Joseph M. Marshall III

by The Journey of Crazy Horse a Lakota History

  The Gathering of Warriors was done as hundreds of men circled the great camp. At the head of the Sahiyelas rode their great fighters Big Nose and High Back Wolf, while the Lakota were led by Red Cloud, Big Road, and High Back Bone. Ahead of them all rode the old men pipe carriers.

  As the scouts had reported, the settlement at the river crossing had grown with straight rows of canvas tents and corrals full of horses and mules. The leaders decided to lure the soldiers into an ambush. Crazy Horse was one of twenty Lakota and Sahiyela picked as decoys. The main body of fighting men hid themselves in the broken hills to wait.

  Crazy Horse and three others went ahead, while the other decoys waited back. The four rode for the horses and mules, drawing out a column of soldiers from across the river pulling a wagon gun. The decoys fired on them and withdrew slowly, staying just within rifle range, knowing their constant movement would make them hard targets. Far past the bridge, the soldiers stopped and fired several rounds from the wagon guns, the blast of the big gun echoing through the hills.

  Hearing the wagon guns, many of the young men waiting in ambush rode to the tops of the hills before the signal to attack was given, and were spotted by the soldiers who immediately withdrew back across the bridge. Another ambush had been spoiled by youthful impatience. Crazy Horse was angry but could do nothing. The remaining decoys joined him, and they decided to go after the horses and mules on their side of the river.

  The leaders decided to disengage for this day and make new plans for the next, and sent High Back Wolf to bring the decoys back. The decoys were already scattering horses and engaged in an intense exchange of gunfire with the soldiers. High Back Wolf rode into the river to join some of the decoys charging directly at the soldier settlement. A concentrated volley from the soldiers knocked the great Sahiyela fighter from his horse. The rest of the decoys disengaged thereafter, returning to face the stern words of the leaders and deliver the sad news to Blind Wolf, the father of High Back Wolf.

  Crazy Horse knew that all of the decoys should have broken off after the ambush had been spoiled, but the heat of the moment was hard to turn away from. Such an excuse was of no use to Blind Wolf. Before dawn, Crazy Horse and several Sahiyelas took the old man to the river to recover his son’s body.

  After sunrise, Crazy Horse rejoined the decoys. Ambushers were hidden south below the bridge, and a large group of Sahiyelas waited in the hills to the west. To Crazy Horse’s surprise, the mounted soldiers rode out once more when he thought they would be more cautious. Instead of chasing the decoys, the soldiers stayed on the Holy Road once they crossed the bridge. The ambushers below the bridge waited for a signal, then circled the soldiers from behind, and the battle was joined. Foot soldiers then came running over the bridge with a wagon gun, took up a skirmish line to open rifle fire, and then began firing the wagon gun.

  Crazy Horse joined the main body of Lakota warriors and saw that some of the mounted soldiers had been cut down. Then the firing abated as a few Lakota recognized the soldier leader who was trying hard to control his horse. He was the one called Collins, who had hunted with some of them in the north. By now his soldiers were close to the hills where the Sahiyelas waited, anxious to avenge High Back Wolf. Seeing them charge, Collins ordered a retreat. As his soldiers turned back for the bridge, he stayed back alone to protect the rear. Meanwhile, the foot soldiers were sending shells from the wagon gun into the midst of the Lakota.

  Some of the Lakota held their fire, Crazy Horse among them, as Collins faced the charging Sahiyela while trying to control his frightened horse. Wild with fear, the horse took him directly into the oncoming Sahiyelas, who cut him down quickly.

  The Lakota had to turn their attention to the fire coming from the foot soldiers as they lowered the aim of their wagon gun and sent warriors scurrying away from its exploding shells. So most of the mounted soldiers were able to gain the safety of the bridge as the foot soldiers also withdrew back across the bridge.

  Many of the Lakota and Sahiyela leaders were angry that the soldiers had been able to escape though outnumbered. The fighting had evolved into the two sides sniping at each other from long range, and neither was gaining any advantage. Crazy Horse rode into the hills to rest his horse and found a large group of Lakota watching a cloud of smoke to the south along the Holy Road. A large group of the Sahiyela had broken off in that direction, he had noticed earlier, so he rode to see for himself what might have happened.

