White Man Runs Him (Mahr-Itah-Thee-Dah-Ka-Roosh) - (born c. 1858 - died June 2, 1929) was a Crow scout serving with George Armstrong Custer’s
1876 expeditions against the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne that culminated in the
Battle of the Little Big Horn. His accounts of the battle and the events leading up to
the battle are invaluable to modern historians but were largely ignored for nearly a
hundred years.
Also known as Crow Who Talks Gros Ventre and White Buffalo That Turns Around, he
was born into the Bear Lodge Clan of the Crow nation, the son of Bull Chief and Offers Her
Red Cloth. At the age of about 18, he volunteered to serve as a scout with the United
States Army on April 10, 1876 in its campaign against the Sioux and Northern
Cheyenne, traditional enemies of the Crow.
Originally assigned to the infantry, he was later transferred to the Custer’s Seventh U.S.
Cavalry. He scouted for Lieutenant Charles Varnum’s column in the days preceding te
battle. On June 25, 1876, he accompanied Varnum and Custer to the Crow’s Nest, a natural rock formation overlooking the Little Big Horn valley, to assess the situation. The Crow scouts, including White Man Runs Him, Goes Ahead, Curley, Hairy Moccasin and others, advised Custer to wait for reinforcements. Custer refused their advice however and prepared to attack.
When Custer saw the scouts taking off their uniforms and putting on Crow war clothing,
he demanded to know what they were doing. The responded that they wished to die as warriors rather than soldiers. Angered, Custer sent them away about an hour before engaging in the final battle. White Man Runs Him retired to a ridge along with Goes Ahead, Hairy Moccasin, and Strikes That Bear to join Major Marcus Reno. They were engaged briefly in battle but would survive the engagement. He then joined Colonel John Gibbon's column.
After the battle, he lived on the Crow reservation near Lodge Grass, Montana. He
was the stepgrandfather of Joe Medicine Crow, a Crow tribal historian who used his grandfather’s stories as a basis for his later histories of the battle. His status as a Little
Big Horn survivor made him a minor celebrity late in life and he even made an cameo appearance in the 1927 Hollywood movie, "Red Raiders".
Despite his fame, his accounts of the battle and Custer’s command were largely ignored for nearly a century. The United States Army and Custer’s widow Libby had begun a public relations campaign to portray Custer as a gallant fallen hero. The Crow scouts depiction of Custer as vainglorious, headstrong, and reckless did not fit with the
accepted view of the time. White Man Runs Him, the other surviving scouts, as well as
Sioux and Cheyenne warriors told their side of the story to photographer and writer
Edward S. Curtis in the early 20th Century. His book told their story, but even he left out the more controversial parts of the account. It wasn't until the late 20th Century when Curtis's private notes became public that most historians began to take a second look at Native American accounts of the battle.
White Man Runs Him lived the remainder of his life on the Crow reservation in the Big Horn Valley region of Montana, just a few miles from the site of the famous battle. He died there in 1929 and was buried in the cemetery at the Little Big Horn Battlefield.