Joseph M. Marshall III

by The Journey of Crazy Horse a Lakota History

  The summer of 1876 was truly exciting and significant for the Lakota and the nation overall. It was a culmination and a turning point. First there was a strong response to Sitting Bull’s message to gather. Few, if any, leaders on this continent then and since have had the level of credibility and influence that would galvanize one fourth of the population to travel hundreds of miles to meet and discuss issues of national importance. Crazy Horse’s considerable reputation and quiet charisma matched Sitting Bull’s skill as a politician and orator. Although there were many other well-known and respected political and military leaders present, none had achieved the status of either Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse in the hearts and minds of the people. Together they provided visionary leadership and a sense of cohesiveness and a feeling of strength.

  In the summer of 1876 Sitting Bull was undeniably the most powerful political leader among all the Lakota bands. He was still capable as a fighting man but his real strength was in his ability to communicate. He was feverishly attempting to convince enough Lakota to serve the good of all by uniting against a formidable common enemy, one that threatened to destroy their way of life. No enemy had ever faced them with that possible consequence. He knew that his purpose was to bring everyone together under a common cause; after that he was counting on the military leaders, Crazy Horse first and foremost, to step up and lead the Lakota militarily. Both men, each in his way, were calling their constituents to serve, to put their time, talents, and experience to work to solve a very large problem. Therefore, as Sitting Bull watched Crazy Horse invoke the ancient ritual of Wica Mnaiciyapi, he probably felt an overwhelming sense of satisfaction that his message was getting through.

  As Sitting Bull watched the throng of fighting men answer the call, he certainly realized what they would encounter in combat, but he may not have fully considered what lay ahead for those several hundred warriors as they left the encampment. History has not focused as much on the battle toward which Crazy Horse was leading his men. It is known as the Battle of the Rosebud because it occurred in the valley of Rosebud Creek, one of the tributaries that flowed north into the Yellowstone River. It occurred on June 17. There is obviously more attention to the battle of eight days later, the Battle of the Little Bighorn. But to understand fully the reason for the outcome of both battles, we should examine the significance of the night of June 16, 1876, and what it reveals about service to one’s cause and nation.

  The Lakota encampment on June 16 was near Ash Creek, a few miles from its confluence with the Greasy Grass (Little Bighorn) River. The scouts had reported the soldiers to be in the area where Goose Creek flowed into Rosebud Creek, a distance of about fifty miles from Ash Creek in a southeasterly direction. Crazy Horse and his men departed from the Ash Creek encampment at dusk. The summer solstice was days away, so daylight lingered further into the evening. From today’s perspective that meant the warriors left the encampment around 10 P.M. on June 16 and the first shots were fired seven hours later at dawn, or about 5 A.M. on June 17.

  Moving troops at night is a sound tactical maneuver but can often prove to be a logistical problem. In this instance at least three factors contributed to the success of this action. One, the Lakota, especially men from Crazy Horse’s band, knew this particular area well. Two, at least one scout who had ridden north with the news of the soldier column was leading the way back, over the trail he had traveled only hours before. And three, riding great distances at night was nothing new to the Lakota and the Sahiyela. Nevertheless, anyone who knows the West or is an experienced rider understands that the seemingly simple act of riding a horse for fifty miles is not, even in the daylight. The fact remains, however, that several hundred riders, many leading a second horse, traveled through the night over the rough, uneven terrain of the Wolf Mountains.

  Fifty miles and some seven hours afford ample time to think. No one knew specifically what would happen when they reached their objective or where exactly the enemy would be. The one unavoidable fact facing them all was that there would be a battle. Many of the men riding through the night were combat veterans and many had fought against white soldiers. They knew what to expect. But this particular situation had an added dimension. The older veterans understood the circumstances and concerns that had brought them all together at Ash Creek. They knew that riding through the night to face a persistent enemy was part of the process of alleviating the threat to the very existence of the Lakota. This was not a war party to demonstrate how much braver the Lakota were in battle. This was a mission wherein the enemy had to be thoroughly defeated, where body count was just as important as tromping the enemy’s spirit. It was the message Crazy Horse had been preaching: Kill the white enemy because that’s how he counted his victories and assessed his defeats.

  Most, if not all, had answered the call in this particular instance because of the man issuing the call: Crazy Horse. Riding into battle with such a man was something to tell the children and grandchildren. But once the initial fervor had dissipated somewhat, reality set in. Thoughts of family rode with them and certainly thoughts of the enemy they would face. Many prayed for courage, strength, and victory. And those with little or no combat experience were likely plagued with uncertainty about themselves, hoping and praying they wouldn’t break and run when the shooting started.

  So they rode through the night—eager, apprehensive, circumspect, perhaps talkative, but most of all silently introspective—picking their way up the western slopes through the sagebrush and prickly pear cactus, and over the divide and down the eastern side. At dawn they reached their objective and immediately engaged the enemy. In spite of the fifty-mile trek, they and their horses, without any significant rest, had enough stamina to engage in combat for ten to twelve hours. Half of that time was under a fierce sun.

