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Article: Beaten men. (exhibition '400 Years of Native-American Portraits' at the New York, New York, public library)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- January 16, 1993
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1993 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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ONE of General George Custer's assailants at the Battle of Little Bighorn was an 18-year-old Sioux warrior called Wooden Leg. His name must have been a poor guide to his fighting form: he was apparently a close accomplice of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, whose band finished off Custer and his troops in the summer of 1876.
What Wooden Leg made of the motor car, air travel or the wireless goes unrecorded; but he lived until 1940. A photograph of him in middle age shows a cruel face worthy of central casting--in Errol Flynn's day, anyway--with narrow eyes, thin lips and a fearsome scar above the right cheek. It can be seen in an exhibition, "400 Years of Native-American ...