Curley: Survivor or Charlatan?

By Bob Snelson

 

At twenty years of age, Curley was the youngest of the six Crow scouts attached to Lieutenant Colonel George Custer’s regiment during the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Curley would become famous for his seemingly miraculous escape from the battlefield. His claims that he witnessed the annihilation of Custer’s immediate command from a distant hill have been met with skepticism as well as fascination. Unfortunately for posterity, Curley spoke no English, leaving only interviews conducted through interpreters.

In this article we shall investigate the possibility that we have long disregarded an important eyewitness account of Custer’s demise. Like many students of the battle I have often found myself frustrated by Native American accounts of the battle. Their accounts generally lack important details and often contain obvious factual errors. In those two respects they are no different from most of the accounts given by white soldiers. So what are the real problems we encounter when reading their accounts? Our cultural differences, simple misunderstandings, and errors made by interpreters and writers.

 In many Indian cultures warriors were expected to recount the stories of their heroic deeds. This usually occurred in their lodges at night or during the cold winter months. This was a form of entertainment as well as the method of passing on oral history. It was expected that the story teller would exaggerate to improve his stories. Should we expect any different when we hear their stories of the Little Bighorn fight? Unlike the many other battles they might have participated in, the participants were asked about the Little Bighorn fight until they grew bored with the telling of it. When they were asked leading questions about the battle that didn’t fit with their recollections, they gave the best answers they could under the circumstances. Their accounts were also skewed by fear of reprisals. We also should not overlook the possibility that some of the Indian participants allowed their sense of humor to show in their accounts. Another problem stemmed from their lack of understanding of the cavalry’s tactics and White men in general. What they didn’t understand they referred to as crazy behavior.

Misunderstandings are a major source of our consternation with Indian accounts. A common one is our methods of determining direction. We generally refer to northeast as east, while the Indians would refer to northeast as north. These small generalizations in regard to direction often result in 90 degree misunderstandings. When a participant spoke of the ridge just to the west of a known hill we must compensate by mentally turning our compass 90 degrees. We would generally refer to the ridge as being to the north of the hill. Such simple misunderstandings can frustrate many students of the battle enough to make them give up on the Indian accounts. We must also realize that none of the warriors had a complete view of any part of the Custer fight due to terrain limitations. Since such was the case, how can we expect them to know what took place at every point of the battlefield? They would have to guess like the rest of us. We need to first determine the locations of the eyewitnesses prior to lending any credence to their accounts.

Whenever interpreters are used we incur a greater risk of confusion occurring. The confusion may be caused by the interpreter misunderstanding the eyewitness. The interpreter may understand the eyewitness correctly, yet misspeak the response. Or the interpreter may substitute his own response for those of the eyewitness for some reason, adding bits and pieces of stories told by others he has interpreted for. There is also the risk that the interviewer misunderstands the interpreter or simply fails to take accurate notes. The interviewer may also misunderstand the eyewitness’ response and inadvertently make an incorrect assumption about the battle. Another problem results from the writer who ignores both the eyewitness and the interpreter and writes whatever he wants to, while attributing the story to the eyewitness. Nineteenth Century reporters were seldom held accountable for inaccurate stories, often making up their own facts for the sake of sensationalism.

Why has Curley been doubted by students of the battle? Some may believe that it was impossible for any of Custer’s soldiers or scouts to escape after the withdrawal from Medicine Tail Coulee, even though at least one soldier escaped the battlefield only to die from his wounds a day’s ride away. We also suffer from a mistaken assumption that all Indians can easily determine the tribes of all other Indians. During their movement toward the Little Bighorn, Gibbons’ Crow scouts mistook their own tribesmen for Sioux. Others disbelieve Curley’s accounts due to the alleged method of his escape. According to one account, which Curley denied making, Curley escaped the battlefield by putting a Sioux blanket over his head and pretending to be Sioux. The story was ridiculous to anyone with an ounce of common sense, as the temperature that afternoon was over ninety degrees! Whether the error was on the part of the interpreter or the interviewer we shall never know. Maybe Curley was trying to say that he pretended to be Sioux by riding away while waving a Sioux blanket over his head. We shall never know the answer to that question either.

In my book Death Of A Myth, I have chosen to believe Curley’s accounts, as they appear to conform to the accounts of the Sioux and Cheyenne participants, while also indicating tactics used by the soldiers. The use of a rear guard on the way to Calhoun Hill and Custer’s quick Officers’ Call behind the hill are just two examples. His accounts help explain some of the idiosyncrasies of the company locations as well. As always, a few more details would have been helpful. I urge all students of the battle to take another look at Curley’s accounts with a more open mind, leaving out the odd account of his method of escape.