Turn the Stars Upside Down: The Last Days and Tragic Death of Crazy Horse

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Yes,” Rosecrans whispered with growing irritation at the delay this half-breed was causing. “I want to meet Crazy Horse, leader of the Northern Sioux.”

  “Crazy Horse—sure!” Garnett said, grinning widely now, his whole face animated. “Your hand … ah, Lieutenant—see … you’re shaking hands with Crazy Horse himself.”

  It sank in slowly, while he slowly looked down at their left hands entwined together. Rosecrans rasped, “This is … is … Crazy Horse?”

  “Him,” the interpreter asserted, nodding toward the pale-skinned man. “This here is Crazy Horse.”

  For a long moment the fascinated Rosecrans studied the scar-faced, light-haired war chief of so slight a build. As American Horse brought his pony to a halt nearby, the lieutenant refused to tear his eyes from their two hands, still not quite believing.

  “American Horse says,” Garnett translated the scout leader’s words, “Crazy Horse never shake for a long time—you’re the first white man to shake his hand in more than eleven winters.”

  By God! I’m the first white man to shake this famous war leader’s hand since he went on the warpath! That makes me the first white man ever to take his hand in … in peace!

  * * *

  Sitting Bull shaded his eyes with his free hand and gently drew back on the single horsehair rein to halt his pony. The mid-afternoon sun had grown strong this far north, beginning to cast long shadows that streamed out from the sides of those two riders who galloped toward him—waving pieces of blanket, their mouths Oed up like the black eye-sockets in a buffalo’s skull.3

  Perhaps we can find enough buffalo up here, he thought as more than a double-handful of horsemen came up behind him, halting on either side of this great mystic and leader of the Hunkpapa.

  The wind was strong here, whipping away the words shouted by those two riders as they raced ever closer. Young men, they were, these two brothers he had dispatched just before dawn, instructed to ride north—youngsters still full of the sap that ran strong this time of the year. And although he could not hear those shouted words ripped away from their lips by the cold spring wind that knifed its way up and down the gentle folds of this rolling prairie, Sitting Bull nonetheless already knew the message they were carrying back to him with such excitement.

  Already he could hear the whispers of those who were waiting around him. And he could barely make out the sounds of a great village on the march coming up behind them.

  Turning slightly, he glanced over his shoulder at the way the procession had spread itself out as wide as the rolling hills allowed. What remained of their once-numberless pony herd was kept to the west side of their march by the herder boys. Travois were loaded with all that his people still owned. The women were scolding errant children and scampering dogs. Old men and women who could no longer walk long distances rode among the tiny ones perched atop the bundles of buffalohides, heavy loads bouncing near the ends of long lodgepoles. Some of his people—those who had spotted the two riders coming out of the distant, gray horizon—were shouting to the others now, their joyous voices struggling to be heard against the gusts of cold spring wind. Maybe they realized that they had arrived.

  Slowly, with a great wave of relief washing over him, Sitting Bull drank in the chill air still soaked with a hint of the rain that had beaten against them as they had gone into camp near twilight last night. They had huddled in the lee of the low hills, throwing up what shelters they could erect and struggling to ignite a few fires where several families warmed themselves and heated some soup over the glowing embers of the dried buffalo droppings and smoldering greasewood. This Northern air felt good on a man’s skin, smelled sweet. Above all else, it carried the taste of freedom to Sitting Bull’s tongue as the mouths of the riders closed and they raced ever closer.

  For the first moment in a long, long time, Sitting Bull felt assured that he and his people would now have peace for themselves and the children yet unborn.

  As that pair of youths yanked back on their reins and their ponies came to a leg-jarring halt right before him and the other Hunkpapa headmen, Sitting Bull could see how the tears streamed from the corners of their eyes, moisture whipped by the wind and their high-speed flight across the prairie to carry him this momentous news.

  “Speak,” he commanded them, his eyes darting from one to the other now as he felt the anxiety creep back into his bones.

  The younger one, he gulped as he glanced at his older brother.

