A great American
Crazy Horse, Tȟašúŋke Witkó in Standard Lakota Orthography, was one of the most
legendary of American Indians. His very name is redolent of Western myth and he
ranks with Sitting Bull, Cochise and Geronimo (essay coming soon) as one of the best known of his
people. He has been referred to as a genius of war, a lover of peace, a
statesman, a mystic, even as a Sioux Christ (and this idea was heightened by
his being betrayed at the end by his own disciple).
There is no authenticated photograph of Crazy Horse. This is a sketch made by a Mormon missionary in 1934 after a discussion with his sister.
Crazy
Horse on the screen
Of course the movies and TV have made
much of him. Think of Victor Mature as Crazy Horse in the George
Sherman-directed 1955 Universal picture Chief Crazy Horse. Poor Victor: he was actually surprisingly good in Westerns but
he really wasn’t very convincing as the Oglala mystery man.
Victor Mature as Crazy Horse. Oh dear. Here he is with Black Shawl (Suzan Ball, Lucille's cousin); the movie makes no mention of his true love, Black Buffalo Woman, another man's wife.
There was Fox’s Crazy Horse and Custer: The Untold Story in
1990, with Michael Dante as Crazy Horse. There was a TV movie in 1996, with
Michael Greyeyes in the role. Of course Matt Clark had to meet him on Stories of the Century (I don’t think
there was a famous figure of the Old West that Matt didn’t meet – or capture) in 1954. George Keymas was Crazy Horse
then. And so on.
Reading
There is a perhaps surprising amount you
can read to find out about the life of Crazy Horse, considering how few hard
facts there really are known about him. His own people thought him a mystery
while he was alive (one of his many names might be translated as Our Strange
Man) and he was known for his modesty, shyness and preference for being alone.
He certainly avoided whites as much as possible, had no photograph of himself
taken and we don’t even know for sure when he was born.
That hasn’t stopped writers discoursing
at length on his life. In 1906 and ’07 Judge Eli Ricker interviewed people who
knew Crazy Horse. Journalist Elinor Hinman and Nebraska writer Mari Sandoz did
something similar in 1930 – 31, when of course those who knew him were very old.
Sandoz wrote a 428-page-long rather novelistic biography, Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas, in 1942. Professional
historian Stephen Ambrose went one better in 1975, at 528 pages. Since then
there have been many more biographies, often of great length.
Mari Sandoz and her book
All of them seem to have no problem
putting words into the mouth of Crazy Horse, clearly a man of very few words,
or even telling us what he was thinking. I waded through the Sandoz because,
well, you gotta, but I must say I found it hard going. I know she’s a great
American writer and all but these ‘poetic re-imaginings’ aren’t really my
thing, however beautifully they are written. And it just seemed interminable.
For me, by far the best read is Larry
McMurtry’s Crazy Horse: A Life in the
Penguin Lives series. Yes, Mr. McMurtry
is a novelist too, and a very fine one, but he is also an excellent writer of
non-fiction. He manages to stay factual yet bring a good novelist’s readability
to a book. And most blessed of all, it’s short.
The best book
Why do most books have to be so long these days? The thing is this: I
reckon to read about fifty books a year. It may be fewer if I’m into Victorian
novels or Russians, it may be more if I’m rattling through some Elmore Leonards
or Luke Shorts. But it’s roughly one a week, on average. Now, let us imagine
our reading life as a reasonably sentient being at, say, sixty years, even
seventy. That’s still well less than 4000 books in total, leaving aside all
those earnest volumes you rushed through at college to complete the next essay.
4000! That’s a minuscule fraction of what’s been written. So I am just plain
resentful of a writer who wants me to plow through a weighty 600-page tome on a
subject that interests me. It’s selfishly taking too great a share of my exceedingly
limited reading time.
And, as we all know, less is more. You
don’t need 600 pages. The best life
of Custer is Robert M Utley’s Cavalier in Buckskin, which is complete, fascinating, elegantly written and weighs in
at a slender couple of hundred pages. And McMurtry’s Crazy Horse, cheaply available on Kindle, is a 142-page
masterpiece, illuminating, thoughtful and well, authoritative. The writer says:
I am not writing this book because I think I know what Crazy Horse
did – much less what he thought – on more than a few occasions in his life; I’m
writing it because I have some notions about what he meant to his people in his
lifetime, and also what he has come to mean to generations of Sioux in our
century and even in our time.
The
few hard facts of his life
Brief the book may be but the author
still has time to recount the facts of Crazy Horse’s life - for of course we do
know something about him, and he was a man, not a myth, even if McMurtry makes
the point that we know more about the life of Alexander the Great over two
thousand years ago than we do about Crazy Horse. The Sioux only came into
serious contact with the record-keeping, letter-writing whites in the four months
between the moment he led his people in to Fort Robinson in May 1877 and his
death, and even then he camped six miles away instead of the prescribed three
and saw whites only when he absolutely could not avoid them.
