Wooden Leg: A Warrior Who Fought Custer - Suicide Controversy

Suicide Controversy

The theory that Custer's soldiers committed suicide en masse toward the end of the Battle of the Little Bighorn has been controversial right from the very start, and the discussion still continues today. Marquis was a keen advocate of this theory and developed it most fully in a later book, Keep the Last Bullet for Yourself. The notion was so controversial that he could not find a publisher, and the book did not appear in print until long after his death.

Marquis has many critics who say he either exaggerated the role played by suicide or is entirely mistaken; Hardorff says the theory is discounted by most academics. Hardorff suggests that Marquis may have made errors due to the use of sign language which, he claims, cannot convey the nuances of language. Despite this criticism, Hardorff still maintains that Marquis' work is of great importance. There can be no doubt that Wooden Leg is indeed relating a tale of mass suicide. In the book he discusses at length what may have been the cause. The effects of whisky was a common theory amongst the Indians, but Wooden Leg believed the prayers of medicine men to have been the cause. Wooden Leg's only taste of whisky up to the time of the battle had been a mouthful—which he immediately spat out—that he took from a captured bottle. In later life Wooden Leg changed his mind and subscribed to the whisky theory after experiencing the effects alcohol first-hand.

R. A. Fox and others note that while Wooden Leg's version is corroborated by the oral tradition of other Cheyenne witnesses, notably that of Kate Bighead, a young woman who witnessed the battle, there is no corroboration in the oral tradition of the Sioux. Fox concludes that "quite simply, the contention is nonsense. A few troopers undoubtedly took their own lives, but it is hard to know what factors fostered the idea of wholesale suicide". Fox in his turn has been criticised for selectively using Indian oral tradition when it suits him, but discarding it as nonsense when he finds it disagreeable.

Another suggestion is that the Cheyenne warriors, pressed to recount details of the Custer battle, were still reluctant to admit to killing soldiers for fear of punishment. A simple way out of this dilemma was to say when questioned by non-Indians that most of the soldiers died at their own hands. Researchers R. A. Fox and Thom Hatch say that Wooden Leg retracted the claim in later life; this would have been in extreme old age, as he had still not recanted at the age of 73 when the book was written, other than to say it was whisky that was the cause rather than prayer. In his book Cheyenne Memories, John Stands In Timber, tribal historian for the Northern Cheyenne, agrees: "Wooden Leg said some other things (in his book) he took back later. One was that the soldiers were drunk, and many killed themselves. I went with two army men to see him one time. They wanted to find out about it. I interpreted...and we asked him if it were true that the Indians said the soldiers did that. He laughed and said there were just too many Indians. The soldiers did their best. He said if they had been drunk they would not have killed as many as they did. But it was in the book."

Archaeologists have attempted to test the suicide theory, particularly by the examination of the remains of skulls, but have been unable to reach a conclusion. The suicide theory cannot be ruled out by the archaeological evidence, but there is no evidence to support it either.