wooden Leg found his childhood friend in the gully where the first group of soldiers had fallen.
Though Noisy Walking claimed to feel good, his pallor betrayed three bullet wounds, one clean through his body, along with multiple stab injuries. His father, the renowned medicine man White Bull, had been notified, and women relatives were approaching with a travois. Moving eastward, Wooden Leg spotted a nearly concealed body. The missing scalp puzzled him.
Something about the figure seemed familiar. He summoned his brother Yellow Hair, and they made a grim discovery: it was Lame White Man, their own war chief. The evidence suggested a tragic error. His finest clothing remained untouched.
A Sioux warrior had likely mistaken him for an enemy in the chaos. A single bullet had pierced his chest, accompanied by multiple stab wounds. They discreetly covered his body with a blanket, avoiding confrontation with their Sioux allies. Within hours, his widow arrived with female relatives to claim his remains.
Across the field, mourning women retrieved their dead and wounded. The victory’s joy faded as Wooden Leg heard their wails, reminded of the warriors’ own losses. Among the fallen soldiers, Wooden Leg noticed uniform markings, shoulder decorations, and sleeve stripes, though their significance escaped him at the time. He assumed they represented some white man’s war medicine.
The battle preparations had followed sacred customs. Horses bore only blankets and lariat bridles, allowing quick recapture if riders fell. Twelve Cheyenne wore full war bonnets, including chiefs and seasoned warriors. None fought naked.
All wore their finest battle regalia. Some Sioux warriors employed dramatic disguises, including buffalo and bear skins. Discovering metal bottles among the dead, the warriors identified the contents as whiskey, a foreign concept to most. While some warriors sampled the liquid with comically disastrous results, the fighters credited their medicine men’s prayers for the soldiers’ apparent madness and self-destruction.
Wooden Leg initially believed the medicine men’s power explained the soldiers’ strange actions. Years later, however, he concluded that the whiskey likely caused the self-destructive behavior. From a soldier with three stripes, he took a leather packet containing strange green papers with markings. He tore up the contents but kept the holder as a trophy.
Many warriors found similar packets, most of which were discarded or given to children as curiosities. By midafternoon, Wooden Leg left the battlefield wearing captured soldiers’ clothes that fit poorly, the sleeves and pants too short. He carried two metal whiskey bottles and his unusual beard scalp mounted on an arrow shaft. His grandmother recoiled when he offered her the scalp trophy.
After he boasted of his exploits, she reluctantly accepted it, though it clearly disturbed her. He shared one bottle among friends and gave the other to Little Hawk, who drank it all and promptly became violently ill. A commotion erupted near the camp where Sioux warriors surrounded newly arrived Indians. Angry shouts of “kill them” mixed with calls for restraint.
Above the chaos, one voice thundered that the speaker had nothing to do with the soldiers. It was Little Wolf, one of the four revered elder Cheyenne chiefs. Speaking in Cheyenne, he stood proudly among seven lodges of families who had just arrived. Yellow Horse, a Southern Cheyenne elder, nudged Wooden Leg forward, saying he was Little Wolf’s relative and should speak for him.
As they pushed through the hostile crowd, Wooden Leg saw even some Cheyenne, like White Bull, distraught over his wounded son, accusing Little Wolf of collaborating with the soldiers. When Wooden Leg questioned him, the chief’s eyes flashed. He demanded whether anyone thought he was a white man’s dog. His chest swelled as he declared he would fight any man who said his heart was not Cheyenne.
Little Wolf explained that his band had spotted soldiers camped on the upper Rosebud, traveled cautiously through the night, found abandoned army supplies, witnessed the battle from distant hills, and approached only when gunfire subsided. After Wooden Leg translated his story, the Sioux war leader declared him innocent. Though some grumbled about his late arrival, the crisis passed when Little Wolf’s women distributed precious reservation sugar and coffee to smooth tensions. That afternoon, the people conducted sacred burials.
Lame White Man received honors fit for a chief. Wooden Leg helped inter his bones in a hillside crevice, clearing a sheltered cove, wrapping the body in blankets and a buffalo robe, and sealing the tomb with flat stones. The chief’s mother remained behind to mourn. As custom dictated after death, all tribes began relocating.
Cheyenne moved about a mile downstream to the northwest. Sioux bands retreated toward the bench hills west of the Little Bighorn. Nearly all non-combatants had fled to the hills during the initial attack and remained there until the soldiers were repelled. Returning refugees created such crowds that horsemen could barely pass.
After the battle’s outcome became clear, people moved with cautious relief. Women worked tirelessly, hauling water, gathering wood, and dismantling lodges. Hundreds cut willow branches to weave temporary shelters against the threat of rain. For those in mourning, custom demanded sacrifice.
Lodges were torn apart or burned, possessions cast away. Even the travois that carried the dead were broken. Their horses were sometimes set free or killed in solemn tribute. At dusk, Wooden Leg went to Noisy Walking, who lay beneath a willow dome, his body frail upon buffalo robes.
His father kept watch while his mother sat silent at the entrance. When Wooden Leg asked how he was, Noisy Walking whispered that he was good but wanted water. Wooden Leg knelt beside him, unsure what to say. He told his friend he had been very brave.
Silence stretched between them. When Noisy Walking begged again for water, White Bull refused, not out of cruelty but wisdom. A medicine man knows when even a sip can hasten the end. Wooden Leg stayed until he could bear no more.
There was nothing left to do but leave his friend to his fate. That night, no songs of victory rang through the camps, only the muffled cries of mourning women and the low chanting of prayers. Across both the Sioux and Cheyenne circles, grief cut deep. Mothers and sisters gashed their limbs in ritual sorrow.
Five warriors, including Wooden Leg, took turns scouting through the night. Once they crept to the high bluffs overlooking the soldiers’ refuge and saw the survivors huddled below. Though they could have picked them off, they held their fire. Their duty was to observe, not provoke.
When relief came at last, Wooden Leg did not seek his family. He turned his horse loose and collapsed onto a patch of thick grass, exhaustion heavier than the dew. Wooden Leg died in 1940 on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana.
His eyewitness account, recorded by historians, remains one of the most detailed Native American testimonies of the Battle of the Little Bighorn.