However, we learn that Crazy Horse was
born sometime around 1840 by the Belle Fourche River in what we now call South
Dakota. His father, a shaman and healer, and not of a great family, was also
called Crazy Horse but he transferred his name when his son proved himself a
warrior, and took the name Worm instead. The boy, known then as Curly, who, all
accounts say, was noticeably pale-skinned, led the traditional life of the
Plains Indian, raiding and hunting. The buffalo were still there in their
millions.
McMurtry makes the point that to many
writers Crazy Horse was a sort of Zelig, turning up wherever key historical
events occurred, and this gives the writers license to write about the Fort
Laramie Councils, General Harney’s attack on the
Bluewater village, the great parley at Bear Butte or whatever else, because
Crazy Horse “may have been there”. But then he may well not have been, and
given his propensity for avoiding whites and being alone, his non-presence
would be more likely.
Most of the accounts do however place
him on a raid against the Arapahos in the summer of 1858 when he behaved with
such courage that he earned his father’s name. The early 1860s were a time of
relative prosperity for the Sioux because the whites were down in the south and
east fighting each other, leaving the Plains Indians mostly to their own
devices and own way of life. McMurtry writes perceptively and interestingly
about the Plains, that great American steppe which whites called a desert but
which was far from a desert, and upon which migrating animals and nomadic
people wandered and lived – the latter with a sacramental view of the land that
contrasted with the commercial attitude of the encroaching whites. This must
have been the golden time of Crazy Horse’s life, when he was probably in his
early twenties and earning honor and respect as a horseman, warrior and hunter.
In
love
Many of those who knew Crazy Horse who
were interviewed talked of his love for a certain Black Buffalo Woman, the
niece of Red Cloud, who married another, No Water. Crazy Horse took the news
hard and remained near her, though No Water was a jealous husband.
About 1865, when Crazy Horse was
probably in his mid-twenties, the Sioux revived the custom of the
Shirt-wearers. The duty of the men chosen was to put selfish interest aside and
concern themselves exclusively with the welfare of the tribe. It was a high
honor. Notable young Sioux were chosen, men of good family, Young Man Afraid,
Sword and American Horse, but Crazy Horse was too. He had lived an ascetic life
ever since receiving a vision in his youth, kept no possessions and did all he
could to look after those in need among his people. In addition he was a fine
warrior and hunter. He was an excellent choice to be the sort of role model the
Shirt-wearers were supposed to be.
Crazy Horse could have made an offer of
horses to No Water for Black Buffalo Woman. No Water would probably not have
accepted but at least the norms would have been respected. Instead, Crazy Horse
and Black Buffalo Woman now eloped. After only a day No Water found them and he
shot Crazy Horse in the face with a pistol. The bullet broke his jaw but he
lived. Black Buffalo Woman was persuaded by the elders to return to her
husband. Crazy Horse could not remain a Shirt-wearer. No one replaced him; the
institution fell into disuse again. It is interesting that Black Buffalo
Woman’s last child, a daughter, was very light-skinned, like Crazy Horse. She
lived into the 1940s.
Crazy Horse did marry, a woman named Black
Shawl, and they had children – one daughter died aged two. It seems to have
been a loving relationship. He also later took another wife, a mixed-race
person named Nellie
Larrabee, also known as Chi-Chi and Brown Eyes Woman, described by interpreter/scout
Billy Garnett as "a half-blood, not of the best frontier variety, an
invidious and evil woman" but that was just his view. Black Shawl survived
Crazy Horse and died of influenza in 1927.
Fighting
the whites
Crazy Horse may have been involved in
several previous fights against whites but the first one we know about for sure
is the Fetterman rout of December 1866. You know the story. Fetterman was an
arrogant, Indian-hating and frustrated captain who was highly dissatisfied at
the policy of containment and negotiation with the Sioux, which he regarded as
weakness and cowardice. Crazy Horse was one of six who had the honor of enticing Fetterman to
disobey orders and pursue the Sioux over a ridge, where he had been expressly
forbidden to go. It is said that Crazy Horse often dismounted to encourage his
pursuers and once even built a small fire. At any rate, once Fetterman and his
troop of eighty (he had boasted that with eighty men he could “march through
the whole Sioux nation”) breasted the rise in question, he found the massed
Indian resistance and he and his whole force were annihilated. You can’t help
feeling that it served them right, though one is sorry for the troopers led by
idiots to the slaughter.