  It was he who swallowed deeply, his eyes smiling as he made his announcement. “We have been to a camp of the traders in the Cedar Hills,” he explained, turning slightly and pointing behind him to the north with an outstretched arm.

  Sitting Bull leaned forward, slightly, on the withers of his spotted pony, taking some of the pressure off his tailbone. “Did they tell you we were getting close?”

  At that instant the young one’s eyes grew big, his lips trembling as if he could no longer contain himself. The older boy nodded, giving permission.

  “Back there.” Then the young one paused and pointed past Sitting Bull and the headmen, on past the village that continued to draw closer as they spoke. “The traders said we must have crossed over sometime when the sun was near mid-sky.”

  “M-mid-sky?” Sitting Bull repeated, as the headmen gathered round him turned and looked over their shoulders, just as he did. He raised his face toward the sun, then quickly wheeled back on these two young couriers. “Then?”

  Now the older boy proclaimed, “The trader Indians said we have already come to a new land.”

  Suddenly the shout went up from more than a handful of throats around the Hunkpapa leader. “The Land of the Grandmother!”

  But Sitting Bull wanted to be sure before he allowed himself to believe it. He drank in another long, deep draught of that cold, moist air. “We are no longer in the land of the Americans?”

  Both youths shook their heads, smiling joyously.

  Around him now the older men were singing, and that soon set the women’s tongues to trilling as they brought the first of the travois horses to a halt behind the advance party.

  The Medicine Line! his heart exulted.

  Staring behind him at that long rumple of short-grass prairie disappearing against the distant, cloud-filled horizon to the south, Sitting Bull squinted his eyes in the high spring sunlight, and wondered where the line had been that they had apparently crossed near midday. Where had it been marked, with no range of mountains, no river’s course, nothing at all to designate the boundary between what had been and what would be from now on?

  Here in this free land, he could remain a free Indian. No longer chased by the American soldiers.

  They had crossed the Medicine Line and reached the Land of the Grandmother—giving the women and children sanctuary from the prowling soldiers.

  His people were singing all around him now, a tumult that rocked this vacant prairie, reverberating from the very breast of the earth herself. Hundreds upon hundreds of Hunkpapa shouting their praises to the Great Mystery now that they could hunt the buffalo in peace, sleep in peace, watch their children grow in peace.

  As the others, those old friends of many battles and long summers of struggle, urged their horses close around him, a blur of hands pounding him on the back, reaching out to touch his arm or brush his cheek in praise for what he had brought them through … a stunned Sitting Bull turned and looked south again.

  Wondering.

  Wondering and whispering a prayer for his young friend of the Oglala who had chosen a different road. Asking the Great Mystery to watch over and protect Crazy Horse.

  CHAPTER TWO

  6 May 1877

  BY TELEGRAPH

  SNOW AT DEADWOOD—INDIAN MATTERS—WASHINGTON NEWS.

  Indian Affairs.

  WASHINGTON, May 5.—Brigadier General Crook had a long conference to-day with the secretary of the interior and the commissioner of Indian affairs, in regard to the removal of the Sioux agencies to the Missour
i river, and on the Indian question generally. Secretary Schurz and Commissioner Smith entirely concur with General Crook in his view that the Indians should be compelled to work for their grub, and the conference to-day was mainly with a view to ascertain how the labor of the Indians could be utilized in the interest of both the Indians and of the government. No definite conclusion has been reached as to the precise location of the new agencies, but it seems certain the Indians will not be removed until next autumn, as during the warm season the Indians will be disposed to straggle off on hunting expeditions, but will be easily collected on the approach of cold weather.

  Watching the dozen or so Sioux headmen beckon him to cross the open ground between them, an animated Lieutenant William Philo Clark1 turned to his half-breed interpreter and asked, “That means they want me to go out to meet them?”

  “A good sign, them sitting on the ground way they are,” Billy Garnett whispered to the young officer, who served as the army’s agent and chief of U.S. Indian scouts at Red Cloud’s agency. “Shows you they’re ready to talk.”

