CRAZY HORSE Read online

  Crazy Horse

  A Lakota Life

  KINGSLEY M. BRAY

  University of Oklahoma Press : Norman

  2800 Venture Drive

  Norman, Oklahoma 73069

  www.oupress.com

  Copyright © 2006 by the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing

  Division of the University. Manufactured in the U.S.A.

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  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, University of Oklahoma Press, 2800 Venture Drive, Norman, Oklahoma 73069 or email rights. [email protected]

  ISBN 978-0-8061-8375-6 (eBook-mobipocket)

  ISBN 978-0-8061-8376-3 (eBook-epub)

  Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life is Volume 254 of The Civilization of the American Indian Series.

  This eBook was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [email protected].

  For my mother and father,

  Christine Mary and James David Francis Bray

  CONTENTS

  Illustrations

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Part One Curly Hair

  1. The Light-Haired Boy

  2. Year of the Big Giveaway

  3. Becoming Hunka

  4. First to Make the Ground Bloody

  Part Two Thunder Dreamer

  5. Crying for a Vision

  6. Crazy Horse

  7. Fighting the Crow People

  8. Till the Road Was Opened

  Part Three Shirt Wearer

  9. Fighting for the Road

  10. Closing the Road

  11. Shirt of Honor

  12. Staying Single

  Part Four War Chief

  13. Up against It

  14. Iron Road

  15. Thieves’ Road

  Part Five Days of the Whirlwind

  16. I Give You These because They Have No Ears

  17. A Good Day to Die

  18. Walking the Black Road

  19. All the Rivers Lie across My Road

  20. To Keep My Country

  Part Six I Cherish the Land

  21. I Came Here for Peace

  22. Moon of Making Fat

  23. Buys a Bad Woman

  24. Many Bad Talks

  25. Putting Blood on Our Faces

  26. Moving across the Creek

  27. They Refused to Follow

  28. Bad Winds Blowing

  29. This Day Is Mine

  30. Owning a Ghost

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  FIGURES

  Following page 286

  Crazy Horse, as drawn by Amos Bad Heart Bull

  Red Cloud

  Spotted Tail

  Young Man Afraid of His Horse

  He Dog

  Little Big Man

  Hunts the Enemy (George Sword)

  Little Hawk and Lieutenant William P. Clark

  General George Crook

  Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer

  Colonel Nelson A. Miles

  Touch the Clouds

  Oglala delegation to Washington

  Low Dog

  Spotted Eagle

  Black Shawl

  Crazy Horse’s funeral cortege

  Crazy Horse’s scaffold burial at Camp Sheridan

  MAPS

  The Lakota world in Crazy Horse’s youth

  The Fetterman Battle, December 21, 1866

  The Lakota world, 1868–1877

  The Battle of the Rosebud, June 17, 1876

  The Battle of the Little Bighorn, June 25, 1876

  The Battle of Wolf Mountains, January 8, 1877

  Red Cloud and Spotted Tail agencies and environs, 1877

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  It is a special pleasure to acknowledge the assistance of many members of the Lakota community in North and South Dakota. Several informants requested anonymity, especially in the sensitive matters of Crazy Horse’s family life. Many made available private family documents; all have contributed to the deeper background of Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life. Especially significant interviews were conducted with the following Lakota people, whose contribution is gratefully acknowledged:

  LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, Fort Yates

  Emma Chase Alone West, Manderson

  Elsie Clown, Eagle Butte

  Victor Douville, Sinte Gleska University, Mission

  Mario Gonzalez, Black Hawk

  Ellen in the Woods, Eagle Butte

  Leonard Little Finger, Loneman School, Oglala

  Loretta Little Hawk, Pine Ridge

  Elaine Quick Bear Quiver, Pine Ridge

  Chris and Nita Ravenshead, Custer

  Lula Red Cloud and Harry Burk, Hermosa

  Evangeline Lucille Runs After, Rapid City

  Donovin Sprague, Historian, Crazy Horse Memorial, Crazy Horse Mountain

  Alex White Plume, Manderson

  Harvey White Woman, Kyle

  Jack Meister, of Waleska, Georgia, gave crucial assistance in the interview process. Jack indefatigably tracked down individuals, made calls, and put me in touch with informants. I look forward to more years of cooperation in discovering the Lakota past.