  The enemy was cavalry and mounted infantry of the United States Army, a 1,000-man force augmented by 300 Shoshoni and Crow Indians, under the overall command of Brigadier General George Crook, known as “Three Stars” to the Lakota. They were encamped along Rosebud Creek in a valley a few miles northeast of the present town of Sheridan, Wyoming.

  The scrutiny of hindsight suggests that the battle was a draw. Crazy Horse and his men withdrew from the field in the late afternoon, and Crook’s soldiers could do little more than watch them leave, although there was one aborted attempt at pursuit. Perhaps it was a draw because of the weariness of Crazy Horse’s warriors and their horses after an all-night ride. If Crazy Horse - could have engaged his enemy with fresh men and horses the outcome would have been a decisive victory. But that they could fight a numerically superior and better-armed force to a standstill after a seven-hour ride is testament to commitment. Although the Lakota and Sahiyela suffered many wounded, incredibly only eight were killed in action.

  Crazy Horse’s warriors displayed a devotion to duty because the course of human events too frequently causes men and women to take up arms in defense of life, community, nation, or ideals. Their efforts were nothing new, unfortunately, in the annals of human history. And there have been many similar examples since throughout the world. But during the summer of 1876 the foundation for Lakota victories in two significant battles eight days apart were established during that long night ride over the Wolf Mountains. That long and arduous journey to battle taught them much about themselves individually and collectively. It taught them, or reminded them in many cases, that engaging in combat is only part of the commitment to serve, that sometimes commitment and devotion to duty is a long, quiet ride.

  Honoring songs are common at Lakota pow-wows, sung in recognition of a notable accomplishment, a noteworthy deed. The gathering, hence the community, pauses to give recognition. Many honoring songs are sung for Lakota military veterans, sometimes as a general commemoration and sometimes specifically to honor those present at the gathering. One of the lines of the honoring song is:

  Oyate kin ninpi kta ca lecamu yelo, or, “I do this so that the people may live.”

  In Lakota society of t
he past, woman was the source of life and man was the protector of life. So what is the “this” that “I do” for the people? Women gave birth, taught the children for the important first formative years of life, and nurtured the family. Men had to provide the material for the family and community to survive, grow, and prosper, and to ensure that there was the freedom to do so.

  In the Sun Dance, the most solemn of Lakota religious ceremonies, males are the primary participants, some as helpers and observers, and some make the focal sacrifice and are pierced. Those who are pierced practically and symbolically offer and give the one thing that is truly theirs: themselves. The giving of self is the core philosophy of the fighting man, the warrior. The male as the warrior is prepared physically, emotionally, and spiritually to give all that he is on behalf of the people. It is a process that begins at the age of five or six and continues throughout a lifetime. If a man does not die on the field of battle and reaches that part of his life where his physical skills are not as sharp, he enters that phase where his experience and wisdom are just as important as his physical skills and his deeds once were.

  Crazy Horse did reach that point in his life—a culmination of the forces and influences of destiny and the circumstances of the times he lived in, rather than the infirmities of old age.

  After the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the United States government stepped up its military campaign against the Lakota. Sitting Bull was forced to flee into Canada in 1877 and the U.S. Army attacked Crazy Horse’s own encampment during the winter. Other influential leaders such as Spotted Tail of the Sicangu Lakota and Red Cloud of the Oglala were already settled at their own agencies. Indeed, most of the Lakota bands were on agencies or reservations by early 1877, already living under the control of the United States government. It was inevitable, they said, and they sent messages to Crazy Horse’s band that it was time to consider that living on reservations was preferable to being hunted down and killed by the whites.

  With Sitting Bull in Canada, Crazy Horse was the most influential leader among those Lakota who refused to surrender. In fact, the Crazy Horse band of nearly a thousand people were for all intents and purposes the final holdouts. When Sitting Bull finally returned south of the Forty-eighth Parallel in 1881, it was in capitulation rather than to continue the fight.

  Crazy Horse and his advisors realized that it was a numbers issue. He had less than two hundred able-bodied fighting men. The whites could send ten times that many men against him at any time. Furthermore, the whites had more guns and more bullets. The deciding factor, however, was the lack of resources to sustain his people in the field. The buffalo were gone, but there was probably enough elk and deer to provide them with the fresh meat they needed. However, when men had to devote most of their time to fighting to defend their families, there wasn’t much time left to hunt.

  A number of the younger men proposed hiding their non-combatants in some secret location and taking to the field as a highly mobile force against the whites. The idea had strong appeal, especially with those who thoroughly detested the thought of life on a reservation and those who knew that man for man the Lakota could outfight the whites. The idea was appealing to Crazy Horse the warrior, but to Crazy Horse the family man, to the leader responsible for the welfare of all the people, he knew that leaving the women and children unprotected would not be wise. Sooner or later the whites would find them, and he didn’t want a ghastly reoccurrence of the Little Thunder or Sand Creek massacres. Therefore, the cold hard reality was simply and inescapably picking the lesser of two evils. Continue to resist until the soldiers killed them all, or surrender.

