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Eagle Bear's Story of the Battle
An Oglala Sioux's account of the Battle of the Little Bighorn

EAGLE BEAR'S ACCOUNT #1

Pine Ridge, South Dakota
September 25 [1936]

[EAGLE BEAR] was standing under a crudely -- built sun shelter in front of his one-room log cabin where he lives with his brother, Fool's Crow. Eagle Bear's long, gray hair, parted in the middle, hung in two braids down his back. He wore an old pair of corduroy trousers, a faded blue shirt and shabby moccasins. A blue bandanna handkerchief was tied around his neck....

"Eagle Bear, how did the battle with Custer begin?" the woman interpreter, Josephine, put the question to the Indian. The word "battle" was used judiciously because old-time Indians dislike the word "massacre" in describing Custer's defeat. The Indian looked stolidly at the ground, then grunted a few words. "He says the fight happened so long ago he must think awhile," Josephine said....

"Custer was the blame for the battle," Eagle Bear said, speaking slowly. "Our people wanted peace. We did not want to fight the white men anymore. If Custer had not fired on us, we would not have killed him and his soldiers.

"Custer first shot and killed an Indian boy who was camped with his father a few miles below our village. The boy was helping his father skin a buffalo when the soldiers fired into their camp. The soldiers rode on, but the father jumped on his horse and hurried to tell us what had happened. [Note: This was the Sioux boy Deeds, whose murder by the Americans was described by Drags The Rope, Lazy White Bull and others.]

"None of the Indians expected a fight. The children were swimming in the river and playing on the bank...

Indian Views of the Custer Fight: A Source Book by Richard G. Hardorff, The Arthur Clark Co. Spokane, WA 2004, p 187 - 189

Here is another account of the battle by Eagle Bear.

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