Political authority and respect depended on relationships, generosity, experience, and demonstrated ability.

Stories carried history through families and generations.

Medicine Crow grew up in a family where those stories were unusually close.

One of the most important elders in his childhood was White Man Runs Him, who had served as a Crow scout with George Armstrong Custer’s forces during the 1876 campaign that ended at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

White Man Runs Him survived the battle because the Crow scouts had separated from Custer’s immediate command before the final destruction of the Seventh Cavalry detachments on the ridge.

When Medicine Crow was a boy, White Man Runs Him was not a name from a textbook.

He was a living elder.

That distinction matters.

Many twentieth-century Americans encountered the Little Bighorn through movies, paintings, museum exhibits, or romanticized accounts.

Medicine Crow heard recollections from someone whose own eyes had seen the events and whose life had been shaped by the world that produced them.