  Almost a year earlier Crazy Horse had mounted his horse and ridden around the encampment on Ash Creek, and with each circuit more and more warriors fell in behind him. In May 1877, the circumstances were nearly the opposite. If he had decided to fight, every able-bodied male, from the very young to the very old, would have followed him anywhere. Most certainly more than a few women would have taken up arms also. But now he had to put the warrior aside—push him into the shadows, so to speak. It would have been completely understandable for the warriors to fight and die, because the very survival of a nation and a way of life was certainly worth dying for, but that would mean leaving the helpless ones to face the whites alone. So the choice was made to surrender.

  Crazy Horse realized that a new kind of war was being fought to save the very essence of being Lakota. To fight in this war meant that the right kind of leadership was even more critical because the enemy was not only the whites but those Lakota who had essentially “gone over” to the other side. Crazy Horse knew that surrendering militarily didn’t mean surrendering identity, and he detested anyone who pandered to the whites. To survive physically was necessary to prevent further bloodshed, but it was just as critical to survive culturally. That would mean hanging on tenaciously to language, values, and beliefs no matter what the whites might do. To fight that fight he knew that, as he had done on the battlefield, he had to take the lead and set the right example. The prospect of living in close proximity with white people and under their control was distasteful and detestable. Nevertheless it was a call to duty and service to the - people he couldn’t ignore. He had to do it so that the people - could live. If he suspected that it would cost him his life, he spoke of it to no one, but he must have wondered about that part of his vision in which his own people pulled the rider down from his horse.

  Afterword:

  Honoring Song for a Thunder Dreamer

  Crazy Horse still lives in the shadows of my mind, as he always will. The boy in me sees him as a glorious warrior. The man I’ve become sees him as someone who reluctantly answered the call to serve and who became a leader in the most trying of times.

  There were struggles within me from time to time, between the temptation to make Crazy Horse into a shimmering legend and the need to see him as a real person. He is certainly both, but it is immeasurably reassuring and inspiring to know him as a real man. Legends are like fog. Sooner or later the heat of the sun does burn them off. The scrutiny of unvarnished truth is like the sun. Bit by bit it dissipates the misty aura of legend. We do need our legends, it would seem. We hold them up as sort of a standard that we can try to attain, knowing we never can. But if we dare to look at them as people, it is frequently possible to understand them, their motives, their attitudes, and how and why they did what they did, or didn’t do. If we accept them as people, we can find a connection to them, a connection woven by reality and humanity—for, after all, they fulfilled their journey just as we are fulfilling ours, on the same Earth.

  Crazy Horse should be a hero, but not one of conjecture. Many have misjudged him or made him into something he is not, and as a result, Crazy Horse pretenders cross our path with annoying consistency. They seem to be everywhere. Some are living grand adventures in the wide-eyed imaginations of “Indian lore” enthusiasts, or are stubbornly fighting a losing war in the pages of pulp western history magazines as another dark icon opposing the inevitability of manifest destiny. These Crazy Horses are almost never without a weapon in hand, frequently wearing a feather “war” bonnet and riding at the head of a mass charge. They are from the “an Indian is an Indian is an Indian” view of indigenous cultures, which will swear that Crazy Horse and Geronimo spoke the same language and that “war” bonnets are standard issue for all Indian males over the age of twelve. This type of Crazy Horse is the darling of those who find lost causes somehow appealing. They know nothing of the reasons Indians fought so hard to protect their lands and their lives, but only that they were “noble savages” because they fought knowing they would lose.

  Then there is the “conqueror of Custer” version, the purveyor of violence ready to fight at the drop of a “war” bonnet, his hate for white people dripping like venom—meaning, of course, that Crazy Horse has no validity without Custer. Kill a famous white man and insure your place in history. That’s almost as popular as the glory-seeking egotist suffering from viol
ent mood swings—a quiet camp dweller one day and a screaming savage on the warpath the next. Close behind is the overrated leader who owes his place in history to the fascination of white people, a first cousin to the one who owes his celebrity to offing Custer. Popping up in the crowd is “Chief” Crazy Horse because there are those among us who seem to think that we can’t make history unless we have a title in front of our names; like general, duke, emperor, governor, mayor, judge, president, or chief. And then we have the Crazy Horse that could be one of the richest men in the world if he were paid endorsement fees for the use of his name on anything from tobacco products to malt liquor, designer clothes, salons, saloons, jewelry stores, and Paris burlesque houses.

  The Hollywood Crazy Horses are an eclectic bunch. In a 1955 feature film his vociferousness was as out of place as his “war” bonnet. In a 1990 made-for-television miniseries (about Custer), he was a moody, reticent pedestrian (literally). A feature film the same year in which he shared equal billing with Custer attempted the “untold story” approach, but it went awry soon after the opening credits. Between 1955 and 1996 he has appeared as a background or minor character in several westerns, and once as an insect-eating captive in a western television series about Custer that lasted only slightly longer than the Battle of the Little Bighorn. A 1996 television movie came the closest. But overall, screenwriters should know that it takes more than an occasional smile on an Indian face and lovemaking on the prairie to portray the human side of Indians and give us a realistic insight into Indian culture. It is progress, I suppose, for non-Indian writers to realize that we smile and make love. Fortunately there hasn’t been a preponderance of movies because they probably would have done nothing more than burden us with Crazy Horses of conjecture.