  He was close enough to smell the smoke when he met a number of Sahiyela leading mules and packhorses. They had found five wagons, the men told him, and soldiers already dug in for a fight. The warriors had run off a herd of mules, then attacked the circled wagons. Big Nose sent men in on foot to draw fire while the mounted warriors charged. It was a hard fight, they said, but they had killed all but two or three soldiers and took all of their supplies.

  Now Crazy Horse understood why Collins did not follow the decoys. He was heading out to help the approaching wagons likely returning from the Sweetwater station.

  The day wore on and many of the warriors rode back to the camps. The Sahiyela, eager to avenge High Back Wolf, went down the Holy Road looking for soldiers. Crazy Horse turned his horse northward.

  During the next few days, he sat on the fringes as old men talked about the fight near the bridge. They had not succeeded in wiping out the soldiers because a few impetuous young men - couldn’t hold themselves back for the right moment. It was a problem that had to be corrected if they were to defeat the whites, they all agreed. And one way to solve the problem was to find strong young men to lead the others. For that, they said, perhaps they should renew the tradition of the Shirt Wearers.

  Some people scoffed at such talk. No Shirt Wearers had been selected for a generation because the purpose behind the tradition had been forgotten. A Shirt Wearer was to be a young man of strong action and good ways, one to set the example for others. Instead, the tradition had become the father choosing his son to wear the Shirt next. Better to let it be, some said, instead of dishonoring a good thing again.

  After the fight against the soldiers at the bridge, the great gathering began to break up slowly; a few of the Blue Clouds and Sahiyelas returned to their own country. Crazy Horse and Little Hawk returned home to news of a large column of soldiers heading north led by a man named Connor who was promising to punish the Lakota for the soldiers killed at the Shell River crossing and those killed at the wagon fight. Preparations were made and scouts sent to watch the column of angry and vengeful whites. Warriors picked a good spot for an ambush and waited but were surprised when the soldiers turned aside and attacked a small encampment of Blue Clouds along the Tongue. The Lakota rushed in to help and recovered many of the horses run off by the soldiers. Instead of engaging the Lakota, the soldiers hurried away to the north and crossed over the Wolf Mountains. Perhaps they were not so angry after all, some young men said. But another column appeared.

  When the Lakota and Sahiyela found them they were hiding behind their circled wagons along the Powder, not very anxious to fight, it seemed. The warriors surrounded the wagons and watched them for days. Finally, two whites walked from the wagons to talk with the Lakota leader, Red Cloud, and Dull Knife, who was leading the Sahiyela. For a wagonload of provisions, the soldiers would be allowed to leave, it was decided. So they went south toward the Shell, not knowing that the Lakota and Sahiyela didn’t have much powder and shells for a long fight.

  On the heels of their leaving, yet another column was found, this time further north, close to where the Powder empties into the Elk River. The Mniconju had been fighting them, helped by a sudden strange turn in the weather. Though it was early in the Moon of Leaves Turning Brown, a rainstorm had turned to ice, killing the big Long Knife horses. So there were many soldiers, the biggest column yet this summer, with many wagons and not enough horses to pull them all. They came up the Powder anyway. So the Lakota and Sahiyela, still low on powder and ammunition, went out to meet them.

 
The best the Lakota and Sahiyela could do was make the soldiers use up their ammunition, so they charged up close. Once more, the Sahiyela Big Nose showed his strong medicine by riding back and forth in front of the soldiers until his horse was shot. Strangely, however, the soldiers were reluctant to come out and fight. Someone’s medicine seemed to be on the side of the warriors. Another cold, hard rain came and killed most of the remaining wagon horses of the Long Knives.

  The warriors stayed close, harassing the soldiers, sometimes charging in to send a few arrows. Crazy Horse, Lone Bear, He Dog, and Little Hawk did this often, keeping the soldiers pinned behind their wagons. If the warriors were hampered by the lack of powder and bullets, the soldiers had a more serious predicament. They had no food and began eating their dead horses. Finally, after piling all their goods from the wagons they couldn’t carry or burn, the soldiers walked away and the warriors let them go. They followed them over a few hills just to remind them to keep walking, but the soldiers seemed to be in no condition to turn back and fight, some stumbling and dropping their rifles. Crazy Horse picked one up, a back-loader that fired a very large bullet; a man didn’t have to pour powder down into the barrel first.