  In England, fellow students of the Plains Indians helped at various stages in the process of research and writing. Neil Gilbert, English Westerners’ Society, helped crystallize my ideas about the Battle of the Rosebud. Members of the Custer Association of Great Britain, especially Derek Batten, Francis Taunton, and Barry C. Johnson, in inviting me to speak on Crazy Horse, helped me focus my concept of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Thanks are also due to Barry for his long loan of the Eli S. Ricker Papers microfilm. In many hours of debate in person and on the telephone, I derived knowledge and wisdom from my dear late friend Colin Taylor, dean of American Indian studies.

  I owe a special debt to Joseph Balmer, of Erlenbach, Switzerland. A founding member of the English Westerners’ Society, Joe was also a prolific correspondent with historians and Indian people. His gift of a large collection of George E. Hyde’s research papers helped focus my historical ambitions, and his loans of his extensive correspondence with such reservation contacts as John Colhoff and Eddie Herman are resources that I still consult daily. Without Joe’s belief and contribution, this book would be the poorer.

  In the United States, the staffs of a number of institutions have been of material assistance. Thanks are due to Barbara Larsen, National Archives–Central Plains Region, Kansas City, Missouri; Michael Musick and Robert E. Kvasnicka, National Archives, Washington, D.C.; Dayton W. Canaday, former director, South Dakota Historical Society. Fellow Indian Wars historians Paul L. Hedren and Jerome A. Greene have helped with encouragement and information. Throughout twenty years of my research, the Nebraska State Historical Society has been an incomparable resource and source of material aid. Through Director Lawrence J. Sommer, the society helped underwrite the costs of research trips. Nebraska Game and Parks Commission helped make accommodations available for my family and me. At the University of Oklahoma Press, I owe thanks to editor-in-chief Charles E. Rankin, acquisitions editor Alessandra E. Jacobi, and manuscript editor Steven B. Baker for bringing this book to fruition. Copyeditor Melanie Mallon helped make the final cuts with enviable grace and meticulous attention to detail.
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br />   Colleagues have generously shared knowledge, views, and facts. In particular, I thank Raymond J. DeMallie, Department of Anthropology, University of Indiana, Bloomington; Mike Cowdrey, San Luis Obispo; and Ephriam D. Dickson III, Salt Lake City.

  A cluster of friends and their families have been vital contributors to this book and my continuing research into the history of the Lakota people and the Native plains. Nebraska History editor Donald B. Cunningham was a gracious host and guide on a memorable trip across the plains—here’s hoping for many more! At the Fort Robinson Museum, curator Thomas R. Buecker has been a source of fact, food, and good humor. R. Eli Paul, museum director of the Liberty Memorial Museum of World War One, Kansas City, Missouri, has been generous in sharing documents, views, and knowledge. Gail DeBuse Potter, director of the Museum of the Fur Trade, Chadron, Nebraska, is a constant source of logistical aid and good grace in my trips to the plains. As if that were not enough, she is married to James E. Potter, retired now as editor of Nebraska History, who has facilitated research and dispensed wit and wisdom in equal measure. Last but not least, James A. Hanson, editor, Museum of the Fur Trade Quarterly, who first invited me to the plains, showed me Fort Laramie, the Powder River country, and one imperishable Wyoming morning, the sunrise over Pumpkin Buttes; he has been for more than twenty years the Prince of Companions.

  Finally, no thanks could be complete without acknowledging my family. My father first encouraged my childhood interest in the American West by bringing home from our public library in Yorkshire works by Francis Parkman, Mari Sandoz, and George Hyde. His and my mother’s belief in this project is reflected in the dedication. My wife, Ann—lodestone, anchor, and North Star—has been a sounding board for ideas and an indispensable partner in all enterprises. Without her presence, I could not have completed this book. Our children, Ciana, Dubheasa, and David, in not letting me escape from the joyous toils of family life, have contributed more than they can know to my understanding of life in Lakota lodges.

