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Rosebud Memorial
Its relative modesty speaks
to how the Battle of the Little
Bighorn has overshadowed it.Guy V. Henry Fell Here
Stones and a more recent obelisk
mark where the captain was
shot from his horse yet survived.Feathered Fiasco
Jack Red Cloud dressed
for the battle like a warrior
but wept and begged.Jack exclaiming, “Aho! Aho!” (“Thank you!
Thank you!”) to the warm approval of his
fellow Lakotas. At least these Crows and
Sioux were enemies no more.As in the Gap, the action on Kollmar
Creek occasioned several distinctive epi-
sodes, perhaps none more thrilling than
the escape of 18-year-old Cheyenne war-
rior Limpy. During some childhood esca-
pade the young warrior had broken his leg,
compensating ever since for bones that had
been poorly set—hence his name. Regardless,
Limpy fought as fearlessly as any other warrior
on the Rosebud.
That morning to the south of Kollmar Creek, as
a group of soldiers withdrew eastward afoot, Limpy
and five other mounted Cheyennes pressed the
bluecoats. Eager to count coup, they paid little heed
to their surroundings. Suddenly a group of soldiers popped up
on their left flank, firing as they advanced. The Cheyenne rid-
ers elected to make a run for a hill some 200 yards to the rear,
warrior Young Two Moon suggesting they should scatter, so as
to avoid making one big easy target. One by one each rode off,
safely evading the soldiers. Then came Limpy’s turn.
The youngest in the group, he obligingly went last and had
barely set out when a bullet struck his pony. The horse went wild,
kicking, jumping and finally bucking off its rider, before drop-
ping dead. Fortunately for Limpy, nearby stood a cluster of sand-
stone monoliths, some as tall as a man, others high as a horse,
and all providing good cover on an otherwise exposed ground.
Making for the rocks, the young warrior had just reached their
shelter when he thought of his bridle, a fine one mounted with
silver dollars that an uncle had given him. Unwilling to bear the
shame of losing it, he ran back to his dead pony and started
tugging at the headpiece amid sustained enemy fire. “Bullets were
flying on top of my head,” Limpy recalled.
From a distance Young Two Moon saw Limpy’s plight, and
that mounted Army scouts were rushing toward him, aiming
to kill and count coup. Setting out on horseback to rescue his
fellow warrior, Young Two Moon reached Limpy, but the crip-
pled boy was unable to jump on the pony’s back, and the two
again parted. With the enemy closing in, Limpy hobbled over to
one of the smaller sandstone rocks and clambered atop it. Young
Two Moon then rode out a second time, and this time from his
perch Limpy was able to scramble onto the pony’s back. Riding
double, the Cheyennes escaped, Limpy clutching both his
weapon and the prized bridle. He soon took charge of a cap-
tured horse and set out again with his five companions. Join-
ing another body of Indians, mostly Cheyennes, the six again
charged into the fight.
Limpy’s story also had an epilogue set in modern times.
In 1934, to mark the 58th anniversary of the Battle of the Rose-
bud, the Billings chapter of the Daughters of the AmericanRevolution unveiled a monument of stone and
bronze atop a knoll at the Big Bend of the
Rosebud. The marker was one in a wave
of memorials orchestrated by the national
DAR to mark such historic American sites.
Imposing as it was, however, more striking
was the presence of four old men—Bea-
ver Heart, Louis Dog, Wheezer Bear and
Charles Limpy of the “Limpy’s Rocks” epi-
sode in 1876. The four had journeyed from
the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation
for the unveiling. A fifth old man, Kills Night,
was blind and ailing and remained home near
Busby, lamenting his inability to attend. All were
veterans of the Rosebud battle, acknowledged
as the last of the Cheyennes who had fought both
there and at the Little Bighorn. Three came dressed
in historical garb, and, according to a reporter
from The Billings Gazette, all were in a talkative
mood. That bright, hot afternoon the four wizened Cheyennes
shared their stories of the fight, adding to the rich tapestry
of the Rosebud.
Such chroniclers as Thomas Bailey Marquis and John Stands
in Timber captured and published similar Northern Cheyenne
accounts, further perpetuating the tribal legacy of the place. For
those four old men and all the Northern Cheyennes, then as
now, languid Rosebud Creek and the surrounding battlefield
remain sacred ground, both in physical proximity and in the
sanctuary of their collective memory.Paul Hedren, a retired National Park Service historian and super-
intendent, drew these stories from his forthcoming book Rosebud,
June 17, 1876: Prelude to the Little Big Horn. For further reading
see Hedren’s Traveler’s Guide to the Great Sioux War: The Battle-
fields, Forts and Related Sites of America’s Greatest Indian War.