The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-06-25
Indians Tell Tragic
 Story of How
 They Killed Custer


 In the valley of the Little Big Horn, in Montana, just across the state line from Sheridan, Wyo., stands a fine monument which marks the site of the most celebrated of Indian battles. Today is the thirty-ninth anniversary of that fierce conflict in which s'Yel- low Hair Custer and his 276 soldiers were slain to a man by the blood thirsty Sioux sayages. In paleface history this tragedy is often described as a massacre and the aborigines are held up to execrafton. There are at least two sides to every question, how ever, and we are now able to acquaint ourselves with the Indian version through the expedition sent out by Rodman Wanamaker, under the lead ership of Dr. Joseph KossUth Dixon, for the purpose of perpetuating the life story of the original Americans. In his book, '@The Vanishing Race,'' pr. Dixon has presented the Indian version of the battle of the Little Big Horn.
 We were pursued by the soldiers. we were on the warpath," explained Red Cloud. a Sioux chief. we were driven out of the Black Hills by men seeking gold and our game was driven off and we started on our journey in search ofs game. Our children were starving and we had to have some thing to eat.''
 
 we fought this battle from day light up until o'clock in the after noon and all of the white men were killed. We kept circIing around Gus ter and as his men came down the ridge we shot them down. And then the rest dismounted and gathered in a bunch, kneeling down and shooting from behind their horses. We circled round and round, firing into Custer's men until the last man was killed. think Custer was a, very brave man to fight all these Indians with his few men from daylight until the sun was almost going down.
 When we had killed all the sol diers we felt that we had done our duty and felt that it was a great bat tie and not a massacre, declared Runs s-the-Eneny, another Sioux chief According my estimate there were about 2,O0O able bodied warriors en- gagged in this fight; they were all in good fighting order. The guns and ammunition that we gathered from the dead soldiers of Custer's com mand put us in better fighting condi- ton than ever before, but the senti- ment ran around among the Indians that we had killed enough and we did not want to fight any more"
 In view of the tremendous conflict in Europe, this naive statement is in- teresting, as showing that even paint
 
 warfare and weary of staying.
 'eThe whole valley was filled with smoke and the bullets flew all around us, making a noise like bees,''' was the graphic description of Chief Two Moons. When all the white men were dead, said Two Moons, ''We then jumped off our horses, took their guns and sca1ped them.'' As one of the causes of the deadly ferocity man ifested by the Sioux, Two Moons ex- plained: t'At Powder river the sol diers attacked our camp and de- stroyed everything and that made us mad. When the soldiers came after us, on the day of the Custer fight, we were ready to kill them all. The sol diers were after us all the time and we had to fight" From the view point of the untutored savage, it was a case of military necessity and in the light of recent events the killing of soldiers by warriors in open fight does not seem so terrible, after all.