Thomas H. Leforge was "born an Ohio American" and chose to "die a Crow Indian American." His association with his adopted tribe spanned some of the most eventful years of its history--from the Indian Wars to the reservation period--and as interpreter, agency employee, chief of Crow scouts for the 1876 campaign (he was with Terry at the Little Big Horn), bona fide Crow "wolf," and husband of a Crow woman, he was usually in the midst of the action. His story, first published in 1928, remains a remarkably accurate source of historical and ethnological information on this relatively little known tribe.
Dr. Thomas B. Marquis, Crow Agency physician and personal friend of Leforge in his old age, is described by the present official tribal historian and ethnologist, Joseph Medicine Crow, as one of the first and few white men to whom the Crows would speak freely. He also wrote Wooden Leg: A Warrior Who Fought Custer(also a Bison Book). Herman J. Viola, who collaborated with Joseph Medicine Crow on the introduction to this edition, is director of the National Anthropological Archives of the Smithsonian Institution.