  A new rifle seemed to be the beginning of things that suddenly turned in his life. Deep into the Moon When Leaves Fall, he rode up into the foothills of the Shining Mountains to ponder all that had transpired, especially in the days that had just passed.

  The strange incursion of the soldier columns that didn’t seem to want to fight seemed long ago. Yet the news of the death of Yellow Woman felt as though it had come only the day before. Little Hawk was growing into a daring fighter, already winning several war honors. But the most perplexing and heavy change was symbolized in a shirt made from the hide of a bighorn sheep, now rolled in a decorated case and waiting in his parents’ lodge. Also waiting were the duties and responsibilities that came with it.

  The old man leaders had indeed decided to revive the old tradition of the Shirt Wearers. And as expected, the shirts were given to young men of important families. The choice of Young Man Whose Enemies Are Afraid of His Horses, Sword, or Long Knife Horse (aka American Horse) surprised no one. But when the name of Crazy Horse was announced, a gasp went through the gathered crowd, and the shouts, the whoops, and the trilling that followed were the loudest of all. He felt truly honored and yet was uncertain that he was a good choice. Later, two more Shirt Wearers were chosen and he was pleased that his friend He Dog was one. The other was Big Road, a good, strong, and honorable man.

  “To wear the shirts you must be men above all others,” said an old man chosen to speak. “You must help others before you think of yourselves. Help the widows and those who have little to wear and to eat and have no one to help them or speak for them. Do not look down on others or see those who look down on you, and do not let anger guide your mind or your heart. Be generous, be wise, and show fortitude so that the people can follow what you do and then what you say. Above all, have courage and be the first to charge the enemy, for it is better to lie a warrior naked in death than to be wrapped up well with a heart of water inside.”

  Crazy Horse’s vision had told him he would be a fighting man, and, thus far, he had honored that foretelling, and would do so for as long as he could. But the vision had shown nothing about shouldering the cares and the welfare of others. Even in the best of times, it was difficult to do the right things for oneself; now he must do the right things to show others how it must be done. Perhaps that was why the Thunders were in his vision, his father and others had suggested. His would be a life of sacrifice, to live it for the good of others when all he wanted was to walk his own road. As his father had said during a quiet evening after the making of the Shirt Wearers, such a man does not belong to himself; he belongs to the people.

  Something else was new also. His enemies, until now, had been the Crow and the Snakes. Now he could also count the relatives of Red Cloud among them. Everyone thought that Red Cloud himself, or certainly one of his relatives, would be chosen. After the ceremony, they had moved their lodges, and one of those riding away with a backward scowl at the son of Worm was Woman’s Dress, known as the Pretty One when he was a boy. Crazy Horse knew that an enemy from within was the most dangerous of all.

  As he sat on a slope looking over the rough, broken lands of the Powder River country, he pondered all that had happened, and then smoked his pipe and prayed for the strength to follow the path that had chosen him.

  The makers of the Winter Count had chosen to call this year the Winter When the Men Were Hanging at the Soldier Fort. An early snow came before all the berries were picked, a sign that did not escape the notice of the old ones. Things would happen backwards, they warned.

  A messenger came from the north, from among the Hunkpapa Lakota. He was of the camp of Sitting Bull. Soldiers were running around everywhere, he said. And at the same time a man was traveling up the Great Muddy with a peace paper from the “great father.” First they send the soldiers, then they send the peace talkers. If they can’t kill us, perhaps they will try to harangue us to death, some suggested.

  But in spite of the laughing, everyone knew that sometimes the peace talkers were more dangerous than the soldiers. The Hunkpapa visitor said that already some Loafers along the Great Muddy had signed the paper that said they gave permission for the whites to make roads through Lakota lands. Perhaps I should sign a paper to give away my brother-in-law’s lodge, said one man. The laughter was a little bitter this time, for everyone knew what the man meant. Who among the people had the power to sign a paper that bound everyone? It was not the Lakota way, but the mark of one Lakota by his name was taken as agreement or permission given by all Lakota, as the whites saw it. So no one among the Oglala would expect to see the peace talker visit their camps soon. The Loafers were easier to persuade, already liking and needing the things of the whites as they did.

