Curly Ashishishe ( c . 1856 – 1923 ) , known as Curly ( or Curley ) , was a Crow scout in the United States Army during the Sioux Wars , best known for having been one of the few survivors on the United States side at the Battle of Little Bighorn . He did not fight in the battle , but watched from a distance , and was the first to report the defeat of the 7th Cavalry Regiment . Afterward a legend grew that he had been an active participant and managed to escape , leading to conflicting accounts of Curly ' s involvement in the historical record . Life . Ashishishe was born in approximately 1856 in Montana Territory , the son of Strong Bear ( Inside the Mouth ) and Strikes By the Side of the Water . His name , variously rendered as " Ashishishe " , " Shishi ' esh " , etc . , literally means " the Crow " . He resided on the Crow Reservation in the vicinity of Pryor Creek , and married Bird Woman . He enlisted in the U . S . Army as an Indian scout on April 10 , 1876 . He served with the 7th Cavalry Regiment under George Armstrong Custer , and was with them at the Battle of Little Bighorn in June of that year , along with five other Crow warrior / scouts : White Man Runs Him , Goes Ahead , Hairy Moccasin White Swan , and Half Yellow Face ( leader / chief of the scouts ) . Custer had divided his force into four separate detachments , keeping a total of 210 men with him . Half Yellow Face and White Swan fought along side the soldiers of Reno ' s detachment and White Swan was severely wounded . Curly , Hairy Mocassin , Goes Ahead and White Man Runs Him went with Custer ' s detachment , but did not actively participate in the battle , and they later reported they were ordered away before the intense fighting began . Curly separated from White Man Runs Him , Hairy Moccasin , and Goes Ahead and evidently the watched the battle between the Sioux / Cheyenne forces and Custer ' s detachment from a distance , and , seeing the complete extermination of Custer ' s detachment , rode off to report the news . A day or two after the battle Curly found the " Far West " , an army supply boat at the confluence of the Bighorn and $ 3 Rivers . He was the first to report the 7th ' s defeat , using a combination of sign language , drawings , and an interpreter . Curly did not claim to have fought in the battle , but this first report was accurate , leading historians to believe he had been present at Little Bighorn but to have witnessed it from a distance . He was sought out by historians and the media , and two of the most influential historians of the Battle of the Little Bighorn , Walter Mason Camp ( who interviewed Curly on several occasions ) and John S . Gray , accepted Curly ' s early account . Later , however , when accounts of " Custer ' s Last Stand " began to circulate in the media , a legend grew that Curly had actively participated in the battle but had managed to escape . Later on , Curly himself stopped denying the legend , and offered more elaborate accounts in which he fought with the 7th , and had avoided death by disguising himself as a Lakota warrior , leading to conflicting accounts of his involvement . After the Crow Agency had been moved to its current site in 1884 , Curly lived there , on the Crow Reservation on the bank of the Little Bighorn River , very close to the site of the battle . He served in the Crow Police . He divorced Bird Woman in 1886 , and married Takes a Shield . Curly had one daughter , Awakuk Korita ha Sakush ( " Bird of Another Year " ) , who took the English name Nora . For his Army service Curly received a U . S . pension as of 1920 . He died of pneumonia in 1923 , and his remains were interred in the National Cemetery at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument , only a mile from his home . Curly ' s story . Curly ' s earliest newspaper account as recorded in the " Helena ( Montana ) Herald " on July 15 , 1876 , is as follows : Thomas Leforge , in his autobiographical narrative , stressed that the Army expected scouts to be non - participant in skirmishes and added this recollection :