Joseph M. Marshall III

by The Journey of Crazy Horse a Lakota History

  Crazy Horse told the old men he would lead the young men against the soldiers, any and all who wanted to follow. Runners carried the call to every lodge in the encampment.

  Crazy Horse hurried to his own lodge as the entire encampment was alive with anticipation. Black Shawl had already heard and was preparing food and had filled his water flasks. He would ride the paint mare and lead the bay gelding; they both had stamina to spare and were hardened combat veterans themselves. Like all Lakota fighting men, he was in a constant state of readiness, his weapons always in easy reach and in good working order. So there was little other preparation to complete.

  The moment came, as it frequently had for them, to face the parting. Crazy Horse tied his weapons and gear to the paint, then embraced his wife, covering them both beneath his elk robe. They said little. Whatever they felt came through in the strength of their embrace and the reluctance to let go. He took one of his lances and jammed it point first into the earth. Then he swung onto the mare and rode away.

  The sun was near the jagged western horizon as she watched him head to the east opening of the great circle of lodges, riding the paint and leading the bay. There he turned right and began to circle the large encampment. Men hurried to join him as he continued around the outer edge of the camp. By the time he reached the opening again, a file of riders were strung out behind him.

  As he finished the second turn around the encampment and began the third, the old ones watching realized what Crazy Horse was doing. He was invoking an old ritual known as “Gathering the Warriors.” It had last been done eleven years past when the Sahiyela and Blue Clouds came north after the massacre at Sand Creek. Word spread quickly as more and more men joined the growing procession. It seemed as though - everyone in camp stopped whatever they were doing to watch. Women began to sing the Strong Heart songs to encourage their fighting men.

  As the fourth and final turn around the encampment began, it was difficult to see where the procession of fighting men started and where it ended. It encircled the entire camp. Sitting Bull’s vision had brought a sense of confidence, and the sight of close to six hundred fighting men emphasized it. Drums pounded throughout the camp like the heartbeat of the land itself. Grandparents took their grandchildren by the hand to make sure they saw the awe-inspiring sight.

  As he finished the fourth turn, Crazy Horse pointed his horses south and the great procession followed, feathers and banners streaming, the very image of strength and invincibility. Sunset’s long shadows had stretched across the land by then, and when Crazy Horse reached the western slopes of the Wolf Mountains, dusk had already settled.

  Foremost in the minds of the fighting men was the attack on Two Moons’ and He Dog’s camp. That was a singular and specific motivation for the action they had embarked on, but also present was the awareness that an invasion into their lands and lives had been going on for longer than most of them had lived. For most of them, therefore, following Crazy Horse to fight the soldiers was necessary to repel that invasion. Many had yet to fire a shot in anger at the Long Knives. Righteous anger and a strong sense of resolve rode with them as they moved south into the deepening dusk and approaching night. Amid the occasional snort and the soft thud of hooves on dry ground, the younger men pretended to check their weapons or neck ropes as they tried to ignore their apprehension and thoughts of death.

  Crazy Horse called on the men he knew who had detailed knowledge of the area to lead them over the Wolf Mountains. The terrain was rough, rocky, and covered with sagebrush. Two factors had prompted Crazy Horse to take the fight to Three Stars: First, his advance scouts probably stayed relatively close to the main body, perhaps no further than half a day’s ride. Therefore, the likelihood of encountering any of Three Stars’ scouts or soldiers was highly unlikely. And, if by chance that happened, it - wouldn’t be difficult to overwhelm them. Second, nights were short this time of year. To take advantage of the cover of darkness meant leaving the Ash Creek encampment no later than sundown. The advantage, of course, was that an enemy couldn’t see the rising dust from an approaching force at night.

  The trail guides were more than equal to the challenge. Except for three stops to rest the horses, six hundred men and a thousand horses moved quickly and without incident. As the dawn’s light grew, Crazy Horse called a halt and sent scouts ahead. They were in the Rosebud Creek drainage and he wanted to scout the next drainages over on each side.

