Just five months after the Little Bighorn Battle, on November 25, 1876, in retaliation, U.S. troops under the leadership of General Ranald Mackenzie destroyed the village of Cheyenne living with Chief Dull Knife on the Powder River.

Although the Sioux and Cheyenne had won one of their greatest victories at Little Bighorn, this victory actually marked the beginning of the end of their fight against the U.S. government.

News of the massacre of Custer and his men reached the East Coast during the centennial celebrations on July 4, 1876. This outraged the citizens and Americans demanded retaliation.

The government responded by sending one of its most successful Indian fighters to the region, General Ranald Mackenzie, who had previously defeated the Comanche and Kiowa Indians in Texas. Mackenzie led an expeditionary force up the Powder River in central Wyoming, where he located a village of Cheyenne living with Chief Dull Knife. Although Dull Knife himself probably wasn’t involved in the battle at Little Bighorn, many of his people were, including one of his sons.

At dawn, Mackenzie and over 1,000 soldiers and 400 Indian scouts opened fire on the sleeping village, killing many Indians within the first few minutes. Some of the Cheyenne were able to escape to the surrounding hills. The Indians watched as the soldiers burned more than 200 lodges that contained all their winter food and clothing. Then the soldiers cut the throats of their ponies. When the soldiers found souvenirs taken by the Cheyenne from soldiers they had killed at Little Bighorn, the assailants felt justified in their attack.

The surviving Cheyenne, many of them half-naked, began an 11-day walk north to Crazy Horse’s camp. Devastated by his losses, the next spring Dull Knife convinced the remaining Cheyenne to surrender. The army sent them south to Indian Territory, where other defeated survivors of the final years of the Plains Indian wars soon joined them.

It makes one wonder how things would have been different had the Little Bighorn not taken place.

On November 21, 1860 hired killer Tom Horn was born in Memphis, Missouri.  Tom was raised on a farm, and like many young farm boys, he loved to roam the woods with his dog and rifle, hunting for game.  He was an unusually skilled rifleman, an ability that may have later encouraged him to gravitate towards a career as a professional killer.

At the age of 14, Tom left home after a particularly savage beating from his father.  He started working as a teamster with mules in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  His skills got him a job with the U.S. Army, where he served as an interpreter with the Apache Indians; learned to be a skilled scout and tracker; and tracked the cunning movements of the famous Apache warrior Geronimo.

Tom started his career as a hired gunman when he went to work for the Pinkerton Detective Agency.  Horn’s four-year stint with the Pinkertons impressed his next employer, the Wyoming Swan Land and Cattle Company. Swan and other big ranches hired Tom to control rustlers.  It’s not known exactly how many rustlers and other troublemakers he killed.

“Killing is my specialty,” Horn reportedly once said. “I look at it as a business proposition, and I think I have a corner on the market.”

In 1903, Tom Horn was arrested and hanged for the killing of a 14-year-old boy.

Many historians today don’t believe Tom killed the boy.  Although it carried no legal weight, few years ago Tom was given another trial, and found innocent.

Although Tombstone, Arizona is known for the OK Corral Shootout, on November 14, 1882 another shootout took place between two Old West characters with unique nicknames. The shootout was between gunslinger Franklin “Buckskin” Leslie and Billy “The Kid” Claiborne.

Tombstone was the home to many gunmen who never achieved the fame of Wyatt Earp or Doc Holliday. Probably one of the most notorious of these forgotten outlaws was “Buckskin” Frank Leslie.

Little is know of his early life. At different times, he claimed to have been born in both Texas and Kentucky. Although there is no supporting evidence, he also said he studied medicine in Europe, and had been an army scout in the war against the Apache Indians.

Drawn by the moneymaking opportunities of the booming mining town of Tombstone, he opened the Cosmopolitan Hotel in 1880. That same year he killed a man named Mike Killeen during a quarrel over Killeen’s wife, and he married the woman shortly thereafter.

When John Ringo was found dead in July 1882, a young friend of Ringo’s named Billy “The Kid” Claiborne, was convinced that Leslie had murdered Ringo. A cocky young man who took on the nickname “The Kid” after Billy The Kid, seeking vengeance and the notoriety that would come from shooting a famous gunslinger, unwisely decided to publicly challenge Leslie, who shot him dead without hesitation.