Wooden Leg: A Warrior Who Fought Custer Wooden Leg: A Warrior Who Fought Custer Wooden Leg: A Warrior Who Fought Custer is a book by Thomas Bailey Marquis about the life of a Northern Cheyenne Indian, Wooden Leg, who fought in several historic battles between United States forces and the Plains Indians, including the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where he faced the troops of George Armstrong Custer. The book is of great value to historians, not only for its eye-witness accounts of battles, but also for its detailed description of the way of life of 19th-century Plains Indians. The book was dictated to Marquis by Wooden
Battle of the Little Bighorn Territory: "…a horse or a mule for a repeater…buffalo hides for ammunition." Custer's highly regarded guide, "Lonesome" Charley Reynolds, informed his superior in early 1876 that Sitting Bull's forces were amassing weapons, including numerous Winchester repeating rifles and abundant ammunition. Of the guns owned by Lakota and Cheyenne fighters at the Little Bighorn, approximately 200 were repeating rifles corresponding to about 1 of 10 of the encampment's two thousand able-bodied fighters who participated in the battle The troops under Custer's command carried two regulation firearms authorized and issued by the U.S. Army in early 1876: the breech-loading, single-shot Springfield Model