caption death_date title birth_date article_title name
'' wasu maza '' 1955 minneconjou , lakota 1858 dewey beard
 dewey beard -lrb- iron hail -rrb-
dewey beard

dewey beard or wasú máza -lrb- `` iron hail '' , 1858 -- 1955 -rrb- was a minneconjou lakota who fought in the battle of little bighorn as a teenager .
after george armstrong custer 's defeat , wasu maza followed sitting bull into exile in canada and then back to south dakota where he lived on the cheyenne river indian reservation .
chief iron hail is often mistaken by historians for chief iron tail , being lakota contemporaries with similar sounding names .
most biographies incorrectly report that chief iron tail fought in the battle of the little bighorn and that his family was killed in 1890 at wounded knee , when in truth it was chief iron hail who suffered the loss .
iron hail joined the ghost dance movement and was in spotted elk 's band along with his parents , siblings , wife and child .
he and his family left the cheyenne river indian reservation on december 23 , 1890 with spotted elk and approximately 300 other miniconjou and 38 hunkpapa lakota on a winter trek to the pine ridge indian reservation to avoid the perceived trouble which was anticipated in the wake of sitting bull 's murder at standing rock indian reservation .
he and his family were present at the wounded knee massacre , where he was shot and some of his family , including his mother , father , wife and infant child were killed .
he recounted his experiences in an in depth interview with eli s. ricker , for a book ricker planned to write .
dewey beard changed his name from iron hail when he converted to roman catholicism .
he was a member of buffalo bill 's wild west show for 15 years .
in the early 1940s beard and his wife alice were raising horses on their land on the pine ridge indian reservation .
in 1942 the department of war annexed of the reservation for use as an aerial gunnery and bombing range .
beard 's family was among the 125 lakota families uprooted from their homes .
they were compensated by the government for their land in installments which were too low to enable them to afford more property , and as a result they both moved into a poor section of rapid city .
when he died in 1955 at the age of ninety six , dewey beard was the last known lakota survivor of the battle of the little big horn , and the last known lakota survivor of the wounded knee massacre .
