Half Yellow Face



Half Yellow Face (1830(?) to 1878(?),(or Ischu Shi Dish in the Crow Indian language), was the leader-chief of the six Crow Scouts for George Armstrong Custer’s 7th Cavalry during the 1876 campaign against the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne.  The other Crow scouts were White Swan, White Man Runs Him, Hairy Moccasin, Goes Ahead, and Curly.    Half Yellow Face was the "pipe carrier" of the Crow scouts because he was older (about 40) and had more experience in war that the others.  As the leader-chief he had the rank of corporal. In the days before the Battle of the Little Bighorn, as Custer advanced up the Rosebud River, Custer relied on Half Yellow Face and his other Crow Scouts because they knew the country through which he was passing. It was the Crow scouts ranging out in front of the 7th Cavalry, that sent word back that the large Sioux-Cheyenne village had left the Rosebud and gone over into the Little Big Horn Valley. Half Yellow Face guided the 7th cavalry on the June 24-25 night march that took them to the Rosebud/Little Bighorn divide. In the early morning hours of 25 June, the day of the battle, the Crow scouts had gone to a high point (the "Crows Nest") on the Rosebud-Little Bighorn divide. Looking westward toward the valley of the Little Bighorn, a distance of about 12 to 15 miles, they saw indications of large horse herds and camp fire smoke from a village larger than Custer had anticipated, though the encampment itself was out of site on the valley floor. The other Crow scouts joined others in warning Custer of the risks in attacking such a large encampment, but Half Yellow Face told Custer that the column had been observed several times that morning by Sioux scouts and could not remain where he was -- he had to either attack or go back. Custer also became concerned from other reports of contact with the Sioux that he had been observed and if he delayed an attack the encampment would be warned of his presence and scatter, thus avoiding the military confrontation the army was seeking. As these preparations for attack were ongoing Half Yellow Face said to Custer (either through sign language or through the interpreter/scout Mitch Boyer), "You and I are both going home tonight by a road we do not know". Although poetically prophetic for Custer, these words probably had little effect on him. As the battle began, Half Yellow Face and another Crow scout, White Swan, went with Major Reno's detachment  and took a direct and active part in the combat at the south end of the village, and continued to fight along side Reno's troopers on the 25th and the 26th. When White Swan was severely wounded fighting on the valley floor, Half Yellow Face got him to safety in the Reno hilltop entrenchments,     arriving at about 5 p.m.  On the 27th, after the Sioux had left, going up the Little Bighorn valley, Half Yellow Face made a special travois and moved White Swan twelve miles down the valley to the "Far West" steamship so that White Swan got medical care with other wounded soldiers in a temporary hospital near the mouth of the Big Horn River. Half Yellow Face and another Crow scout Curley dutifully stayed with Gibbon's forces on the Yellowstone until furloughed to visit their Crow village which was camped on Pryor Creek>, though the three other Crow scouts, White Man Runs Him, Hairy Moccasin and Goes Ahead had simply left the Reno entrenchments at about 4:45 on June 25, and went back to their Crow village. Sources indicate that Half Yellow Face died in 1879, three years after the battle. Traditional reports state he was killed on the Yellowstone River while pursing a Sioux raiding party who had stolen Crow horses. The 1885 Census records confirm that Half Yellow Face had died leaving his wife and 3 children. When Half Yellow Face died, there was no National Cemetery at the battlefield and so he was not buried there like the other Crow Scouts. Indian oral tradition indicates that he had a traditional scaffold burial on Crow lands, near present day Wyola, Montana. Because Half Yellow Face did not long survive he did not participate in the many later interviews of the other Crow scouts, conducted by persons fascinated with the battle. Consequently he did not share in their fame and notoriety, and he remains the least known of the six Crow Nation scouts who served with George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.