Bloody Knife Bloody Knife ( Sioux : " Tamena Way Way " or " Tamina WeWe " ; Arikara : " Nes I Ri Pat " or " Nee si Ra Pat " ; ca . 1840 – June 25 , 1876 ) was an American Indian who served as a scout and guide for the U . S . 7th Cavalry Regiment . He was the favorite scout of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and has been called " perhaps the most famous Native American scout to serve the U . S . Army . " Bloody Knife was born to a Hunkpapa Sioux father and an Arikara mother around 1840 . He was abused and discriminated against by the other Sioux in his village because of his background , in particular by Gall , a future chief . When Bloody Knife was a teenager , he left his village with his mother to live with the Arikara tribe . His brothers were killed during a Sioux raid led by Gall in 1862 . Bloody Knife found employment as a courier and hunter for the American Fur Company and later served under Alfred Sully before scouting for George Custer on several military expeditions . He died from a bullet wound to the head on June 25 , 1876 , during the Battle of the Little Bighorn . Early life . While his exact date and place of birth are unknown , Bloody Knife was probably born between 1837 and 1840 in Dakota Territory . His father was a Hunkpapa Sioux and his mother a member of the Arikara tribe , also known as the Ree . Along with brothers and perhaps one sister , he lived with his father ' s tribe during his early childhood , but was not well - treated by them because of their enmity with his mother ' s people . Bloody Knife grew to hate the Sioux and especially a Sioux named Gall . Gall was the adopted brother of Sitting Bull , but while Sitting Bull had also mistreated Bloody Knife it was his peer with whom Bloody Knife developed an enduring feud . When Bloody Knife ' s mother left his father in 1856 to return to her own tribe , Bloody Knife joined her . About fifteen , he found himself on the Upper Mississippi River at an American Fur Company trading post called Fort Clark . Conflicts between the Arikaras and Sioux were routine there , with Sioux war parties attacking Arikaras who wandered too far from the fort . In spite of the threat they represented , Bloody Knife took on and succeeded in the dangerous job of delivering mail to other forts in Missouri and to Fort Totten in North Dakota . He did not , however , pass through these years unscathed . During a visit to his father , Bloody Knife was — contrary to the customary protection of guests — attacked and ambushed by Gall and several other Hunkpapas who beat him severely , stripped him , spat on him , mocked him and hit him with coup sticks and musket ramrod s . In the fall of 1862 , two of his brothers were killed , mutilated , and scalped by a Sioux war party led by Gall . Their bodies were left to be eaten by wolves . First years as a scout . After working for the American Fur Company , Bloody Knife accompanied Brigadier General Alfred Sully in 1865 as a scout on his Sioux expedition . Bloody Knife proved useful to the group of Galvanized Yankees , prisoner soldiers from the Confederate States Army who served the Union in the America West instead of serving time in a prisoner - of - war camp at Fort Berthold . He also worked as a messenger , helping the troops to communicate with other military units in the area , which was still mainly controlled by the Sioux . In late 1865 , Bloody Knife met with Captain Adams Bassett of Company C , Fourth U . S . Volunteer Infantry , whom he told that Gall had recently arrived near Fort Berthold , that Gall was not peaceful and had killed white men along the Missouri River . Bassett sent a lieutenant with a platoon and Bloody Knife to capture Gall or kill him if he would not surrender . Bloody Knife led the soldiers to the Hunkpapa village , south of the fort where Gall was staying . The men attempted to arrest Gall upon arrival , but when Gall tried to escape he was bayoneted and forced to the ground , and was twice stabbed with bayonets . The story goes that Bloody Knife took aim to administer a killing shot to Gall ' s head , but the officer in command knocked the shot wide , claiming Gall was already dead . Bloody Knife argued furiously with the officer to no avail . He departed , leaving Gall alive to become a Sioux war chief . However , since similar stories have been told about Gall attempting to kill Sitting Bull and being prevented , the story may be apocryphal . In 1866 , President Andrew Johnson authorized the formation of a force of Indian scouts when he signed the Indian Scout Enlistment Act . Bloody Knife enlisted as a corporal at Fort Stevenson in May 1868 , but his early service was not without issue . Bloody Knife had a problem with alcohol that may have led to him deserting his post in September 1868 . By 1872 , the year of his involvement in the Yellowstone Expedition , he became a lance corporal . Friendship and early work with Custer . In 1873 , at Fort Rice , he met George Armstrong Custer . The two became friends , and Custer admired Bloody Knife ' s talents as a scout . Although Bloody Knife is said to have been insolent , Custer was amused by his candor . He was himself a volatile man , and during an expedition in 1874 would shoot at Bloody Knife during a fit of rage . Custer occasionally gave Bloody Knife gifts , including a silver medal inscribed with Bloody Knife ' s name that Custer ordered from Washington . Bloody Knife quickly became Custer ' s favorite scout . On the next Yellowstone Expedition , Bloody Knife joined Custer and fought against the Sioux . Bloody Knife helped to discover an abandoned Sioux village which he estimated to have held 1 , 000 warriors . The group followed the trail , which led them to a battle at Yellowstone . Black Hills Expedition . In 1874 , Bloody Knife took part in the Black Hills Expedition , which included over a thousand men , geologists , infantry , cavalry , two miners , several reporters , and sixty - five Arikara scouts . Shortly before the beginning of the expedition , the Sioux attacked the Arikara village at Fort Berthold , killing five Arikaras and one Mandan . One of Bloody Knife ' s sons was killed in the attack and another scout , called Bear ' s Ears or Bear ' s