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What happened to Custers Indian child?

Hi There, It has been said that Custer fathered a child by and Indian woman. I was wondering if you or anyone knows what happened to the Mother and baby? Did they just disappear in to the mists of time?

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Permalink Reply by William Luban on June 11, 2012 at 1:10pm

Here is an account from a Lakota Sioux who knew the Southern Cheyenne maiden in question. Is it absolutely factual? I do not know. But, here it is:

Account by White Cow Bull (Lakota)

In 1938, Joseph White Cow Bull, an Oglala Lakota veteran of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, went with David Humphreys Miller to the Little Bighorn battlefield and recounted to him his recollections of the battle. Among his recollections:^[9]

While we were together in this village [on the Little Bighorn River], I spent most of my time with the Shahiyela [Cheyenne] since I knew their tongue and their ways almost as well as my own. In all those years I had never taken a wife, although I had had many women. One woman I wanted was a pretty young Shahiyela named Monahseetah, or Meotxi as I called her. She was in her middle twenties but had never married any man of her tribe. Some of my Shahiyela friends said she was from the southern branch of their tribe, just visiting up north, and they said no Shahiyela could marry her because she had a seven-year-old son born out of wedlock and that tribal law forbade her getting married. They said the boy’s father had been a white soldier chief named Long Hair; he had killed her father, Chief Black Kettle [sic], in a battle in the south [Battle of the Washita] eight winters before, they said, and captured her. He had told her he wanted to make her his second wife, and so he had her. But after a while his first wife, a white woman, found her out and made him let her go.^[9]

Miller asked White Cow Bull, "Was this boy still with her here?" and White Cow Bull answered:

"Yes, I saw him often around the Shahiyela camp. He was named Yellow Bird and he had light streaks in his hair. He was always with his mother in the daytime, so I would have to wait until night to try to talk to her alone. She knew I wanted to walk with her under a courting blanket and make her my wife. But she would only talk with me through the tepee cover and never came outside."

Another story concerns the Indian maiden Monahseetah, an adult then, who protected Custer's body from desecration, telling those who had intended to chop him like every other cavalry soldier killed, claiming "He is my relative," and had "Yellow Hair" at her side as she hovered over the body.