  Final preparations were made and weapons were checked. Some men painted their faces for battle and prayed, or performed whatever ritual that seemed to help keep nervousness in check. Horse holders, older boys who had been brought along to stay in the rear and watch the spare mounts, were given final instructions.

  Crazy Horse moved off by himself. He tied his medicine stone behind his left ear and draped the calf-hide cape over his shoulder. He left the mare with one of the boys and led the bay aside, tossing gopher dust over his back. Then he settled behind the ridge of a gully to check his weapons and wait.

  The scouts returned after sunrise. Three Stars’ army was below them, encamped on either side of Rosebud Creek, most of them still asleep. Crazy Horse was about to issue instructions for the men to lead their horses quietly down the slope when gunfire cracked from the valley below. He was later to learn that one of Three Stars’ Crow scouts opened fire. The battle was joined.

  The Rosebud Fight, as the battle came to be known, was the toughest combat Crazy Horse had seen. The Battle of the Hundred in the Hand ten years earlier had had its own set of circumstances that made it tough. But at the Rosebud, the Lakota faced a larger and more heavily armed enemy force. Three Stars’ soldiers were both infantry and cavalry, forcing the Lakota to adjust to different tactics as the fighting progressed. Attack was met with counterattack as the day wore on. The valley of the Rosebud thundered with gunfire and dust hung in the air. Late in the afternoon it was evident that the soldiers were disorganized, fighting in scattered units, their effectiveness significantly reduced. Crazy Horse was notified that, even though nearly a hundred Hunkpapa had arrived at midmorning, the Lakota and Sahiyela were critically low on ammunition. Sensing that Three Stars wouldn’t be able to mount any pursuit, Crazy Horse sent word to withdraw.

  Crazy Horse rode with He Dog, Big Road, and Good Weasel, among others, as they once again chased dusk into night. There was no pursuit from the soldiers to speak of. The feverish aftermath of combat slowly faded as the reality of the day began to take hold. Ten good men had been killed, and many wounded. In a day or two, the scouts Crazy Horse had left behind would report on the soldiers.

  Crazy Horse was bone-tired, but as a leader of fighting men, he was satisfied with the way the Lakota and their Sahiyela allies had performed. They had engaged a numerically larger force and fought them to a standstill. Experience and fighting ability were not in question, only rifles and ammunition. He was convinced that, adequately supplied, Lakota fighting men would drive the Long Knives out.

  Two days later, scouts reported that Three Stars had turned back south. The encampment was alive with excitement. Sitting Bull’s vision had come to pass, many said. But others were circumspect. The vision was of victory over soldiers attacking an encampment. Rosebud was not that victory, some felt.

  Sitting Bull worked harder than ever, knowing he would likely never have the opportunity to make his case to so many influential leaders gathered in one place at one time, especially with the impetus of victory to add credibility. New arrivals came on a daily basis, swelling the encampment’s population to over seven thousand and horses to nearly ten thousand head. More important, the number of fighting men increased to around a thousand.

  Many people compared the encampment to the one near the Shell River crossing north of Elk Mountain in the summer of the Battle of Red Buttes eleven years earlier. This one was larger, and people were still arriving. The patriotic fervor Sitting Bull had hoped for was alive and well in the young men, but a few of the older headmen were still cautious. One
battle won against one column of soldiers may have inspired Lakota fighting men, but it would also serve to anger the “great father.”

  Crazy Horse left the diplomacy to Sitting Bull as he kept scouts on the trail to the south in the event Three Stars decided to turn around and strike back. He had his own opportunity to convince his contemporaries—men like Big Road, Young Man Afraid, and Touch the Clouds—that organized resistance was the best answer to the problem of the whites. As large as the encampment was, there were as many or more people still at agencies, and the most notable absentees were Red Cloud and Spotted Tail. But most of the older leaders at Ash Creek understood why those two men were not here. Their presence would have meant an outright acknowledgment of the influence of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, not to mention loss of the status they both had so carefully cultivated with the whites.

