"No," he said, "this picture is a lie. Those long swords, have swords--they never fought us with swords, but with guns and revolvers. These men are on ponies--they fought us on foot, and every fourth man held the others' horses. That's always their way of fighting. We tie ourselves onto our ponies and fight in a circle. These people are not dressed as we dress in a fight. They look like agency Indians--we strip naked and have ourselves and our ponies painted. This picture gives us bows and arrows. We were better armed than the long swords. Their guns wouldn't shoot but once--the thing would not throw out the empty cartridge shells. (In this he was historically correct, as dozens of guns were picked up on the battlefield by General Gibbon's command, two days after, with the shells still sticking in them, showing that the ejector wouldn't work.) When we found they could not shoot we saved our bullets by knocking the long swords over with our war-clubs--it was just like killing sheep. Some of them got on their knees and begged; we spared none--ugh! This picture is like all the white man's pictures of Indians, a lie. I will show you how it looked." Then turning it over he pulled out a stump of a lead pencil from his pouch and drew a large shape of a letter S turned sidewise. "Here," said he, "is the Little Big Horn River; we had our-lodges along the banks in the shape of a bent bow." "How many lodges did you have?" asked Harry. "Oh, many, many times ten. We were like blades of grass." [It is estimated that there were between four and six thousand Indians, hence there must have been at least a thousand lodges.] "Sitting Bull had made big medicine way off on a hill. He came in with it; he had it in a bag on a coup-stick. He made a big speech and said that Waukontonka (the Great Spirit) had come to him riding on an eagle. Waukontonka had told him that the long swords were coming, but the Indians would wipe them off the face of the earth. His speech made our hearts glad. Next day our runners came in and told us the long swords were coming. Sitting Bull had the squaws put up empty death lodges along the bend of the river to fool the Ree scouts when they came up and looked down over the bluffs. The brush and bend hid our lodges. Then Sitting Bull went away to make more medicine and didn't come back till the fight was over. "Gall was head chief. Crazy Horse led the Cheyennes; Goose, the Bannocks. I was not a head chief--my brother, Iron Horn was--but I had a band of the worst Uncpapas; all of them had killed more enemies than they had fingers and toes. When the long swords came we knew their ponies were tired out. We knew they were fooled by the death lodges. They thought we were but a handful.