Trumpet on the Land: The Aftermath of Custer's Massacre, 1876

For many years Cody’s participation in that dramatic “duel” was doubted in many circles, just as Frank and Luther North had done all they could to cast doubt on Buffalo Bill’s being the one who had actually killed Dog Soldier Chief Tall Bull at Summit Springs on July 11, 1869. But none of the assertions from others who claimed to have killed Yellow Hair have withstood close scrutiny. All those boasts are, as are the claims of the North brothers regarding Summit Springs, dispelled by Don Russell in his compelling book on Cody.

Still, a sergeant with the Fifth Cavalry can take credit for providing the best confirmation that it was indeed Cody who met and killed the Cheyenne. John Powers, stationed that summer at Fort Hays in Kansas, was what we now call a “stringer,” paid to send back reports on the campaign trail to his hometown newspaper, the Ellis County Star.

Powers’s account, composed in the days immediately following the dramatic skirmish, confirms the account of Charles King, written four years later in Campaigning with Crook: the approach of Hall’s wagon train, its guard of infantry companies, Cody’s leading the soldiers to ambush the ambushers intent on butchering the two couriers, Cody’s firing of the first shot (which killed the Cheyenne’s war pony), his firing a second shot that felled the war chief himself, and the charge of the Fifth Cavalry past the scout who stood over Yellow Hair’s body.

That scene brings to mind a minor controversy in the three accounts used to write the one you have just read. While one of those contemporary reports (each of them written by witnesses of the skirmish) states that Cody shot Yellow Hair in the chest, two of them state unequivocally that Buffalo Bill shot the Cheyenne in the head. When one studies Cody’s abilities with firearms exhibited throughout his life, it isn’t at all hard to believe he was in fact capable of shooting Yellow Hair in the head. Nonetheless, I’m still uncertain that a hardened plainsman like Cody would chance taking a shot at his enemy’s head, when he had a far bigger target in the Cheyenne’s broad chest.

While no testimony specifically reports that Yellow Hair wore his prize scalp around his neck, I have taken that poetic license with the tale, making the trophy torn from the head of a white enemy just the target Bill uses when he takes deadly aim at the war chief.

And that brings up another interesting question I haven’t been able to answer to my own satisfaction: how the name Yellow Hair, over time, eventually became Yellow Hand. Was it primarily Cody’s mistake when he sent the scalp and warbonnet on to his friend in Rochester, New York? Or was it Baptiste “Little Bat” Garnier who made the error when he translated the war chiefs name for those right there at the Warbonnet skirmish that hot July morning? Or was it some unnamed historian’s attempt to distinguish between this minor Cheyenne war chief and the term the Southern Cheyenne used when referring to George Armstrong Custer (Hiestzi, or “Yellow Hair”)?

All we know for certain is that the warrior’s name was indeed Yellow Hair because, it is believed, he proudly wore the blond scalp of a white man (or woman—accounts differ on the sex of the person who once wore that yellow hair). Despite the fact that the sign reads “Yellow Hand,” any visitor to the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, Wyoming, will see for himself not only this most famous scalp of the Sioux War, but Yellow Hair’s feathered bonnet and trailer,his pistol and shield, his knife and blanket, along with the dead Cheyenne’s bridle and quirt.

It is beyond me how anyone can claim Cody ended up with these spoils if he wasn’t the one who stood over the war chiefs body, and if he himself didn’t remove them from Yellow Hair as the Fifth Cavalry began its chase of Little Wolfs band!

By that time, exactly a month after Crook’s stalemate on the Rosebud, the press had already begun its assault on the general and his handling of the campaign to that point. It was the contention of editors both east and west that Terry and Crook would never find the hostiles, that there was little hope of success. While most of the nation’s papers clamored for results in the Sioux War, the New York Tribune went so far as to blame the government’s policy in the Black Hills for the army’s lack of success, also claiming that Sitting Bull had made it clear his Sioux would not return to their reservations until the army drove the white men out of their sacred Paha Sapa.