  Born in New York back in 1845, Clark had graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1868, assigned that June as a second lieutenant in the Second U.S. Cavalry. While he was affectionately known among the enlisted men as “Nobby,” his fellow officers more often than not called him Philo. It was while he had served General George Crook as aide-de-camp during the Powder River Expedition, August through November of 1876, that Clark began his climb up the ladder of the frontier army. Back in January 1877, Crook had rewarded the young lieutenant, appointing him to become the new military agent at Camp Robinson when the army took over control of the Sioux agencies.

  Clark yanked out his pocketwatch and glanced at its white face. Just past ten A.M.

  It had been three days now since the Crazy Horse village met up with Lieutenant Rosecrans’s wagons of supplies and that beef herd near Hat Creek Station on the Black Hills Road. Three days of feasting and much-needed rest before the Sioux set off again, continuing their march south.

  Just minutes ago one of American Horse’s agency scouts had come tearing down from the white bluffs northwest of the post, galloping among the clapboard buildings with his electrifying word that the Northern People had come in sight! About the time the far horizon had blackened with the village and its immense pony herd, Lieutenant Clark’s escort breathlessly reached a stretch of flat ground a scant four miles north of Camp Robinson.

  It was here, close by Soldier Creek, that Crazy Horse and his headmen rode forward onto that open ground, accompanied by Red Cloud and his agency scouts.

  The young lieutenant now saw everything falling right into his hands. Through the waning days of winter it had appeared that Spotted Tail, the Brulé chief who ruled over his own agency some forty miles downriver, would get all the glory for bringing in his nephew, the famous Crazy Horse, instead of that honor going to Red Cloud, the chief in whom Lieutenant William Philo Clark had placed all his support. Red Cloud had to win, had to be the one to bring about the surrender.

  Some weeks ago as spring was reaching these central plains, the aging chief had responded to Clark’s promise that if Red Cloud could succeed in getting Crazy Horse and his people to surrender to his agency rather than to Spotted Tail, the lieutenant would then convince General George Crook he should restore Red Cloud to a position of power and prestige over his Oglala people … perhaps even as chief over all the Sioux at both agencies! Highest among the chiefs. That would bring enormous prestige, not to mention immeasurable power over the day-to-day lives of his people. With the agency system, rations were distributed through the chief. The man who controlled food and blankets, kettles and beads, would have a secure grip on a position of unequaled authority.

  On behalf of General George Crook, Spotted Tail had journeyed north this past winter to convince his nephew that he should not surrender to Colonel Nelson A. Miles. To come south to his agency instead. But now, William Clark and Red Cloud had whisked Crazy Horse right out from under the noses of both Spotted Tail2 and General Crook.

  With his mighty escort and the army’s presents, Red Cloud had gone out to persuade his long-ago friend to turn aside from the trail to Spotted Tail’s camps and surrender at his own Oglala agency. Working hand-in-hand with the ambitious Clark, Red Cloud had single-handedly assured the greatest honor would go to the young lieutenant: this historic surrender of the mighty Sioux war chief Crazy Horse.3

  When their eyes met across the distance now, Clark saw how smug Red Cloud appeared, having done what the soldiers had asked of him. On his dark, lined face was the look of a man who now demanded what had been promised him.

  While Red Cloud and his men stood to the side, the delegation of Crazy Horse’s headmen dismounted, then promptly sat down in a broad line facing the soldiers and their agency scouts.

  Hearing the growing murmurs from American Horse’s men behind him, Clark gazed over his shoulder again at the broad phalanx of excited agency scouts, asking Garnett, “Do these men really expect more horses from Crazy Horse?”

  The half-breed shrugged. “Crazy Horse’s warriors gave each one a pony or two when we run onto them a few days back … so your scouts figure to get another gift today. But one thing you can count on: them war bands won’t ever give away the best of their ponies.”

  Fact was, as poor in possessions and as gaunt and hungry as they were, the Crazy Horse people were still rich in horseflesh, while Red Cloud’s friendlies owned few ponies of their own. In the eyes of American Horse’s agency scouts, the gifts of these Northern horses were a true treasure indeed.