Crazy Horse was with Sitting Bull in
August 1872 when they fought an action against four hundred well-armed soldiers
who had learned the Fetterman lesson and would not be tempted out. It was
nearly a disaster. Sitting Bull made himself famous by sitting down within
rifle range, filling a pipe and smoking it. Crazy Horse had a more actionful
way of showing his courage: he galloped right across in front of the Army line
and had his horse shot out from under him. Then the Sioux called off the fight.
It was in 1873 that Crazy Horse
encountered Custer for the first time, in an inconclusive skirmish with few
casualties on the Yellowstone. Custer thought Sitting Bull was the leader of
his foe; he didn’t know Crazy Horse, who had never been to a meeting with the
whites, and had received no mention in the popular press (the financial panic
had anyway driven most other things out of the newspaper columns).
It might have stayed that way if they
hadn’t found gold in the Black Hills. Although the US government was used to
breaking treaties it had made with the Indians (McMurtry quotes the writer Alex
Shoumatoff who has reckoned the total at 378) it had to squirm especially
awkwardly to break the 1868 pact which had guaranteed the Black Hills in
perpetuity as a reserve which whites may not enter. Still, the financial
situation back East cried out for more gold and Sherman began to mutter (very
unconvincingly) about treaty violations by the Sioux. Many of the Indians knew
anyway that the whites would never let a mere solemn promise stand in their
way: they would not stop till they had everything. In no time at all there were
more whites in the Black Hills than their owners.
When Grant’s order came that the Sioux
must come in to designated reservations by January (a particularly stupid order
because he should certainly have known that they did not move camps in
wintertime) Crazy Horse, who was enjoying what would be his last winter as a
truly free Indian (whether he realized that is another matter), sent word that
he would consider it in the spring but not before. By March of 1876 a large
campaign was forming, with Crook, Gibbon, Terry and Custer taking the field.
Everyone knew a major conflict was coming.
General George Crook (1828 - 90)
Crook struck first. He located what he
was assured was Crazy Horse’s village, made a dawn attack and although he
killed few Indians he captured all their food and most of the horses. It was not,
however, Crazy Horse’s village and that night the Sioux recovered most of their
horses.
The
Rosebud
Crook certainly did clash with Crazy
Horse and other warriors in June, though, on the Rosebud, and it was a major
battle, if overshadowed by the more famous Little Bighorn eight days later.
Crook’s force of a thousand was strung out and met fierce resistance from Sioux
and Cheyennes in similar numbers who assailed them mercilessly, preventing them
from forming a proper battle line. At dusk the Indians had enjoyed a great
day’s fighting and stopped the advance of Three Stars, as they called Crook,
and they went home. Because they left the field, Crook claimed victory. It was
an empty boast which he probably didn’t even believe himself. How many died
depends on which account you read, somewhere between nine (Robert Utley) and
fifty-seven (George Hyde) on the white side and perhaps thirty of the Indians.
Of course the Civil War had hardened the US Army to losses but when Indian
fought Indian a death toll of three or four was usually the maximum, so
thirty-odd would have been a great loss.
Little
Bighorn
So much has been written and read and
watched and listened to about Custer’s last stand, and this is not the place to
rehearse all that. What part did Crazy Horse play in the conflict? That is the
question here. One story has it that while many of the Sioux and Cheyennes
never dreamed that Custer would be foolish enough to attack, and were going
about their business in the normal way, Crazy Horse was readying himself,
marking a red bloody hand on his horse’s hips and a red arrow on its neck. He
must have known or sensed that the big day had come.
Both Stephen Ambrose and Mari Sandoz
wrote much about Crazy Horse’s brilliant strategy in flanking Custer and
seizing the high ground. Others say that Sitting Bull or Gall or another had
more influence on the outcome of the battle. We shall never know the details.
We shall never know for sure, for example, who killed Custer. We don’t even
know how many Indians there were – McMurtry says that two thousand is a fair
estimate, but it’s an estimate. Some say that Crazy Horse was involved in the
attack on Reno’s force, others that he did indeed flank Custer and prevent him
from taking an effective defensive position on high ground. It is conjecture.
What we can say for sure is that malgré
Hollywood, Crazy Horse was no commander-in-chief in the white way, disposing
‘his’ troops hither and yon.
After Custer’s defeat the Sioux and
Cheyennes went back to their life. Crazy Horse was apparently occasionally harrying
the miners in the Black Hills. The government now simply took the Sioux lands
for themselves. There was a disgraceful ‘treaty’ of sorts but it signified
nothing – the whites wouldn’t keep to it anyway. In November Crook finally had
a victory, of sorts, when he attacked the Cheyennes under Dull Knife. Those who
got away from that struggled north in the cold and joined with Crazy Horse.