  Crazy Horse’s reputation as a fighting man and combat leader was well known across Lakota country. He Dog had been right. Many young Lakota had joined the gathering simply because of Crazy Horse. Everywhere he went in the encampment people gathered to him. Simply checking on his horses was a chore that took half a day because everyone wanted to talk with him or invite him to their lodges to eat. So when the horse herders came to him complaining that the enormous herd, more horses in one area than anyone had ever seen, had grazed the meadows and gullies around Ash Creek practically down to the roots, he was glad to deal with the mundane aspects of leadership. With He Dog and a group of older boys, he rode northwest to the Greasy Grass valley to scout a new location for the herd. The floodplain west of the river was perfect for grazing.

  Six days had passed since the Rosebud fight. Victory dances still went far into the night and the fighting men were asked to tell the stories of their involvement. The mood of the encampment had changed from an initial uncertainty to one of a comfortable sense of strength. Hardly anyone, no matter how old, could remember the Lakota ever gathering in such numbers for any purpose. At midday, Sitting Bull sent criers to announce a move to the Greasy Grass valley, and by midafternoon the first lodges were taken down and families began moving. By sundown most of the encampment was gone except for a few lodges and the Sun Dance arbor.

  It was not a bustling mass move as one camp, but the marks of loaded drag poles left deep grooves in the earth. The horses were not moved as one herd because that would have been virtually impossible. Over ten thousand head were unmanageable except in small groups. Families caught their own horses because most of them were transport for lodge covers, poles, and household goods and as basic riding mounts. Horse herders did move the extra warhorses and buffalo hunters in several small manageable herds of a few hundred each.

  As the sun went down, the new encampment was organizing itself among the big cottonwoods west of the meandering Greasy Grass River, and because of the river’s bends there was no overall circle of lodges. The various groups staked out their own identifiable areas. Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapa were on the southernmost end, while the Sahiyela, as guests, chose an area at the northern end beyond an old crossing that opened onto a wide gully given the name of Medicine Tail Coulee by the Crow. In between were the Sicangu, Itazipacola, Mniconju, Oglala, and a small band of Ihanktunwan Dakota.

  The east bank of the Greasy Grass rose to high, undulating ridges overlooking the west side and the flat valley that stretched away to low hills. On the ridges, men sat on their horses and gazed down at the sprawling encampment, the mouth of Ash Creek now to the south. Among them was Crazy Horse. The sun was going down and cooking fires were lit, becoming flickering spots of light in the shade of the cottonwood groves. Some families, who were quietly anxious that the whites at the agencies not associate them with the Rosebud fight, had left. There was talk of some people moving to the north, closer to the Big Horn River. But he was dismayed to hear the consensus that it might be time to break up the gathering.

  Crazy Horse knew that people would slowly begin to leave, but he hoped not for a few more days. Much of the talk around many campfires was that such a gathering would never happen again. He broke from the line of horsemen, rode slowly to the river and crossed it, and then rode from one end of the encampment to the other.

  Long after sundown, a man with a limp crossed the river at the south end of the large encampment. He climbed the ridge with a long bundle under his arm. He wore a brain-tanned hide shirt decorated with plaited and dyed porcupine quills, leggings, and a breechclout. In his right hand, he held a short lance with a long, wicked-looking iron point. The lance was, for the moment, a walking stick. Reaching the top of a small knob, the man stopped and opened his bundle. Soon he had arranged various accoutrements that were the symbols of his calling as a holy man. He loaded his pipe, offered it to the Sky, the Earth, the Four Directions, to the Grandfather, and then prayed. He spent the better part of the evening sitting deep in thought and praying. Finally he gathered up his things, carefully rearranged them into his bundle, and left the hill.

  The largest gathering of Lakota ever known would leave the Greasy Grass valley in three days, but not before the most defining event of all of their lives would occur. Dawn at the new site was cool, but shortly after sunrise, the air grew steadily warmer, a sure sign of a hot day coming. The big cottonwood trees released their white fluffy seedpods, giving the illusion of a thin fog up and down the river.

