Wooden Leg

'I made medicine the first time when I was seventeen years old. It was during the month of May, I believe, although we did not divide the years into months or weeks as the white people later taught us to divide them...My father taught me some medicine practices for myself. He showed me where to gath [...]
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'I made medicine the first time when I was seventeen years old. It was during the month of May, I believe, although we did not divide the years into months or weeks as the white people later taught us to divide them...My father taught me some medicine practices for myself. He showed me where to gather the seed of a certain grass that has power to shield me...My horse was protected by the same medicine.' Told with vigor and insight, this is the memorable story of Wooden Leg (1858-1940), one of sixteen hundred warriors of the Northern Cheyennes who fought with the Lakotas against Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Wooden Leg remembers the world of the Cheyennes before they were forced onto reservations. He tells of growing up on the Great Plains and learning how to be a Cheyenne man. We hear from him about Cheyenne courtship, camp life, spirituality, and hunting; of skirmishes with Crows, Pawnees, and Shoshones; and of the Cheyennes' valiant but doomed resistance against the army of the United States.In particular, Wooden Leg recalls the fight against Custer at the Little Bighorn, a controversial and arresting recollection that stands as the first published Native account of that battle. As an old man in his seventies, Wooden Leg related the story of his life and the Little Bighorn battle in interviews with Thomas B. Marquis (1869-1935), formerly an agency physician for the Northern Cheyennes. Marquis checked and corroborated or corrected all points of importance with other Cheyennes. This edition features a new introduction by Richard Littlebear, president of Chief Dull Knife College and an enrolled member of the Northern Cheyenne Nation of Montana.