Mitch Bouyer

Mitch Bouyer (sometimes spelled 'Bowyer', 'Buoyer', 'Boyer' or 'Buazer', or in Creole, 'Boye') (1837 – June 25, 1876) was an interpreter and guide in the Old West following the American Civil War. General John Gibbon called him "next to Jim Bridger, the best guide in the country". He was killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

He was born Michel Bouyer in 1837. His father, Jean-Baptiste Bouyer, was a French Canadian who was employed by the American Fur Company, trading with Sioux in the Wyoming area. Mitch's mother was a Santee Sioux. His father was killed by Indians while trapping, about 1863. Mitch's Indian name was Kar-pash. He had three full sisters: Marie, Anne, and Thérèse, who seem to have been triplets born in 1840. He also had at least two half-brothers: John Bouyer (c. 1845-1871), who was hanged at Fort Laramie for killing an Army scout in the first legal execution in Wyoming Territory, and Antoine Bouyer (born 1852?), whom Walter Mason Camp interviewed in 1912. John, in an interview just before he was hanged, stated that there had been other siblings who had already died.

Bouyer was an interpreter at Fort Phil Kearny in 1868. In the fall of 1869, he married a young Crow woman named Magpie Outside (or Magpie Out-of-Doors), who became known as Mary. Their first child, also named Mary, was born in 1870. Sometime later they also had a son, apparently named Tom, but eventually called James LeForge (see below).

Bouyer became a guide for the 2nd U.S. Cavalry, working with the Northern Pacific Railroad's survey team. From 1872 on he was employed by the Crow Agency and the US Army.

In 1876 Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer requested that Bouyer be transferred to the 7th U.S. Cavalry as an interpreter for the Crow scouts when Gen. Alfred Terry ordered the 7th south from the Montana Column to search for hostile Indians. Custer's regular scouts were Ree (Arikara). However, for this mission, Terry had assigned six of Lt. James Bradley's Crow scouts to the 7th (including Curley). Bouyer had the additional bonus of knowing the country well.

...
Wikipedia