Distinctly Montana Magazine

54 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • S U M M E R 2 0 2 6 Stands in Timber, born in 1884, was a Cheyenne who was orphaned at eight and later adopted by his widowed grandmother and her second husband, Wolftooth, a warrior who fought at the Battle of the Greasy Grass. Indulging a lifelong fascination with the history of his peo- ple, Stands in Timber spent decades gathering stories from elders and collecting them in his cabin in Lame Deer. Telling Stands in Timber a story was very different from telling even the most trusted white anthropologist or historian. As outsiders, they could be told about some of the particulars of what happened there, but the most sacred mysteries of their culture would have to be safeguarded for as long as possible. As the former chief historian for Little Bighorn Battlefield told the Billings Gazette, "Maybe the suicide vow was too sacred to be shared with outsiders while the battle was still so fresh." The Cheyenne Dog Soldiers and the Lakota Brave Hearts exhibited similar characteristics to the Suicide Boys; the Dog Soldiers would "pin" themselves to the ground with a rope and pin and not move from the spot while they fought until they were killed or their bravery had been proven. Among the Lakota, the Brave Hearts, whose war cry was "hoka hey" and of whom Sit- ting Bull was a member, would wear sashes that they would doff and stake to the ground while they fought. The ceremony of the Dog Men, here recount- ed in the book Cheyenne Memories, possesses some suggestive similarities to the case of the Suicide Boys: "The Dog Men became one of the most fearless of the Cheyenne military societ- ies. Many of them took the suicide vow, or as they called it, 'the old men's charm,' and when they paraded around camp before battle the old men would go on either side of them and the criers would call out, 'Look at these men for the last time they will be alive; they have thrown their lives away.'" The Dog Soldiers were also distinct from the Suicide Boys in key ways because the elite war- riors, even the ones who did not fix themselves to the ground but made mounted horse charges instead, "quit after a few [passes]. They did not make more than four such charges or passes in the same place." The Suicide Boys, rather, "would keep doing it until they were killed." Suicide Boys "were always young men...their deaths were remembered. It did not happen very often…" Stands in Timber wrote. But "some important things were won when they sacrificed themselves that way." National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Insti- tution, "Warriors charging U.S. soldiers at Battle of Little Bighorn," Folder 4 (2367A_08568800)

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