  As he moved his small party out at a brisk walk, Clark cleared his throat with the bedrock certainty that was a mark of his character. “But don’t you see, Garnett? That’s just what they’re about to do. These Northern bands are going to turn over their weapons and their horses to me.”

  Trudging through the bunchgrass on foot, William Rosecrans clung at Clark’s left elbow, while Billy Garnett hugged his right, the three of them striding across that open ground until the interpreter announced huskily, “He’s the one there near the center of ’em, wearing the red blanket around his middle.”

  Clark moved over, and stopped right before the slim, unadorned Indian. Unsure, he quickly glanced at Rosecrans.

  The lieutenant nodded in affirmation. “That’s him.”

  Clearing his throat with authority, Clark asked, “Crazy Horse?”

  Without a word, the Indian promptly rose to his feet and held out his left hand.

  At Clark’s left elbow, Rosecrans quietly whispered, “That’s their custom.”

  “Garnett explained it to you?” he asked from the corner of his mouth.

  “Yes,” Rosecrans said in a hush as Clark accepted the offered hand in his. “He told me all manner of wrong is done by the right hand—so that’s why they shake with their left. They explain that the left hand’s closer to the heart too.”

  “Interesting,” Clark murmured as he shook with the fair-skinned man, who—in the lieutenant’s considerable estimation—in no way resembled the fierce war chief he had imagined Crazy Horse would turn out to be.

  And that bullet scar running from the left side of the Indian’s upper lip, furrowing his cheek—how it gave him a fierce look, even though he appeared to be smiling at the moment. This leader of the wild Sioux possessed a narrow face, at the middle of it a sharp, straight nose, eyes clear and light as well. As he studied the man, it appeared Crazy Horse showed little evidence of the high cheekbones that generally marked his race. In addition, the long braids that fell well past his waist weren’t black and coarse at all, but a softer, brownish hue instead.

  For what was a long moment, the slight Indian stared into Clark’s eyes, almost as if he was taking some measure of this soldier. Then Crazy Horse said something in his native tongue, still clutching the white officer’s hand.

  “He’s telling you he shakes with his left hand,” the interpreter began, “because he wants this peace he
makes with you to be a peace that will last forever.”

  In a matter of minutes they had made the introductions all around, Billy Garnett calling out the names of those headmen of the Crazy Horse people who had joined him in this auspicious surrender ceremony—a litany of names that for years had conspired to strike terror across the northern plains: Little Hawk,4 He Dog,5 Big Road, and the fierce and stocky Little Big Man. As Clark again studied the scar that puckered the left side of Crazy Horse’s lip, extending on around his cheek, Garnett laid his hand around the officer’s elbow, turned him slightly, and began speaking again.

  “This one,” the interpreter said. “You remember, I told you he’s Crazy Horse’s good friend. Name’s He Dog.”

  The muscular warrior spoke, as Garnett began to translate.

  “‘My friend offers you his handshake in honor of our coming together to make peace. We must make it strong and lasting. The Great Mystery above wishes us to lay down our weapons, and never again make war. Looking back in the past, the land is big, so big half of it was yours, half of it was ours. We fought each other for the land. Your soldiers and our people now see the bones of many men and horses littered upon the land. The blood of many has been spilled. We have caused this, you and I.’”

  As He Dog spoke, Clark had to nod in agreement.

  The Sioux continued, “But on this day we will bury the days of our past. The blood we have spilled we will forget. We will never fight again.”

  He Dog stepped away for a few moments, then returned to the line of headmen, having retrieved a painted rawhide case from one of those young warriors who remained several yards to the rear with the ponies.

  Garnett swallowed hard, saying quietly, “He Dog, he wants to make a gift to you.”

  Wary at this surprise development, an uneasy Clark watched He Dog pull back the cap of the tall, cylindrical container some ten inches in diameter, the Indian reaching in with one hand to pull forth what appeared to be a mass of beautiful eagle feathers.