Distinctly Montana Magazine

53 w w w . d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m What exactly happened to the Suicide Boys be- tween the end of the parade and the end of the battle is unclear, but we are able to tell the broad strokes: three, Little Whirlwind, Closed Hand, and Cut Belly, would die on the battlefield, and the fourth, Noisy Walking, would die in his father's lodge that night. They had all honored their vow. Near the end of the battle, Custer's men had gathered on Last Stand Hill. For the time be- ing, they had cartridges and were able to hold the Indians at bay. What was needed to defeat Custer would be for someone to charge the hill and break the firing line, distracting the soldiers just long enough for the rest of the Sioux and Cheyenne warriors to advance on them. After that, it would be only minutes before the fight- ing would be over. Sioux men rode along the lines of warriors, shout- ing for them to watch for the Suicide Boys. When they attacked, they told the others to crowd in alongside them so that Custer and his men would have no room to shoot. As they rode, the men re- peated the instructions. The Cheyenne warriors who didn't know the language had it explained to them by Sioux who did. Then, the charge of the Suicide Boys began, as they rode, scattering the field of the white men's loose horses, and headed directly for Custer and his men. As the melee began, Yellow Nose, a Cheyenne fighter who Stands in Timber interviewed for Cheyenne Memories, was "in there close:" "The dust was so thick he could hardly see. He swung his horse out and turned to charge back in again, close to the end of the fight, and suddenly the dust lifted away. He saw an American flag not far in front of him, where it had been set in the sagebrush. It was the only thing still standing in that place, but over on the other side, some sol- diers were still fighting. So he galloped past and picked the flag up and rode into the fight, and he used it to count coup on a soldier." Two Indian horses collided. One white soldier brandished his rifle as a weapon, swinging it so hard that he and his target both fell over. If one of the soldiers managed to get a shot off, he cer- tainly didn't have time to reload. And, somewhere in the center of the tumult, the Suicide Boys were engulfed in dust and fire and blows. Little Whirlwind is sometimes reported to have been killed earlier, in the attack by Reno, after he and an Arikara fighter both leveled their guns at each other and shot. Both fell. For this reason, some hold that it was not Little Whirl- wind, but Limber Bones who was the fourth Cheyenne Suicide Boy. Limber Bones was killed just below Last Stand Hill, near where Closed Hand was found. Cut Belly was shot down near where the Stone House stands now, and died a few days later at Powder River. Noisy Walking was shot and stabbed through with a bayonet. The story of the Suicide Boys would not be told to non-Native readers for almost 80 years, when it was published in Stands in Timber's 1967 book Cheyenne Memories, co-authored by Margot Liberty. he charged into the fray WEARING ONLY A BLANKET AND MOCCASINS. Minneconjou Lakota warrior White Bull

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