Bloody Knife (1840-25 June 1876) was an Arikara scout for the United States during the Plains Indian Wars. He was George Armstrong Custer's favorite scout, and he was killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876.
Biography[]
Bloody Knife was born in 1840 in the Dakota Territory to a Sioux father and Arikara mother, and he was abused and discriminated against by Chief Gall and other Sioux leaders due to his mixed descent. He left for the Arikara tribe as a teenager, and in 1862 he lost his brothers in a Sioux raid led by Gall himself. Bloody Knife became a courier and hunter for the American Fur Company under Alfred Sully, and he accompanied George Armstrong Custer on several military expeditions as a scout, including his Yellowstone expedition. In 1876, he guided Marcus Reno's force during the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and he was shot in the head and killed while talking with Reno. Reno, whose face was covered in Bloody Knife's brains, fled from the field in disgust, and his two other Arikara scouts Little Brave and Bobtail Bull would also be killed in the battle.