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 in a series of conflicts known as the Sioux Wars, which took place from 1854-90. While some of the indigenous people eventually agreed to relocate to ever-shrinking reservations, a number of them resisted, at times fiercely. On May 7, 1868, the valley of the Little Bighorn became a tract in the eastern part of the new Crow Indian Reservation in the center of the old Crow country. There were numerous skirmishes between the Sioux and Crow tribes so when the Sioux were in the valley in 1876 without the consent of the Crow tribe, the Crow supported the US Army