  INTRODUCTION

  Crazy Horse was the greatest war leader of the Lakota people. Acknowledged by tribal foes as the enemy they most feared, honored by allied tribesmen as the bravest of all warriors, Crazy Horse counted more than two hundred coups, a war record unmatched by any of his peers—Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, Sitting Bull, or any of that remarkable cohort of Lakota leaders growing up during the first half of the nineteenth century. His inspirational courage was a byword, matched by a generosity that won the praise of all his people. Had he been born into an earlier century, his achievements would have been tallied only in the winter counts, the pictographic calendars that recorded Lakota history. Instead, Crazy Horse was born in 1840, just as the presence of Euro-Americans on the Great Plains shifted gears from sporadic trade to a juggernaut of expansion. The Manifest Destiny that transformed the American West from tribal hunting grounds to the agricultural and industrial heartland of modern America provoked inevitable resistance from the Plains Indians.

  From youth, Crazy Horse aligned himself with tribal factions that rejected negotiations with the United States. As the buffalo herds, mainstay of the Plains life-way shrank, many Lakotas accepted the inevitable and settled on treaty-guaranteed reservations, to be ration fed and educated in the ways of a changing world. Until the last months of his short life, Crazy Horse rejected the reservation system. His tactical leadership in the warfare against the U.S. Army contributed critically to the two greatest defeats for American arms during the Plains wars and ensured him a place in a wider history, high on that honor roll reserved for patriots resisting an overwhelming invader.

  Crazy Horse was no brash, unthinking fighting man. Modest, reflective, reserved to the point of introversion, he was inscrutable to many of his own people. His courage was grounded in a profound Lakota piety. To many modern writers, he summed up the romantic ideal of the “mystic warrior of the plains.” For a huge constellation of people today, Crazy Horse continues to matter. For modern Lakota people he has remained a compelling symbol of resistance. In darkened rooms and tipis, songs attributed to Crazy Horse continue to be sung, calling for the aid of spirits in healing and in restoring old ways. To Lakota radicals undergoing the vision quest, Crazy Horse has appeared as a guardian spirit, underwriting the continuing legal struggle to regain the Black Hills. The public at large recognizes the name of Crazy Horse as a touchstone of freedom, of integrity and bravery against the odds. In 1999 Viking Penguin Books, ahead of volumes on St. Augustine, Martin Luther King, and the Buddha, chose to lead off their prestigious Penguin Lives series with a profile of Crazy Horse by Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Larry McMurtry. His elegant essay dwelled on the enigma that was Crazy Horse but also illustrated the need for a new, full life of the greatest Lakota war leader.

  For over sixty years Mari Sandoz’s Crazy Horse, the Strange Man of the Oglalas, has stood as the standard life. A native of the plains, Sandoz commanded a compelling narrative style and an unmatched ability to evoke plains landscapes. Her book resists easy categorization. Characters address each other in direct speech, and motivations are reconstructed and imputed, all in the manner of a typical historical novel, yet Sandoz rooted her fiction in historical research that was groundbreaking for its day. Ahead of any Plains historians, she had examined U.S. Army and Indian Office records at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., explored key regional repositories like the Nebraska State Historical Society, and even conducted her own interviews with Lakota elders to amplify her picture of Crazy Horse and his times. So compelling was her portrait that it helped shift the paradigm in Indian studies, away from the racist stereotyping of the previous century, toward a more empathetic reading of the Lakota world. For over thirty years, no serious attempt was made to replace Sandoz’s life. All biographies since Sandoz have built on her book, unconsciously incorporating her assumptions, biases, and reconstructions as fact, even quoting her dialogue verbatim as conversations actually spoken by Crazy Horse and his contemporaries.

  In truth, Sandoz forced her materials to fit dramatic unities, not historical objectivity. A historical novel needs its protagonist present at all key events. Consequently, Sandoz’s youthful Crazy Horse turns up at the Blue Water Creek battle in 1855, a turning point in Lakota-U.S. relations. Secondary writers have dutifully followed Sandoz, but no contemporary document or Lakota testimony backs up the dramatic reconstruction. To heighten drama, a novelist must simplify the prodigality of real life. Sandoz compresses Crazy Horse’s lifelong commitment as a vision seeker into a single vision quest, its chronology placed to ensure maximum drama. Events such as Crazy Horse’s investiture as a Shirt Wearer are taken out of historical sequence, the better to maintain drama and, more seriously, to sustain Sandoz’s idealized portrayal of Crazy Horse as pure nontreaty Lakota.

