Cheyennes, who had lived for some time in the reservations of the United States, were sent by the U.S. government to persuade the tribes to surrender and to live in a reservation. Because of their hunger, a great part of the Cheyenne tribe accepted the offer; Wooden Leg, with a group of 34 other Cheyennes, among whom was his brother Yellow Hair, refused, since his fellows and he "still desired, more than anything, that freedom that they considered a right". He lived a laborious life in the area of the Tongue and Powder Rivers, until again because of hunger, he and the other 30 Cheyennes decided to give up their lives as hunters and sought the reservation. Wooden Leg entered the White River Reservation. He lived there until the U.S. government forced the Cheyennes to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). There, Wooden Leg learned how to hunt eagles. However, the new reservation was very far from the native land of many Northern Cheyennes, and many died of disease. A group led by Dull Knife and Little Wolf disobeyed the soldiers and left the reservation to return north. Wooden Leg at first refused to follow the leaders, and remained on the reservation. In 1878, he married a Southern Cheyenne woman. After the death of his father, Wooden Leg and his family decided to leave the southern reservation. Passing from the White River reservation, renamed by that time as Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, they reached the place where Little Wolf and the other Cheyennes camped. It was the core of the Tongue River. In 1889, Wooden Leg enlisted at Fort Keogh as a U.S. Indian scout, and was assigned to First Lieutenant Edward W. Casey's Cheyenne Scouts of the Department of Dakota. In 1890, Casey's Scouts and Wooden Leg guided soldiers in the Ghost Dance campaign resulting in the Wounded Knee Massacre. In the same years, he served also as a messenger and a sentry. Thirty years after the battle of Little Bighorn, he took part in a 1906 meeting of whites and Indians, gathered on the field of the battle to remember that event. He spoke of the battle, being one of the few Indians who had the courage to tell his experience to Dixon, a white doctor. Wooden Leg was baptized by the priest in the reservation in 1908. He thought that the whites and the Indians worshiped the same god,