Philip Rising Sun, a Northern Cheyenne warrioir aged 17 in 1876, fought under Chief Lame White Man at the Battle of Little Big Horn. During the fighting, Rising Sun took a scalp. But he secured a more curious trophy after the battle when he found a watch on a trooper’s body. Thinking its ticking indicated some sort of soldiers’ medicine, he kept it until it wound down, then threw it away because he thought it had died. He later served as a scout for the United States Army.
“A tribal prophet, an older man, went around trying to wake us up. He announced that we should keep our ponies tied up close to our lodges. ‘In a dream I saw soldiers coming,’ he shouted over and over again.” – Busby MT 1941
