Custer's Favorite Scout"
This book about Bloody Knife, written by Ben Innis, is now revised and edited for republication. I was asked to write a Preface to it because of my relationship to Bloody Knife and because I’m am currently working on a history on the Sahnish people.
It is with a sense of awe that I write of Bloody Knife and the Sahnish people, perhaps because the haunting spirit of these people watch over my shoulder.
This revision of Bloody Knife: Custer’s Favorite Scout is in itself historical because many writer of history are blind to anything but that written in historic journals or documents. They rarely ask for the perspective of listen to the oral history of the people about whom they write. I say this because I have read materials written by contemporary writer that have twisted historic information so that it bends the truth.
When Rich and Andrea Collin decided to edit Ben Innis’s book on Bloody Knife, they contacted the people from the White Shield, North Dakota area ND the Sahnish Culture Society to provide insight and another perspective on the lives of our people. In the initial printing, Innis wove such a narrow theme that, in come of the cases, his point appeared to be an obsession. He projected his perspectives, religious beliefs, and philosophy into a distorted picture of the Sahnish people and Bloody Knife. For example, in most of the first edition of the book, Innis referred to Indian people are savages and portrayed them as soulless creatures. The Collins have edited the book to something more palatable and truthful.
The Collins arduously searched the Smithsonian and other historical institutions, as well as through dusty records of the tribe for additional information. They also found new photographs that they added to the book.
One of the photographs in the Collins included in this book continues to haunt me. The photograph, taken at For Lincoln in 1875, shows Bloody Knife standing hard against a post, an Indian blanket pulled tightly around him. he is visible removed and isolated from George Armstrong Custer’s wife, Libbie, and other military officers. who are casually seated on stairs in front of the house in this picture. So foreign and so cold is the environment to this warrior that the photograph cries out alienation and pain. This photograph evokes a universal image of the pain of all Indian people as they began the metamorphoses into the white culture. These are people and lifestyles so foreign to the Indian that their struggle is evident even in this old picture. This alienation of the Indian people is evident in this book.
This Sahnish nation, at one time, was so large and fearsome that when the bands moved that left a broad swath and a storm of dust. It is said that other tribes moved out of their way when they moved across the prairie. These were a proud and fierce people whose ceremonial powers were well know by many of the tribes of the Upper Missouri. Even the white men who say their powers acknowledged it but could not understand it. They could only describe these ceremonies as “magic or slight of hand.” At first contact, many tribes openly welcomed the white men and accepted their trinkets and gifts as symbols of friendship. However, this relationship between Indians and white gradually deteriorated, turning the white nations into greedy landlords and the tribes into scattered defenders of their homeland. The Sahnish nation is on the a few tribes with little written about them because they were so openly hostile to the whites.
The result of the volatile relationship between the Sahnish and the white men cause the white of blame raids, attacks, and killings on the Sahnish. Many of the incidents, however, were attributed to them. The Sahnish returned hate with vengeance, trying to wipe all white men from their homeland. They had a reputation for being the most hostile tribe in the Upper Missouri River area. George Catlin, who recorded the history of tribal nations with his water colors and brush, only viewed the Sahnish from a board in the middle of the Missouri. He was afraid, as were most explorers, to come ashore for fear of the Sahnish. The Sahnish were Davids against the gluttonous Goliath who would soon consume them. However, the greed for the land of the Indian nations was insignificant when compared to the devastation wreaked by the smallpox virus. The Sahnish were struck by wave after wave of diseases, including cholera, measles and tuberculosis, for which they had no immunity.
The most devastating was smallpox. When it infected the Indians, it nearly destroyed whole tribes. Historic journals tell of the vast numbers of bodies of dying and dead people that covered the prairies. Villages were silenced, with only the frail wailing of women and last cries of children heard as they succumbed to the horrid disease. The virus cut into their numbers, killing band after band until only three villages of the once powerful Sahnish nation were left. Ceremonies, governments and their strength dwindled as the disease ate into the very heart and soul of the people.
It was during this time (the middle 1800s) that the Sahnish were most at risk. They were living near the Hidatsa (Gros Ventres) and the few remaining Mandans. These three tribes agreed to live together for mutual protection against marauding tribes. These marauders had escaped most of the devastation of the virus and began to attack these now vulnerable tribes, stealing their food, horse and trade goods.
