George Armstrong Custer, Local Connection

[W. Gray]

"Early History of Elk Falls" appears in a 1927 Howard Courant issue written by Donald Lockhart.

Lockhart says that eight years before the battle of the Little Big Horn, Osage Indians from the Elk River valley guided the Seventh Cavalry and George Armstrong Custer from Medicine Lodge, Kansas, to the Washita River in Oklahoma where Custer annihilated a Cheyenne Indian encampment.

This attack was depicted in the motion picture Little Big Man, where the director stupidly had an entire military band stand on a hill above the village playing the regimental song Garry Owen while Custer attacked.

I have never been able to confirm Lockhart's statement about the Elk River Osage.

Lockhart cites "Brady's history" as a source.

If anyone knows who Brady was, please let me know.

I have found that one of the Osage scouts was named (shades of Red Ryder) Little Beaver.

Custer apparently liked the work of his Osage scouts and Lockhart says some Osage scouts were killed at the Little Big Horn.

[Delmonico]

Interesting, the scouts to my understanding were a mix of Osage and Tonkawa's on that trip.  As far as I know they were just Abraroka (Crow) and Arikara at the Little Big Horn.

BTW Custer has been given a lot of flak over that attack on a "friendly" village.  How ever a raiding party was tracked to the camp by the scouts and a white woman and child were killed by Indian women during the attack rather than let them be re-captured.  Like many such incedents out of the era I leave any conclusions to you.