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 to why he refused them and what advantage their availability might have conferred on his forces at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. One factor concerned Major Marcus Reno's recent 8-day reconnaissance-in-force of the Powder-Tongue-Rosebud Rivers, June 10 to 18. This deployment had demonstrated that artillery pieces mounted on gun carriages and hauled by horses no longer fit for cavalry mounts (so-called condemned horses) were cumbersome over mixed terrain and vulnerable to breakdowns. Custer, valuing the mobility of the 7th Cavalry and recognizing Terry's acknowledgement of the regiment as "the primary strike force" preferred to remain unencumbered by the Gatling