To make matters whose, their treaties that the Sahnish signed wit the Government took away their weapons. The Government in turn, promised to provide food, protection and a chance to once again grow crops and hunt in peace. However, the agents of the Government stole the food from the mouths of the people. Many children and women starved under the protection of the white men with whom they signed peace treaties.
It is this time of great stress that I see in my breads. I see the Sahnish warriors and leaders weeping for their people. For as much skill as these brave men possessed, they could do little to protect their people.
It was also during this era that the military recruited scouts from among the Sahnish, Mandan and Hidatsa. The Sahnish readily enlisted. This offer from the Government gave the Sahnish an opportunity for the freedom to hunt and move out into the prairie without fear of being attacked and killed by other tribes. This majority of the Indian scouts recruited from Fort Berthold by the Government came from the Sahnish, rightly so because the Sahnish for being fierce warriors even at that time. Bloody Knife was no unlike many of the Sahnish warriors, or Ree Scouts, as they were commonly referred to during that time. The majority of the Ree scouts were, however, more distant to the while military.
Bloody Knife was of Sahnish and Lakota Sioux blood, but he claimed his Sahnish blood. Innis implied his “savage nature” was something he learned or inherited from his Sioux heritage. Untrue; his nature was a deeply protective one and in character with his Sahnish people. He lived among his people where death was a constant companion, his nature reflecting a world so extremely hostile that in order to survive, he had to maintain superior warrior skills. And so he did. Blood Knife saw his brothers viciously murdered and mutilated by other tribes. He felt the bind and chaff of the reservation that put him in a walless jail. with no access to free living, and he longed for freedom.
Bloody Knife studied, learned, and became very skilled in the military world that George Custer admired. Custer was the leader of the 7th Cavalry, the military unit for which Bloody Knife provided scouting services. Bloody Knife’s hunting skills were particularly exemplified when the Army needed to take extra wagons along to bring back all the game he brought down. A photograph of Custer crouching near a large grizzly bear, claiming it as his kill also depicts Bloody Knife kneeling beside the downed animal. Of course, the kill was Bloody Knife’s, but he gave Custer the honor.
Custer knew and understood the skills of “his favorite scout.” He saw Bloody Knife as a man with finely honed warrior skills, and he found himself befriending the man. It is noted in sources that Custer would send Bloody Knife into a camp and he would single-handedly subdue it. Custer and Bloody Knife has a special bond, each respected the skills of the other. Bloody Knife was the Rambo of his time. The fictional Hollywood character of the 1980s, portrayed by Sylvester Stallone, is admired for his killing skills and considered a hero. Yet this same kind of skill is interpreted by Inns in his original edition of this book as savagery.
Custer’s and Bloody Knife’s careers ended at Greasy Grass in Montana Territory on June 25, 1876 during the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Bloody Knife knew by prophecy he would die in the battle and he accepted his death, a death that was the result of miscalculations of his leader and friend, George Armstrong Custer.
This infamous battle has been the subject of countless books, journals and articles because the military strategies of the Sioux made and arrogant military stop and take notice.
Unfortunately, the battle did little to keep back the waves of white people and only angered the Government, who gathered more military troops that poured into Dakota Territory and forced the Sioux onto reservations.
The Ree Scouts who survived the battle returned home to Like-A-Fishhook Village, where their loved began to chance. The Battle of Little Bighorn was the event that marked the beginning of the assimilation by the white which would change the lives of the Indian people forever.
The Sahnish people honor Bloody Knife and the Ree scouts who fought at the Battle of Little Bighorn. They honor them with songs and dances on Memorial each year, but they also honor Custer with a song, because as the words of the song indicate, he was a brave and respected man — albeit foolhardy.
It is told by the Sahnish that a horse returned to Like-A-Fishhook Village from the Battle of Little Bighorn. It is thought by the people that the horse belonged to Bobtailed Bull, one of the Ree scouts who died in the battle. They people believed the horse was the embodied spirits of the brave men who died at Grease Grass and it came home to tell of those brave deeds.
Dorreen Yellow Bird (Medicine Rattle Woman)
Oct. 31, 1994
Grand Forks, N.D. USA