  Even in a work of fiction, however, characters are permitted conflicting darker sides. Sandoz brushes over blots on Crazy Horse’s reputation. His adultery with Black Buffalo Woman, for instance, was recognized by contemporaries as a potential threat to tribal solidarity. Sandoz invented mitigating circumstances and a childhood romance to explain away the incident. In the closing section of the book, and in private correspondence, her negative reaction to Crazy Horse’s last wife, the mixed-blood Nellie Larrabee, suggests that her hero’s reality became secondary to the creation of her own idealized supermale—chaste, courageous, and reflective, both warrior and mystic. By contrast, Sandoz casts protreaty Lakotas like Red Cloud as collaborationist villains, reducing the complex reality of the period to a dichotomy of good and evil—and doing no favors to contemporary Lakotas struggling with the reservation inheritance. In writing what remains a compelling historical novel, a beautiful evocation of the plains and a lament for a romanticized Lakota world, Sandoz reconfigured the tragedy of Crazy Horse into a modern saint’s life.

  Crazy Horse, the Strange Man of the Oglalas remains a literary tour de force, but no one today would attempt to reconstruct the reign of Henry V by reading Shakespeare. For se
veral years, frontier military historians like Robert Utley and Eli Paul have called for a new appraisal of Crazy Horse’s life and career. This book returns to the primary sources to construct a life of Crazy Horse grounded in the reality of the nineteenth-century Lakota world. I reassess his achievements in warfare, examine the role he played in the signal victory at the Little Bighorn, and retrace the tragic sequence of misunderstandings, betrayals, and misjudgments that led to his death. I also explore the private tragedies that marred his childhood and shaped his adult life and reassess the evidence for his status as a Lakota visionary, all in hopes of better understanding his role in a momentous chapter of the history of his people and of the wider American nation.

  As a historian, I concede that the materials for constructing a life of Crazy Horse are sketchy and fragmentary. The acres of documentation that chart the life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or Winston Churchill, or even George Washington simply do not exist for a nineteenth-century Lakota warrior. But, like the biographer pointing out that the sources for Shakespeare’s life are insufficient but still infinitely richer than those for any of his peers, I can draw on an unrivaled wealth of interviews, given by Crazy Horse’s friends and contemporaries to curious and persistent researchers early in the twentieth century. The Eli S. Ricker and Eleanor H. Hinman interviews, housed at the Nebraska State Historical Society, form the tip of an iceberg of Lakota testimony on the man and his times. Crazy Horse may be a bewitching enigma, but these interviews provide more information about his genealogy, his family background, and his private and spiritual life than exists for any Lakota contemporary. Following Ricker and Hinman, I have interviewed modern Lakotas, filling in vital details on Crazy Horse’s childhood and the network of relationships that sustained him. All men and women take secrets to their graves, but I hope to have penetrated far enough beneath the surface to be able to draw in the outline of forces and events that shaped his inner life and determined the course of his career.

  The man I was left with was the product of his times. The nineteenth-century Lakotas were as ethnocentric a people as ever walked the earth, assured of their centrality in a world that was about to be transformed beyond recognition. Crazy Horse inherited their sense of exclusiveness, and his adult life was devoted to fighting the enemies of his people. We should not mistake that fight for some high-stakes game or noble martial art: exciting, full of dash and color, it was also a deadly arena in which Crazy Horse, like his peers, killed men and women and routinely mutilated the dead. He was a man profoundly scarred by personal tragedy and loss, his personality marked by melancholy and reticence. Lakotas recognized such traits as the behavior of the heyoka, the dreamer of thunder. To them Crazy Horse married the irruptive, unpredictable nature of Thunder power: in war and in peace he moved rapidly to anticipate, trip up, and confound his foes. Crazy Horse’s concept of his personal gift of Thunder’s power was the central theme of his life, and he strove to refine that power in a mental discipline that, in the last months of his life, opened new vistas for his spiritual growth as a healer in a postwar Lakota world.