The
end of freedom
But Crazy Horse must have known that his
people were now in a pretty desperate situation. It was freezing, they had
little food and less ammunition and there were large numbers of soldiers on the
field. Colonel Nelson A Miles wanted Crazy Horse to surrender and sent runners
to him promising fair treatment. Crazy Horse sent emissaries to discuss the
idea but Miles’s Crow scouts saw them coming and attacked them, killing
several. Miles was furious but the damage had been done. At this time Sitting
Bull took his people to Canada but Crazy Horse seems not to have considered
this.
Finally, in May of the following year,
after a brutal winter, Crazy Horse decided to bring his people into Fort
Robinson in Nebraska – about nine hundred of them, with two thousand horses.
Crook called it a surrender and of course the press took this up but it was
only a surrender in a way. Crazy Horse was not ‘tamable’, he was no negotiator,
he wasn’t even a chief in the traditional sense – just that these people
depended on him.
More
broken promises
Crook had offered Crazy Horse his own
agency and that the Indians would be allowed to leave for a forty-day buffalo
hunt. The promises may have been made sincerely, but as often happened they were
not maintained. Normally leading hostiles like Crazy Horse would have been
invited to Washington and lionized and fêted there, but Crazy Horse never went.
He needed his own agency because at the Red Cloud agency where he was he was
treated with suspicion, even hatred, by the leading ‘settled’ Indians,
especially Red Cloud himself. Many whites respected him and wrote admiringly of
him but fellow Sioux did not.
Rumor,
envy, jealously, and hatred
McMurtry writes:
From the day that Crazy Horse came in he was the focus of rumor,
envy, jealously, and hatred, and it was among his own people that hatred became
a dripping, ultimately fatal poison – a paradoxical thing since, except for this
short terrible period, no Indian was more respected by the Indian people than
he was.
Rumor could be particularly insidious.
The famous mistranslation, deliberate or not, by scout Frank Grouard to white
authorities of Crazy Horse’s words, making the whites believe, wrongly, that
Crazy Horse had said he would if necessary fight to the death of the last white man, poisoned many whites’ view of
Crazy Horse. When General Crook returned for another parley an Indian named
Woman’s Dress told Crook that Crazy Horse meant to shake his hand then stab him
to death. Crook ordered Crazy Horse’s arrest, which he must have known would
set the cat among the pigeons. There was talk of sending Crazy Horse to
Florida.
But when the soldiers and Indian police
(including No Water) sent by Crook to effect the arrest arrived, they
discovered Crazy Horse had left for the Spotted Tail agency, forty miles away. Spotted
Tail, though, was no happier than Red Cloud to see him. The next day, Crazy
Horse went back to Fort Robinson, to explain to its commander, General Bradley,
that the rulors were falsehoods and he was behaving well. He must have found it
hard to understand why so many Indians were massed against him.
But, behaving well or not, Crazy Horse
had become a symbol of resistance, a source of shame for the agency Indians and
worry for the whites.
The
death of Crazy Horse
Bradley had no intention of seeing Crazy
Horse or listening to his version of the facts. The Sioux was marched to the
cells by the officer of the day, a Lt. Kennington, and by Little Big Man (no
relation to the character in the Thomas Berger novels or Dustin Hoffmann movie),
a former friend who had become a policeman. Crazy Horse saw his destination and
broke free but Little Big Man grabbed his arms. Crazy Horse went for a knife
and a private, William Gentles (who would die of asthma six months later) bayoneted
him in the back, piercing his kidneys, and Crazy Horse sank to the ground
mortally wounded. That seems to be the accepted version anyway.
Curiously, though, because it was such a
public event, different accounts of the assassination became common. For
example, Little Big Man always claimed that Crazy Horse had whirled in a frenzy,
accidentally and fatally stabbing himself, but if you want to believe that
Crazy Horse stabbed himself in the back, go ahead.
At any rate, Crazy Horse died, aged
somewhere in his thirties, at Fort Robinson on the night of September 6, 1877.
Many in the fort expected to be killed
that night but the Sioux did not rise. They were probably too cowed and in the
thrall of their chiefs, who had become used to accommodating the white man. Many
of them anyway did not regret Crazy Horse’s death. His presence had been an
embarrassment to them.
Little Big Man received a medal (currently
at the Nebraska State Historical Association) for his “bravery”.
In 1948 the sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski started
creating a giant monument, hacking an image of Crazy Horse out of a 600-foot rock
face in the Black Hills. Though Ziolkowski died in 1982 his wife continued the
work and when she died their ten children did so too. When finished, it is
supposed to be the biggest sculpture in the world. McMurtry starts and finishes
his short book with this monument.
The giant monument slowly takes shape
Crazy Horse has benefited from never
dealing with the whites, attending no peace councils and refusing to travel to
Washington. He was entirely true to his culture. This may be one of the reasons
he has become such a symbol to Native American peoples today, and indeed to many
Americans of all creed, color and origin.
Sorry if the post is too long...
