first to report the 7th's defeat, using a combination of sign language, drawings, and an interpreter. Curly did not claim to have fought in the battle, but only to have witnessed it from a distance; since this first report was accurate, two of the most influential historians of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Walter Mason Camp (who interviewed Curly on several occasions) and John S. Gray, accepted Curly's early account. Later, however, when accounts of "Custer's Last Stand" began to circulate in the media, a legend grew that Curly had actively participated in the battle, but had managed to escape. Later on, Curly himself stopped denying the legend, and offered more elaborate accounts in which he fought with the 7th and had avoided death by disguising himself as a Lakota warrior, leading to conflicting accounts of his involvement. The family story is that he was involved, but when he saw Custer fall, he gutted open a horse and hid inside. After the Crow Agency had been moved to its current site in 1884, Curly lived there, on the Crow Reservation on the bank of the Little Bighorn River, very close to the site of the battle. He served in the Crow Police. He divorced Bird Woman in 1886, and married Takes a Shield. Curly had one daughter, Awakuk Korita ha Sakush ("Bird of Another Year"), who took the English name Dora. For his Army service, Curly received a U.S. pension as of 1920. He died of pneumonia in 1923, and his remains were interred in the National Cemetery at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, only a mile from his home. <ref>"Particulars of the Massacre of Custer's Command" https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84036143/1876-07-20/ed-1/seq-1/#date1=1875&index=2&rows=20&words=Custer&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=Montana&date2=1876&proxtext=custer&y=17&x=12&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1</</ref> Curly's story Curly's earliest newspaper account as recorded in the Helena (Montana) Weekly Herald on July 20, 1876, is as follows: Custer, with his five companies, after separating from Reno and his seven companies, moved to the right around the base of a hill overlooking the valley of the Little Horn, through a ravine just wide enough to admit his column of fours. There was no sign of the presence of Indians in the hills on that side (the right) of the Little Horn, and the column moved steadily on until it rounded the hill and came in sight of the village lying in the valley below them. Custer appeared very much elated and ordered the bugle to sound a