Wooden Leg
A Warrior Who Fought Custer
Wooden Leg, interpreted by Thomas B. Marquis
CreateSpace, 1962/2016, 384 pages
Book Review published on: July 28, 2023
There were no U.S. Army survivors of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, except for a single horse. The only eyewitness accounts are provided by the Native Americans who were on the opposite side of the battlefield. Wooden Leg: A Warrior Who Fought Custer, provides a firsthand account of the battle from the perspective a Northern Cheyenne warrior named Wooden Leg. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Native American culture or U.S. military history. It is a perspective that is seldom captured in writing. It is not a dull, chronological account of the battle, but a warrior’s tale of his life leading up to the battle, his actions in the battle, and his life after the battle.
It is a fascinating personal account of Native American way of life, customs, and traditions combined with the story of how and why the northern plains tribes gathered in modern day eastern Montana and Wyoming in the spring and summer of 1876. The movements were intended to avoid conflict and preserve their way of life. Instead, they moved into American history forever. On 25 June 1876, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer picked a fight with the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The author (or interpreter) Thomas Marquis worked as an agency doctor on reservations with the Northern Cheyenne and Sioux tribes. He learned their verbal and sign languages to communicate effectively. He met many Native Americans who had been with their tribes along the Powder and Bighorn River in the spring and summer of 1876. Marquis wanted to collect and publish these personal stories of a Native American way of life and The Battle of the Little Bighorn from the Native American perspective. He interviewed hundreds of men and women from 1922 to 1930. His favorite subject to interview was named Wooden Leg. Wooden Leg’s accounts prove to be the most interesting, detailed, and factual. Wooden Leg’s account and descriptions were corroborated from other interviews and fact checked against U.S. historical records. Marquis provides footnotes throughout the book that either confirm the historical event or describe the discrepancy between the U.S. military sources and Wooden Leg’s account. This book is an interpreted account of Wooden Leg’s life. It is told in a matter-of-fact way with little embellishment, bravado, or boastfulness. The feats of resilience, bravery, and brutality are riveting.
Wooden Leg’s life is summarized as coinciding with a time of massive changes. He was born and grew into a young man as a totally free member of Northern Cheyenne tribe. He hunted, gathered, and migrated as a free people. Wooden Leg felt that the movement and gathering of the tribes near the Little Bighorn in the spring and summer of 1876 was the last great struggle to maintain the Plains Indian way of life. The Northern Cheyenne changed from a totally independent people to a people totally dependent on the U.S. government in his lifetime. In this book, Wooden Leg tells us how that happened.
Book Review written by: Lt. Col. Peter Campbell, U.S. Army, Retired, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas