Bloody Knife: The Short, Unhappy Life of Custer’s Favorite Scout

Like Gall, his Sioux nemesis, the half-Arikara Bloody Knife was born around 1840. He lived what might be called a short, unhappy life. His life was not entirely without humor or enjoyment, however.

Birth and Boyhood

Bloody Knife’s father was Hunkpapa Sioux, but his mother was Arikara. Given the blood enmity between the tribes, it might be questioned whether she married willingly or was a captive wife. Regardless, Bloody Knife was outcast and bullied as a boy because of his mixed blood. Among the perpetrators of this cruelty were future war leaders Gall and Sitting Bull.

Around 1856 Bloody Knife’s mother left her husband and returned to her own tribe near Fort Clark, a trade fort on the Upper Missouri in Dakota Territory. Bloody Knife and his brothers went with her; he would later be known as an Arikara, or “Ree” despite his Sioux bloodline.

Early Adult Life

Bloody Knife worked as a mail carrier, taking messages among trade forts and military forts across Dakota Territory. He seemed adept, or perhaps succeeded due to his Sioux heritage. Other mail carriers were often killed by the regions’ hostile Indians. Bloody Knife appears to have been a skilled hunter, scout and messenger.

Bad luck and bad blood followed Bloody Knife, at least regarding his fellow Sioux. As a young man he returned to visit his father in the Hunkpapa village. Tribes were customarily hospitable to visitors. Instead Gall, and possibly others, stripped Bloody Knife, beat him with coup sticks and rifle ramrods, spat on him and otherwise humiliated him.

Worse, Gall is said to have led a war party that attacked the Arikara village where Bloody Knife’s family lived. Bloody Knife’s mother and two brothers were killed.

Such cruel attacks were not surprising in themselves. The Sioux and Arikara had long been enemies. While the Arikara were skilled and capable hunters and warriors, they built permanent villages and cultivated crops. The free-roaming Sioux looked down on them and called them “corn eaters.”

Not that the Rees were passive or weak. When Lewis and Clark’s expedition ascended the Missouri in 1804, they nearly came to blows with an overwhelming Indian force, likely Arikara. In 1823 the Arikara attacked a company of William Ashley’s Rocky Mountain Fur Co. trappers, killing nearly half of them. Ironically, some Sioux allied with white soldiers from Fort Atkinson in a punitive action meant to subdue and pacify the Rees.

Scouting for Sully

By the mid-1860’s Bloody Knife was working as a scout for General Alfred Sully. Sully had been assigned to deal with hostile Santee Sioux who had massacred as many as 800 whites in Minnesota in 1862 (The uprising could be attributed, in part, to deprivation on the reservation the Santees had occupied.) Sully was ordered to continue efforts against Sioux depredations across Dakota Territory.

Against Gall

In 1865 Bloody Knife became aware that Gall had come to a Sioux village near Fort Berthold, also an Upper-Missouri trade fort. Bloody Knife is said to have reported Gall had killed multiple whites. When soldiers came to apprehend Gall, they bayonetted him as he tried to escape.

Variations of the tale have grown, but some say Bloody Knife stepped up to fire a final shot into Gall (ironically, some accounts specify Gall’s head). An officer either prohibited the shooting or deflected the firearm, believing Gall was already dead. (Other accounts state a soldier, rather than Bloody Knife, tried to finish Gall.) Gall would survive and crawl away to find help. He lived to “haunt” both Bloody Knife and white soldiers in coming years.

Scouting Into Sioux Lands

Bloody Knife continued intermittent employment as a scout, messenger and hunter. By 1873 he became acquainted with Custer. He was a scout with the troops Custer led along the Yellowstone River escorting Northern Pacific Railroad survey crews. Bloody Knife would also be a scout in 1874 as part of Custer’s Black Hills Expedition. In 1876 he would fatefully join Custer one more time.

Finding Favor

Bloody Knife seems to have endeared himself to Custer during these times. Custer had long been a prolific hunter, collector and amateur taxidermist. He took full advantage of his rank and position as an officer to maximize opportunities. When he topped off his accomplishments by taking a grizzly in the Black Hills, Bloody Knife is known to have helped. A well known photo shows Bloody Knife with Custer with the bear, along with a pair of troopers.

Libby Custer described Bloody Knife as always appearing sad, even when receiving gifts – which he otherwise apparently relished. Bloody Knife is also known for teasing Custer, particularly about his shooting ability. Custer was actually known as a skilled marksman, but he enjoyed bantering with his favored scout.

Custer enjoyed had long conversations with Bloody Knife, apparently through an interpreter. Libby Custer described her husband soaking up great deals of information regarding lands he had not yet seen. The scout would draw out maps in the dirt as the two held long information sessions.

The Final Tragedy

Bloody Knife was among several scouts who warned Custer on June 25^th that he would find more hostile tribesmen than his regiment could overcome. From atop a high spot called the Crow’s Nest, both Indian and white scouts plus the mixed-blood Mitch Bouyer all warned Custer of the overwhelming size of the Sioux and Cheyenne village roughly 15 miles distant on the Little Bighorn.

Custer apparently was unable to discern the smoke from the village or its huge pony herd, described as looking like worms or maggots moving in the grass. He seemed unable to fathom that a force of warriors, even from a village that size, could or would stand before his attack.

Custer believed he must attack that day (more on that to come.) Bloody Knife reportedly looked toward the sun in farewell. He stated he and Custer would both go home by a road they did not know.

When Custer divided his command before attacking the Sioux/Cheyenne encampment, he sent most of his scouts with Major Reno. Oddly, this included Bloody Knife. Some of the Ree scouts went after the pony herd, but most were out on Reno’s left flank as he strangely deployed his men in skirmish formation. Three of the Rees were killed at the camp’s south end (where, fatefully, the Hunkpapa village stood.) Among them was Bloody Knife.

Reno’s attack became disorganized when Sioux warriors swarmed around his left flank. Bloody Knife was with Reno in a stand of timber into which he withdrew his troops. Writers universally mention that a rifle round took Bloody Knife in the head (ironically, like Hemingway’s Francis Macomber) and splattered blood and brain matter onto Reno’s face. This marked a point at which Reno became disconcerted, gave commands and counter orders, then led his men out in what appeared to be a panicked retreat.

A Final Irony

History records that Gall lost two wives and three daughters in Reno’s initial attack. It also records that Ree scouts were seen attacking women. Could it be that Bloody Knife saw and recognized these females as Gall’s family? It seems plausible he might have led these killings as revenge for his own family’s deaths.

Sadly, as bodies were mutilated after Reno’s retreat from the village, two Sioux girls happened on a corpse dressed partly in Arikara garb and partly white man’s clothes. Recognizing the corpse as that of an enemy, they decapitated it and carried the head into their camp. Their mother, married to a Sioux man, recognized it as the head of her brother, Bloody Knife. So ended, tragically, the short, unhappy life of Custer’s favorite scout – along the banks of the Little Bighorn.

Arikara Addendum

The Arikara tribe had once been large and formidable. A smallpox epidemic in the 1780’s reduced their numbers and dominance. Attacks by Sioux made things worse. Weakened, by the 1860s they lived with or near the Mandans and Hidatsas along the Missouri just north of present-day Bismarck. Explorers and traders from Lewis and Clark onward often found them hostile toward white men’s travel up the Missouri.

In 1823 Hugh Glass survived a severe mauling by a grizzly. History and legend overlap, but it appears members of his fur company abandoned him. Fearing hostile Indians, they took his rifle and knife, leaving him for dead. The incident occurred along the Grand River, a Missouri tributary in present-day North Dakota. It was likely the region’s Arikaras, or Rees, they feared most.

Glass was said to have recovered and survived without weapons, finally reaching Fort Kiowa 200 miles away. Once re-outfitted, he trudged west to Fort Henry and then eastward to Fort Atkinson in present-day Nebraska. After that ordeal, in 1832 Glass and two fellow trappers were killed by Arikara, who left their scalps hanging on poles out on the prairie.