After solemnly surveying the mingled corpses of fellow warriors and 7th U.S. Cavalry troopers on the hillside above Montana Territory’s Little Bighorn River (the Greasy Grass to Indians), the pair of Lakota warriors focused on the lifeless body of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer at their feet. “Long Hair thought he was the greatest man in the world,” one said. “Now he lies there.” White Bull, the warrior he was addressing, had killed two men in battle that morning, June 25, 1876. “Well,” White Bull replied, “If that is Long Hair, I am the man who killed him.”
Historian Stanley Vestal recounted this alleged conversation in the February 1957 issue of , published a decade after White