Eye , lost a brother in the same attack . Bloody Knife blamed the death of his son on Gall . Many of the Arikara on the expedition wanted to avenge the attack and when they found signs of a band of Sioux in the Black Hills , they began to sing war songs and adorned their horses and themselves with war paint . Custer was not interested in solving tribal feuds and ordered the scouts not to attack any Sioux unless fired upon first . Bloody Knife and twenty - five other Arikaras were sent out for more scouting and found a small camp of five lodges . The scouts waited for Custer to arrive with his interpreter , Louis Agard , before taking any action . Although some reports suggested the presence of thousands of warriors in the hills preparing to attack , and most of the expedition thought that a fight would occur soon , Bloody Knife discovered a group of only twenty - seven Oglala Sioux , who had been cutting lodgepoles and hunting in the Black Hills and intended return to the Red Cloud Agency , one hundred miles south of their location . The group had no knowledge of the soldiers in the area and all but one Oglala ran away when Agard and some of the scouts approached them . On August 7 , 1874 , Bloody Knife encountered a grizzly bear roughly seventy - five yards from where Custer was searching for a campsite . Custer , having had a lifelong dream of killing a grizzly bear , shot the bear twice with his Remington rifle , hitting it in the thigh , and Bloody Knife and William Ludlow helped with the kill . The bear was an old male with broken teeth , covered in scars , and weighed . Though Custer took credit for the kill , some believe that the fatal bullet was fired by Bloody Knife , and 2002 biography " The Custer Companion " states that the coup de grâce was a cut to the jugular vein by Bloody Knife . During the Black Hills Expedition , several wagons became stuck at a bank . Custer asked whose fault the delay was and a scout named Charley Reynolds blamed Bloody Knife for the incident . Custer drew his revolver and fired shots in the two scouts ' direction . Bloody Knife and Reynolds hid behind some trees . Bloody Knife then told Custer , " It is not a good thing you have done to me ; if I had been possessed of madness too , you would not see another day . " Custer replied , " My brother , it was the madness of the moment that made me do this , but it is now gone . Let us shake hands and be friends again . " Bloody Knife agreed and shook Custer ' s hand . While most Indian scouts earned $ 13 a month , the same amount of pay as the troops received , Custer arranged a job for Bloody Knife with the quartermaster as a guide , where he earned $ 75 ( $ at today ' s prices ) per month . On November 30 , 1874 , Private Bloody Knife was discharged from service , and for his efforts in the Black Hills Expedition , he received an additional $ 150 for what was called his " invaluable assistance " . Death at The Battle of Little Bighorn . In 1876 , during the Little Bighorn campaign , Bloody Knife repeatedly tried to warn Custer there were too many Indians to fight . In spite of the overwhelming odds , he refused to stay out of the battle . By some accounts , before the battle began , Bloody Knife signaled to the sun with his hands , " I shall not see you go down behind the hills tonight . " Bloody Knife was assigned to Major Marcus Reno , who had a command of 140 soldiers , at the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25 , 1876 . During the battle , Custer directed Bloody Knife and the other Arikara and Crow scouts to drive off the herds of Indian ponies in the Sioux camp . Reno and his men retreated into woodland near the river , and Bloody Knife was shot in the head and killed while mounted on his horse . Reportedly , Bloody Knife was standing next to Reno , who had motioned for Bloody Knife to approach him so he could ask Bloody Knife what the Indians would do when his command began to move away from their village . Reno , his face smeared with the gore from Bloody Knife ' s wound , panicked , and his poor response cost many of his troops their lives . Bloody Knife was one of three Arikara scouts assigned to Reno to die during the battle ; the others were Little Brave ( also known as Bear ' s Trail or Little Soldier ) and Bobtail Bull . The US Army suffered a huge defeat . Bloody Knife was decapitated by the Sioux . According to Bloody Knife ' s sister , her daughters had found his body on the battlefield , and unaware that it was the body of their uncle , cut off his head and took it to the Hunkpapa village where it was displayed on a pole . When she saw the head and recognized it as that of her brother , Bloody Knife ' s sister was horrified . According to David Humphreys Miller , an interviewer who talked with many of the participants and witnesses from the battle , she cried out : " Gall has killed him at last ! " However , other accounts do not mention Gall nor the sisters ' reactions at their discovery of the head ' s identity . In the aftermath of the battle , Colonel John Gibbon ' s troops found and identified by its gray color pattern the scalp of Bloody Knife in an empty Sioux lodge . These remains were buried on the battlefield on June 27 , 1876 . Legacy . Bloody Knife had wed an Arikara woman named Young Owl Woman , or She Owl , in 1866 . He fathered at least three children , a daughter and two sons . The daughter died of an illness on December 28 , 1870 , and was buried at Fort Buford . One son was killed in a raid by Lakota on the Arikara village before the Black Hills Expedition of 1874 . The other lived until 1904 , when he was killed supposedly by his own wife . Young Owl Woman served as Bloody Knife ' s legal heir . On April 14 , 1879 , she appeared at Fort Berthold to claim outstanding pay for his services to the army . In 1881 , she received his final $ 91 . 66 in wages from the US Government . Bloody Knife ' s deeds were remembered in song composed by the Arikara scouts after his death at the Battle of Little Big Horn . His story spread wide , and he became one of the more famous scouts associated with the army . In the 1991 television mini - series " Son of the Morning Star " , Bloody Knife was portrayed by Sheldon Peters Wolfchild .