Chief Gall, one of Sitting Bull’s most trusted warriors and adopted younger brothers, spent decades watching the story of the Battle of the Little Bighorn be told by the winning side. When he finally gave his own account to the American public in 1886, it challenged nearly everything the country believed about Custer’s Last Stand. Gall was 36 years old when the battle erupted on June 25, 1876. He had already fought rival tribes and U.
S. soldiers, and he had earned a place among the highest ranks of Lakota leadership. But nothing in his past prepared him for what happened that morning. Sioux scouts discovered abandoned ration boxes left by troops from Custer’s regiment.
When the Americans noticed the scouts and drove them off, Custer understood he had been spotted. Believing he could not risk the village scattering, he decided to attack. Sitting Bull had called a council, hoping to move the people before the soldiers arrived. But the 7th Cavalry moved faster than expected.
Reno’s men suddenly appeared at the southern edge of the village. Gunfire tore through the lodges. Horses screamed. Women and children fled in every direction.
Gall had only one thought: he had to find his family. He ran through the smoke and chaos searching for his two wives and three children. When he found them, it was too late. All five had been killed during Reno’s assault.
Gall later described the feeling in simple terms: “My heart turned bad. ”
For the Lakota, that phrase meant more than grief. It described an all-consuming rage that turned into a hunger for vengeance. A warrior with a bad heart feared nothing.
From that moment, Gall was not fighting for survival. He was fighting to avenge the people he loved. Reno’s troops kept firing into the village, but the warriors responded with overwhelming force. Reno’s command of about 150 men was suddenly surrounded by hundreds of Sioux fighters, with more arriving by the minute.
Among the casualties was Bloody Knife, Custer’s chief scout and a close friend of the general. Gall and Bloody Knife had once been childhood friends, but their relationship had soured into open hostility. During the fight, Bloody Knife was shot in the head while sitting beside Major Reno. The shock was so great that Reno lost control of the battle entirely.
He ordered a chaotic retreat back across the river. Warriors, including Gall, pursued the fleeing soldiers without mercy. Some men were dragged from their horses. Others were shot in the back as they ran.
By the time Reno’s survivors reached the bluffs on the far side, at least 32 soldiers were dead. But for Gall, the fight was not over. Another American force was approaching from the north. Custer.
This is where Gall’s account becomes both fascinating and fiercely debated. According to him, he rode north with three warriors and watched Custer’s approach from a hilltop. He saw an officer scouting ahead with binoculars. At the time, he did not recognize him as Custer.
Custer had cut his long hair shorter before the battle. Gall only learned the identity of the man he had seen later. Gall believed that when Custer saw the enormous size of the village, he hesitated. He did not charge.
He waited. That moment of indecision, Gall said, sealed the fate of the 7th Cavalry. In Gall’s telling, it was the Sioux who attacked Custer first. The famous “gallant charge” was, according to Gall, a desperate attempt by Custer to protect himself as warriors closed in from every direction.
Historians remain divided on this point. Some argue Custer attacked soon after Reno withdrew. Others suggest Gall may have arrived after the initial clash and misunderstood what he witnessed. What is not disputed is that Custer was outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and surrounded.
What followed was a massacre. Gall described the fight with striking honesty. He saw rifles jam from rapid fire. He watched men throw aside their broken weapons and switch to revolvers.
He saw warriors use blankets and war cries to spook the soldiers’ horses, turning the battlefield into chaos. He admitted plainly that the Sioux showed no mercy and took no prisoners. Their grief and fury left no room for compassion. But the most startling part of Gall’s account concerns the famous Last Stand itself.
He insisted Custer and his closest men were quickly overwhelmed on what is now called Custer Hill. The true final stand, he said, happened elsewhere. According to Gall, Lieutenant James Calhoun’s company and Captain Myles Keogh’s troops made the last desperate defense. These soldiers, he said, retreated slowly, step by step, holding their formation even as they were surrounded.
When the end came, they dismounted, formed a defensive line, and fought until the last man fell. Their bodies were later found close together. Their final actions showed discipline, courage, and a refusal to surrender. Gall believed they showed more fighting spirit than any other unit on the field that day.
That single detail reshapes the entire story of Custer’s Last Stand. After the shooting on that ridge stopped, Gall and other warriors turned south to face Reno and Benteen again. By then, Reno’s survivors had joined Captain Benteen and the pack train, forming a defensive position on a hill. The combined force numbered more than 400 men.
Throughout the afternoon and into the night, Sioux and Cheyenne warriors launched wave after wave of attacks. The soldiers held their ground. So Gall and Crazy Horse changed tactics. They decided to let time work against the Americans.
The soldiers were running out of water. The heat was brutal. The wounded were suffering. Soldiers who tried to reach the river were met with gunfire from Lakota snipers stationed by Gall’s warriors.
Several American soldiers would later receive the Medal of Honor for making those dangerous water runs. By the morning of June 26, the situation for Reno and Benteen had become desperate. Then, everything shifted. Lakota scouts spotted dust clouds rising to the east.
General Terry and General Gibbon were approaching with reinforcements. Gall called it “the big dust” and understood what it meant. The warriors could no longer hold their position. The Lakota and Cheyenne called off the assault and began preparing to move the entire village.
By sunset, the camp had been dismantled. The people vanished into the Bighorn Mountains. They had won their greatest victory. But it did not bring lasting freedom.
In the months that followed, the United States intensified its campaign against the Sioux. Village after village was forced to surrender or flee. Sitting Bull, Gall, and many others escaped north into Canada, seeking safety in exile. Exile was brutal.
Food was scarce. Winters were severe. Tensions grew within Sioux leadership. Eventually, Gall split from Sitting Bull and returned with his followers to U.
S. territory. He settled at the Standing Rock Reservation, embraced Christianity, and began working with American officials. In 1886, Gall took part in the 10th anniversary commemoration at the Little Bighorn battlefield.
It was there that he delivered one of the first detailed Lakota accounts of the battle directly to the American public. The audience was both fascinated and unsettled. His story contradicted newspaper reports and military records. It also humanized both sides.
But it sparked controversy. Different newspapers printed different versions of Gall’s story. Some placed him in different positions during the fight. Others included details he had supposedly left out earlier.
Some reported events he may never have mentioned at all. Did Gall tailor his stories to different audiences? Did translators misunderstand his words? Or did reporters embellish the narrative to sell papers?
Historians have debated those questions for more than a century. What remains beyond dispute is that Gall’s voice mattered. His testimony was one of the first times America seriously listened to the Lakota side of the story.
Even if his memories shifted over time, they offer something irreplaceable: a look at that tragic day through the eyes of someone who lived it.