Rain-in-the-Face

(Made Famous by Custer and Longfellow)

In the Wigwam collection is the War Bonnet and War Shirt of this notorious Sioux. It contains sixty-four eagle quills, is mounted on buckskin and was decorated with gorgeous beadwork, scalp-locks and ermine tails, as was also similar decorative features on the softly tanned antelope skin of which the scalp-shirt was made.

I 1873 the expedition of General Stanley comprising seventeen hundred troops, part of which was the famed 7th Cavalry under Custer, went into the Bad Lands and lower Yellowstone country of the Sioux.

The Northern Pacific Railroad was being surveyed - to reach into the Indians' homeland where gold had been discovered; it was contrary to terms of the treaty the Government had made with them in 1868, and was for the purpose of mainly to show the natives the power of the army and to scare them from making any objection to the white man's invasion. The Indians rightfully assumed this to be war. It was.

Custer, to show his bravery, for which he was noted, rushed ahead of the main body of troops, and in his anxiety to do some act of bravery, stirred up a peaceful Indian village for a skirmish, during which his Butler, Baliran, and his Veterinarian, Honzinger, were killed.

While stationed at Fort Abraham Lincoln the following year, word was brought to Custer that an Indian by the name of Rain-in-the-Face was at Ft.Yates and Standing Rock Agency, - and that he had been heard to boast that he had killed Honzinger and Baliran in the previous year's fight.

Custer sent his brother, Tom Custer, with a hundred troopers, to arrest Rain and bring him in for court-martial on the charge of murder.

The Agency was crowded with Indians who had assembled for rations. This sudden appearance of a hundred cavalry troops greatly surprised and agitated the Indians but a half of the number of troopers under Captain Yates left, leaving fifty with Captain Tom Custer, who detailed five to join him in entering the store to make the arrest; the other forty-five were stationed about the building to come to his aid in event of disturbance.

It was cold and the Indians in the room had their blankets drawn close. Tom and his five armed soldiers peered into the faces of those standing about the stove and along the counter. They found Rain amongst them and he was surrounded by the six-gun men, while Captain Tom slipped up behind Rain, threw his arms about his neck, thrust his knee into his back, and choked him to the floor, - with the help of his five troopers; there they bound his arms, loading him into an ambulance, and drove back to the fort, - fifty armed soldiers as guard. The unarmed Indians, though protesting vigorously, were helpless to prevent the outrage.

Rain was placed in the guard-house where he suffered severely in the cold and in due course the trial was held, - one of the notable incidents in old west history.

Famed chiefs took part to defend him before the military tribunal, and made so strong an appeal that a verdict of murder was not fully agreed to, and he remained in jail to await further action.

Rain said he was manacled to a white prisoner, and both escaped. The white man filed off the chains and after a few days of hiding, Rain made his way to his friends in the Sitting Bull camp.

Then it was, that he made his boast that he would cut out Tom Custer's heart and eat it, - a threat that he himself said he made good at the Custer fight two years later.

In telling about it he said: "I had sung the war song. I had smelt powder smoke. My heart was bad - I was like one that had no mind. I rushed in and took their flag; my pony fell dead as I took it. I cut the thong that bound me; I jumped up and brained the swordflag man with my war club, and ran back to our line with the flag. The long sword's blood and brains splashed in my face. I felt hot and blood ran in my mouth. I could taste it. I was mad. I got a fresh pony and rushed back, shooting, cutting and slashing. This pony was shot, and I got another. This time I saw Little Hair (Tom Custer) - I remembered my vow. I was crazy; I feared nothing. I knew nothing would hurt me, for I had my white weasel tail on. I don't know how many I killed trying to get at him. He knew me. I laughed at him and yelled at him. I saw his mouth move, but I there was so much noise I couldn't hear his voice. He was afraid. When I got near enough I shot him with my revolver. My gun was gone, I didn't know where. I leaped from my pony and cut out his heart and bit a piece out of it and spit it in his face. I got back on my pony and rode off shaking it. I was satisfied and sick of fighting; I did not scalp him.

Longfellow's poem entitled: "The Revenge of Rain-in-the-Face" gave the story, not only authority, but wide circulation throughout the world, - and it was selling this poem to visitors, that brought Rain a neat income, at the World's Fair at Chicago in 1893.

Rain was shot through the thigh in the Custer fight. With a razor he obtained from one of the dead soldiers, he cut deeply into the front of his leg for the bullet but was unable to locate it; he then turned to and gashed into the other side, cutting tendons and nearly severed the artery. He got the bullet, but was forced to walk with crutches all the rest of his life because of his self-surgery.

Rain was acknowledged to have the courage unmatched by any other Indian. He withstood two tests of torture in the Sun Dance ceremony, - and he bore the marks of the slits in his back where the tendons had been torn loose in swinging from the raw-hide ropes, tied underneath the ligaments under the supervision of the great Medicine Man, Sitting Bull, and witnesses who saw the wounds, say they were wide and deep enough to cover a man's hand when laid in them.