Curley, the Crow, Still Living.
“Curley, the Crow,” the only survivor of the Custer massacre, a half-blood Sioux scout, is in his seventy-second year. He declares that the famous painting, “Custer’s Last Stand,” does not truly represent the scene, since it shows scalped and mutilated American soldiers on the field of battle at Little Horn, where, on June 24, 1876, Custer and practically all of his command perished. “There was no scalping and no mutilation,” says Curley. “Four hundred and seventy-three soldiers were killed, and not a mark was found on them that was not made by bullets. I was General Custer’s scout, and he had sent me for re-enforcements the night before the battle. I was returning with Captain Bentline and his command. While I was still a long way off my horse was shot from under me, and I got down and ran until I came into the thick of the fighting. As I got there, I saw the soldiers were lying dead right and left. Those four hundred and seventy-three had been surrounded by six thousand Sioux. I saw Custer fighting with his saber, and I thought he was the last man alive there, but I soon saw that his brother, Lieutenant Tom Custer, was fighting beside him. He fell, and General Custer then stood alone. The Indians could easily have killed him before that, but the purpose was to take him alive. Fourteen Indians whom he had slashed and gashed with his saber lay near him, most of them dead or dying. I called to General Custer, meaning to tell him of General Reno’s refusal to come, and he said, ‘You here, Curley? We’ll fight to the end.’ Those were his last words. A big Sioux seized his arm, and Custer turned on him and dealt a terrible saber stroke that half cut his head off. As he did this, the son of the Sioux fired his rifle at Custer, and the bullet went through his heart. I pushed through toward Custer as he fell. I held his head as he sank back dead.”
Changes in Water-polo and Swimming-race Rules.
Radical changes in the rules that came up for consideration were passed upon favorably at the annual meeting of the Intercollegiate Swimming Association held at the New York Athletic Club a few days ago. Most of them affected water polo, and all were proposed by the graduate advisory board, a committee created last winter, when the managers and captains of the various college teams, after encountering all sorts of trouble with the rules in vogue, decided the matter ought to be placed in the hands of competent and experienced veterans of the sport.
The work of this committee, judging from the report, was thorough. Water polo came in for most of their attention, they asserted, because it was that division that had created most dissatisfaction. With an eye toward making the contests less one-sided than heretofore, the board ruled that in future the ball be given to the team scored against after each goal.
A second change was the substitution of three periods for two in every game, to alleviate the tax on the strength and stamina of the players, and another was an amendment permitting a player to return to the game after he had once been withdrawn. The object of the latter ruling is to decrease the size of the visiting squad and thereby reduce their traveling expenses. The value of this change cannot be overestimated, for the matter of expenses has been the bugbear that has retarded the development of the sport among the colleges.
The elimination of the one and a half Flying Dutchman from the list of legal dives was another important amendment. The dive was considered too dangerous for collegians, several serious accidents having resulted at dual meets within the last few years.
There was one subject, however, over which the advisory board and the college representatives failed to agree, and that was the question of eliminating the plunge from the list of events to make room for the back stroke. The board favored the change on the ground that the plunge was not an interesting event from a spectator’s standpoint, that it did not develop swimmers, and that it had been stricken off national and Olympic programs. The back stroke was one style of swimming at which Americans had been beaten easily at the last Olympic meet. The delegates, however, voted to refuse the change principally because most of the colleges had first-class plungers on their squads—men capable of winning points.
No other colleges having requested admission into the association, the championship tournament will again be limited to Yale, Princeton, Pennsylvania, Columbia, and the College of the City of New York. To interest other universities in the sport it was agreed to add a special fifty-yard event for all colleges outside of the association in the championship meet.