This item consists of four strands of dark hair between 6 and 12 inches long bound with rawhide wrappings and tied together by cloth tread. Attached to the tread is an old paper tag marked in faded ink "SCALP LOCKS/Taken from the arm of Rain in The Face - the Indian who killed Gen Custer". A note from the consigner states that this item was acquired at the auction of a "Library Museum" in North Dakota "many years ago". Rain-in-The-Face was a war chief of the Hunkpapa band of the Lakota Tribe and was born around 1835 in what is now South Dakota. He fought the U.S. Army in the Fetterman massacre in 1866. In 1874 he was arrested by Captain Tom Custer of the 7th Cavalry and imprisoned at Fort Abraham Lincoln. Rain-in-The Face escaped and was present at the Lakota and Cheyenne encampment on the Little Bighorn River when it was attacked by the 7th Cavalry on June 25, 1876. Rain-in-The-Face participated in the final combat on Custer Hill where Lieutenant Colonel George A, Custer and his brother Tom were killed. Rain-in-The-Face was popularly credited with killing Tom Custer. Rain-in-The-Face died on the Standing Rock Reservation in 1905.