  Crazy Horse took the gift of a horse to the Sahiyela camp for Buffalo Calf Road, the sister of the Sahiyela leader Comes In Sight. She had galloped into a hail of soldier gunfire at the Rosebud fight to rescue her brother, whose horse had been killed. He visited briefly in the Sahiyela camp and left. Big Road was waiting for him back at his own lodge, visiting quietly with Black Shawl. He mentioned that several families had taken down their lodges and were moving to the north. Midday was approaching and the air was hot and still, a typical day at the end of the Moon of Ripening Berries. The Moon Where the Sun Stands in the Middle was a day or two away.

  A man paused at the edge of a hill east of the river above the encampment. He was alone, riding one horse and leading a second loaded with packs. He was leaving for the Spotted Tail agency some fifteen days to the southeast. After a last glance in the direction of the encampment in the valley, he urged his horses down a long gradual slope, and offhandedly noticed a long line of dust beyond Ash Creek to the south.

  The sides of the council lodge had been rolled up to allow cross ventilation. A few men were waiting in anticipation of meeting with Sitting Bull. Women had already brought food. Sitting Bull had been busy through most of the night attending to a gravely ill woman. He arrived at the council lodge just as a slight din of commotion came from the south end of the encampment, where he had just been.

  A lone Lakota rider splashed across the Greasy Grass, filled bank to bank from the heavy spring runoff from the mountain snows. Gaining the west bank, he began to shout: “Prepare yourselves! The soldiers are coming! The soldiers are coming!”

  The sun was hot again just as it had been the day before. Crazy Horse rode up the long slope and stopped just below the top. Beyond, he could see the barricade of saddles, boxes, and dead horses. Behind it were the last of the Long Knives, many of them wounded. All around them, on the hills and in the gullies stretching to the river were nearly a thousand tired and angry Lakota and Sahiyela fighting men. Most of them wanted to finish the soldiers.

  Whether those soldiers, perhaps three hundred of them, would live or die had been hotly argued through the night in the council lodge. Good Weasel, exhausted and dirty, the blood of a wounded friend dried brown on his hands and arms, saw Crazy Horse and limped over from his position, a captured Spencer rifle in his hands. Crazy Horse delivered the decision of the old men. The soldiers would live, a decision that was influenced by scouts hurrying in from the Elk River area. Another soldier column had been spotted and it was heading south toward the Greasy Grass valley.

  The soldiers hiding behind the barricade in a grassy swale on a ridge above the bluffs overlooking the Greasy Grass
River had been the first to attack the day before. They had crossed the river far to the south near the mouth of Ash Creek, and tried galloping their tired horses across the long, open floodplain toward the south end of the encampment. They had been quickly driven back and then chased across the river. Many were killed at the water crossing after heavy fighting in some trees near the river. As far as Crazy Horse and other leaders were concerned, that was the first fight. Gall of the Hunkpapa and the Oglala battle leaders Black Moon and Big Road were among those who had courageously led two hundred fighting men in that action.

  The second fight started at Medicine Tail Coulee. More soldiers had tried to cross into the encampment from the north end but were stopped by a small but determined group of boys and old men armed mostly with old single-shot rifles. By then many of the women, children, and old people were fleeing to the northwest. Somehow word had reached Crazy Horse and Gall of the second attempted incursion. Gall immediately disengaged from the first fight and led a hundred men to Medicine Tail and crossed. The soldiers galloped away up a long slope to the north.

  Crazy Horse had hurried to his lodge and found Black Shawl waiting with his second warhorse. The camp was in total confusion. Not only were women and children running away to safety, men were galloping through to hurry to the second fight. Shouts and screams filled the air; gunshots could be heard to the south and now thinly to the north. He took his second warhorse and gathered as many men to him as he could.

  If a second group of soldiers were heading north, they could be circling to attack from another direction. It made sense to try to flank them. So he led the men who were with him to an old crossing. Guessing the soldiers would stay to the high ground, he had crossed the river and raced to meet them if they came off the end of the high north-south ridge he knew lay to the east. On the slopes across the river, they circled to the east and encountered twenty or so soldiers, whom they chased back to the main body.