Joe Medicine Crow became a war chief. He set a standard for aspiring warriors and was his son's inspiration. His maternal step-grandfather, White Man Runs Him, was a scout for US General George Armstrong Custer and an eyewitness to the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. Joe Medicine Crow's cousin is Pauline Small, the first woman elected to office in the Crow Tribe of Indians. When he was young, Medicine Crow heard direct oral testimony about the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876 from his step-grandfather, White Man Runs Him, who had been a scout for General George Armstrong Custer. Beginning
Battle of the Little Bighorn size of cavalry companies to 100 enlisted men on July 24. The committee temporarily lifted the ceiling on the size of the Army by 2,500 on August 15. As a result of the defeat in June 1876, Congress responded by attaching what the Sioux call the "sell or starve" rider () to the Indian Appropriations Act of 1876 (enacted August 15, 1876), which cut off all rations for the Sioux until they terminated hostilities and ceded the Black Hills to the United States. The Agreement of 1877 (, enacted February 28, 1877) officially took away Sioux land and permanently established