This is the story of a vow of silence that lasted "100 summers" and cracked open the case of who killed General George Armstrong Custer in the Battle of the Little Bighorn. 

 

And it's the story of a young woman, a mother, a warrior, who faced enormous adversity while trying to survive, defend her family, her homeland, and her culture.

 

We know the names Red Cloud, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and can read their stories, but what of the women? The names and faces of the native women of the Great Plains are all but lost. The story of Buffalo Calf Woman gives us a tiny glimpse into the lives they led.

 

There is no known photo of Buffalo Calf Road Woman. She may have looked similar to the unidentified Cheyenne woman in this photo, sometimes mistakenly identified as her.

 

 

Historian believe Buffalo Calf Road Woman was born some time in the 1850’s. Her life unfolded, beginning to end, amid the Sioux Wars (1854-1890), a series of battles, skirmishes and massacres on the Great Plains. 

 

Hostilities grew so intense by 1866, the Lakota allied with former rivals, the Cheyenne and Arapaho to create a united front against white expansion. Under the leadership of Lakota Chief Red Cloud, they decisively defeated the U.S. Army and forced Americans to negotiate for peace.

 

Under the The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho agreed to settle on the Sioux reservation in what is now western South Dakota. In return, the US designated for the tribes unceded lands adjoining the reservation and extending to the corners of present-day Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota.

 

Buffalo Calf Road Woman's Northern Cheyenne tribe lived on these lands with her husband Black Coyote, their daughter, and her brother, Comes In Sight. It was prime hunting range for the little left of once vast buffalo herds and the treaty promised the land for “absolute and undisturbed use”  by the tribes. 

 

Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders meeting with members of the U.S. Indian Peace Commission, 1868. Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory. Photograph by Alexander Gardner. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.
 

 

 

 

Chiefs Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse had not "put pen to paper" committing themselves to the Fort Laramie treaty. They would not retreat to the reservation where they feared they would starve. When news came in mid-March that Crook’s soldiers had burned a Cheyenne village, the large encampment of Lakota and Northern Cheyenne in the Powder River and Little Bighorn valleys prepared for war.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Rosebud Creek, roughly 1,200 Lakota and Cheyenne warriors led by Crazy Horse made a surprise attack on General Crook’s forces of approximately the same number.  In one of the largest battles of the Plains they fought General Crook to a standstill, pulling back at sunset while the federal troops retreated to camp. 

 

Known as the Battle of the Rosebud in history books, the Cheyenne remember it as the Fight Where the Girl Saved Her Brother.

 

After the battle, the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne moved their families roughly 50 miles to the banks of the river they called the Greasy Grass. It was known by the Army as the Little Big Horn River. Eight days later, they were attacked by General George Armstrong Custer's with eight companies of the Seventh Cavalry.

 

 

Buffalo Calf Road Woman fought alongside her husband Black Coyote. Another woman, an eye witness reported, “Most of the women looking at the battle stayed out of reach of the bullets, as I did. But there was one who went in close at times. Her name was Calf [Road] Woman …[she] had a six-shooter, with bullets and powder, and she fired many shots at the soldiers. She was the only woman there who had a gun. She stayed on her pony all the time, but she kept not far from her husband, Black Coyote. ”

 

In less than an hour, the Sioux and Cheyenne won the Battle of the Little Bighorn, handing the US Army it's largest defeat Plains Indian Wars, killing 268 federal troops, including General Custer. The exact circumstances of Custer's death have long been debated, but in June 2005, members of the Northern Cheyenne gathered to recount their tribes oral history of that day.

 

The Cheyenne say a female fighter named Buffalo Calf Road Woman knocked Custer off his horse that day, leaving him vulnerable to the two gunshots he suffered, one of which killed him. 

 

The Northern Cheyenne had never publicly issued their account of the battle before because they feared retribution from the U.S. government. And though The Battele of the Little Bighorn was a major victory for the indigenous tribes, reprisals did indeed come.

 

The U.S. Army redoubled efforts to hunt down all resisting Native Americans and within a year, most had been rounded up or killed.

 

 

 

In the winter of 1879, Buffalo Calf Road Woman died from diphtheria at Fort Keogh. 

 

Today, children of the Northern Cheyenne nation learn about and remember their ancestors, men and women, who found so courageously for their families, their land, and their culture.

 

There are more than 12,000 enrolled tribal members, about 6,000 who live the Northern Cheyenne reservation in present day southeastern Montana.

 

Every winter a special event pays tribute to Buffalo Calf Road Woman's people who ended their journey in army custody at Fort Robinson. Under pressure to return to Oklahoma, in 1879, about 130 starving Northern Cheyenne people, mostly elderly, women and children made a break from the fort, hoping to make it hundreds of miles to their homeland in Montana.

 

Pursuing soldiers massacred many that night and chased down another several dozen and killed them two weeks later. A small band led by Chief Dull Knife escaped and survived near starvation walking north in the dead of winter to arrive safely in Lame Deer, Montana, where the Northern Cheyenne Reservation would be created five years later.

 

Now, each January 9th, 0:30 at night, on the actual date and time of the Northern Cheyenne breakout of Fort Robinson, children retrace and understand the journey of their ancestors from Nebraska to Montana.

 

 

 

https://helenair.com/news/state-and-regional/northern-cheyenne-break-vow-of-silence/article_a7a4a082-13a2-5da8-98ab-95517fac5ff5.html
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/502013/retrobituaries-buffalo-calf-road-woman-custers-final-foe
https://truewestmagazine.com/rosebud-gets-no-respect/
https://www.ndstudies.gov/gr8/content/unit-iii-waves-development-1861-1920/lesson-4-alliances-and-conflicts/topic-2-defending-lakota-homelands/section-5-battle-rosebud-and-little-big-horn
http://montanawomenshistory.org/a-young-mother-at-the-rosebud-and-little-bighorn-battles/
https://www.astonisher.com/archives/museum/who_killed_custer.html#part1
https://www.pameladtoler.com/ (Women Warriors)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/777193 (Yellow Nose Ledgers)
https://sova.si.edu/record/NAA.MS166032?
https://www.yellowbirdlifeways.org/fortrobinsonrun
https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/running-to-remember-fort-robinson-outbreak-spiritual-run-completes-19th-year

https://billingsgazette.com/news/local/photos-northern-cheyenne-hold-25th-annual-outbreak-run/collection_04eb03bb-dc97-5244-96c8-54b7f000566f.html#3