“The other girls laughed, but the young men who heard it didn’t. They feared me. I would have killed them for laughing. I went to my lodge and painted sapa (black, the color used when they go on the war-path), took my gun, my bow, my pony. Sitting Bull had forbidden any one to leave camp without his permission. I skipped off under cover of darkness and went up to Lincoln (forty-five miles north, opposite the present site of Bismarck, North Dakota). I hung around for two days, watching for a chance to shoot a long sword. I had plenty of chances to kill a Ree squaw, plenty to kill a wood-chopper, but I wanted to carry back the brass buttons of a long sword to the girl who laughed at me. I did so, and she sewed them on her shawl. One morning I saw the sutler (store keeper) and a horse medicine man (U. S. Veterinary Surgeon Hontzinger) go out to a spring; Long Yellow Hair (General Custer) and his men were riding back about 100 yards. I rushed up and shot the sutler and brained the horse medicine man with my war club; then I shot them full of arrows and cut off some buttons. Long Yellow Hair heard the shot and his troop charged back. I didn’t have time to scalp the men I got. I jumped on my pony and yelled at them to catch me. They chased me to the Cannon Ball (a small river twenty-five miles south). Charlie Reynolds (a scout) knew me and told Long Yellow Hair who did this brave deed.
“Next winter I went to the agency store at Standing Rock. I drew no rations—I hadn’t signed the paper. (All the Indians who signed a peace treaty and consented to live on the reservation, under military orders, were furnished with rations by the government twice a month. The hostiles had to live by hunting.) Istokscha (One Arm, the Hon. H. S. Parkin) was running the store then. I wasn’t afraid of any of them. Little Hair (Capt. Tom Custer) had thirty long swords there. He slipped up behind me like a squaw, when my back was turned. They all piled on me at once; they threw me in a sick wagon (ambulance) and held me down till they got me to the guard-room at Lincoln.
“I was treated like a squaw, not a chief. They put me in a room, chained me, gave me only one blanket. The snow blew through the cracks and on to me all winter. It was cold. Once Little Hair let me out and the long swords told me to run. I knew they wanted to shoot me in the back. I told Little Hair that I would get away some time; I wasn’t ready then; when I did, I would cut his heart out and eat it. I was chained to a white man. One night we got away. They fired at us, but we ran and hid on the bank of Hart river in the brush. The white man cut the chains with a knife (a file). They caught him next day.
“I rejoined Sitting Bull and Gall. They were afraid to come and get me there. I sent Little Hair a picture, on a piece of buffalo skin, of a bloody heart. He knew I didn’t forget my vow. The next time I saw Little Hair, ugh! I got his heart. I have said all.”
And, Indian-like, he stopped.
We all knew that the greater part of this was true, since it tallied with the government account of the death of the sutler and Surgeon Hontzinger. But we wanted to hear how he took Tom Custer’s heart. McFadden, who is quite an artist as well as an actor of note, had made an imaginary sketch of “Custer’s Last Charge.” He got it and handed it to Rain, saying:
“Does that look anything like the fight?”
Rain studied it a long time, and then burst out laughing.
“No,” he said, “this picture is a lie. These long swords have swords—they never fought us with swords, but with guns and revolvers. These men are on ponies—they fought us on foot, and every fourth man held the others’ horses. That’s always their way of fighting. We tie ourselves onto our ponies and fight in a circle. These people are not dressed as we dress in a fight. They look like agency Indians—we strip naked and have ourselves and our ponies painted. This picture gives us bows and arrows. We were better armed than the long swords. Their guns wouldn’t shoot but once—the thing wouldn’t throw out the empty cartridge shells. (In this he was historically correct, as dozens of guns were picked up on the battle-field by General Gibbon’s command two days after with the shells still sticking in them, showing that the ejector wouldn’t work.) When we found they could not shoot we saved our bullets by knocking the long swords over with our war clubs—it was just like killing sheep. Some of them got on their knees and begged; we spared none—ugh! This picture is like all the white man’s pictures of Indians, a lie. I will show you how it looked.”
Then turning it over, he pulled out a stump of a lead pencil from his pouch and drew a large shape of a letter S, turned sideways.[[94]] “Here,” said he, “is the Little Big Horn river; we had our lodges along the banks in the shape of a bent bow.”