  Perhaps the early snowfall had been a sign, some thought. Early in the Moon of Frost in the Lodge, when the new cycle of moons began, came news that brought a narrowing to the eyes of old men: Swift Bear of the Sicangu had signed the peace paper giving permission for the whites to make a road and build forts in the Powder River country.

  Fourteen

  Swirling breezes from several directions collided at the summit of the ridge and circled the two men watching the tiny spots of white against the still green background of the meadow far below them to the north. The spots were soldiers’ tents.

  To the west were the jagged ridges of the Shining Mountains. To the east, the foothills played out and then opened onto the broad expanse of prairie stretching all the way to the Great Muddy River. All of it was Lakota territory, none of it with room for the whites, so far as Crazy Horse was concerned. Lone Bear stood beside him watching the activity in the meadow through the farseeing glass.

  The whites had been warned, yet here they were. Last month, in the Moon of Ripening Berries, Red Cloud had gone to the peace talkers at Fort Laramie to speak for the Oglala. There were to be no new roads, he said, reminding them of the Horse Creek Council fifteen years past. But it was not a new road they wanted, the smiling peace talkers had replied, but simply to use an old one. All the old roads were made by drag poles and moccasins, and, before that, the hooves of the buffalo, said Red Cloud, and they are only for us to use.

  As the peace talkers listed the wagonloads of presents they were offering for the use of this “old” road of theirs, new soldiers had come up the Holy Road. They brought with them many loaded wagons pulled by mules—and, of course, wagon guns, too. A Loafer, who was something of a speaks-white, wandered in among them as the new soldiers set up their camp near the fort. Carrington was the man in charge, he learned, who forth-rightly announced to the Loafer that he was going up to the Powder River to put up forts.

  Hearing this news, Red Cloud and Young Man Afraid left the peace talkers with the warning that no road was to be opened, no forts were to be built, and no whites were to travel throu
gh the Powder River country.

  Now Carrington had come to Buffalo Creek beneath the jagged ridges of the Shining Mountains with his seven hundred walking soldiers, after they had stopped to build a small fort on the Dry Fork of the Powder.

  By the middle of the Moon When Calves Turn Dark, the pine log walls of the Buffalo Creek fort were up so the soldiers could be safe inside with their families and animals. And, as at the fort on the Dry Fork, the Lakota had harassed the soldiers. But they held themselves back, saving their energies for the all-out fighting they were expecting Red Cloud to lead. Even before the fort on Buffalo Creek was finished, some of the soldiers were sent north. Near the mouth of the Big Horn, very near to Crow lands, they built yet another fort. By the time summer was over and the leaves were starting to turn, three forts were standing in the middle of the best Lakota hunting grounds. And whites were traveling along a trail where once a man pounded stakes to mark the way to the gold fields west of Crow lands beyond the Elk River. Every line of wagons that came up the trail was attacked with High Back Bone, Young Man Afraid, and Crazy Horse leading raids as far south as the first fort. In the meantime, the fort on Buffalo Creek, which they learned had been named Phil Kearny, was constantly watched and attacked as often as opportunities allowed. But there was little the Lakota could do until the soldiers were caught out or lured into the open.

  The Lakota camps along the Tongue and the outlying valleys numbered several hundred lodges altogether, mostly Mniconjus and Oglalas and a few Sicangu. There were Blue Clouds, but not many, and of course the Sahiyela. Early in the Winter Moon, the Lakota tried to lure the soldiers out to fight them in the open. But they were wary from the constant harassment, and reluctant to pursue the attacking warriors, though two soldiers were killed and a few wounded in a brief encounter. The failure was partly on the shoulders of the decoys because they did not work together—they were after guns and scalps first and not overly worried about a successful ambush. But too many young men - could not hold themselves back until the right moment. The old men leaders were angry and distraught, remembering the trouble caused by impetuous and glory-seeking young men at Julesburg and again at the bridge fight on the Shell. They turned to High Back Bone for guidance.