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

by Terry C. Johnston

  As he watched their two guests mount up and ride toward the edge of camp, Crazy Horse felt his wife’s eyes boring into the side of his face like two hot pokers. Nonetheless, she obeyed his demand for her silence. So he would not give her the satisfaction of seeing the look on her face, the accusation clouding her eyes.

  Right now there were more important things for a man to worry about than his wife’s petty jealousy. What with all the Northern People who had come to watch and wait when the wasicu healer and his translator had shown up in the village, asking for the lodge of Crazy Horse, he knew the tongues had to be wagging. It hadn’t taken long at all for word to spread. He was sure that news of the white man’s visit to his lodge had already reached Red Cloud’s camp, had fallen upon the old chief’s ears. Crazy Horse knew that his asking the healer to help his wife would only serve to give Red Cloud and his closest allies another hook on which to hang their growing displeasure with him.

  But from the moment Black Shawl was taken sick, he had tried the sweat lodges, and having her breathe the leaves and roots laid upon smoky pyres—but none of that had cured her. So while there would be those who would say that he had turned his back on traditional healing when he asked for the wasicu’s help, the truth remained that Crazy Horse would do anything to cure his wife. Besides, those Oglala who were going to criticize him for this were people who disliked him already—

  How surprised he was when he saw the trader’s daughter turn and look back at him.

  Surprised that it made him feel a little better about coming to this place and giving up his people to the agency and the army. If, as Black Shawl had claimed, this Nellie Laravie really saw something young and vital and even heroic when she looked at him, then all might not be lost by becoming less than a warrior, by turning himself over to other chiefs. Maybe she looked at him with those half-lidded woman’s eyes only because he was the leader the agency loafers told so many stories about.

  Then again … she might be gazing at him with the look a woman gave a man when she wanted him to possess her because she truly found him handsome and desirable—even though the scar on his left cheek gave him a stern and fierce expression. Such a thought that he still possessed a powerful personal magnetism made Crazy Horse feel a bit stronger in a very secret way, simply to have such a young and pretty woman stare at him unashamedly with such naked longing.

  Now that Three Stars was coming to hold a council with the Oglala leaders at this place, all mixed up with those troubling matters Crazy Horse had to sort through regarding the soldier chief’s demand that he go east to see the white man’s Grandfather, or the demand he enlist as an agency scout with the White Hat before the wasicus would talk about the agency they had promised him … there was now the question that he wasn’t all that sure he would ever find an answer for: What would his longing for that young trader’s daughter eventually do to him?

  * * *

  “Crazy Horse wants to know when you will give his people the agency you promised him,” Frank Grouard asked of George Crook.

  The gray-bearded general turned and dipped his head to speak to Lieutenant Clark, their foreheads almost touching as they whispered. Frank glanced at the Indians watching the soldier chiefs huddled together and wondered if these Lakota would trust anything else the soldiers said from here on out, after the two of them had been whispering like a pair of old women gossiping behind their hands.

  Crook straightened after conferring with Clark and asked, “Does Crazy Horse understand that I want him to go to Washington City with Red Cloud and the others before we will decide this matter of his own agency?”

  The twenty-four-year-old Grouard pursed his lips and turned back to the Hunkpatila leaders, his eyes barely passing over the face of Billy Garnett and that of Joseph Laravie, the trader who also volunteered to translate during the visit of so important a guest as General George Crook, come from faraway Omaha to visit this agency and little Camp Robinson simply because the famous Crazy Horse was here now. It seemed everyone wanted to look upon the face of Crazy Horse these days.

  Was a time when Frank and Crazy Horse had been the best of friends. Best of friends with He Dog too.

  Frank translated the white man’s words into Lakota, shifting his eyes momentarily to the face of his former comrade, He Dog. He looked into the face of a man who had become his strongest enemy because of a woman. Shit, Grouard thought. Women were the surest way to make a fast enemy of a good friend.

  Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapa band of the Lakota had come to call him Grabber2 when they accepted him into their tribe, not all that many years ago after he ran away from the world of the whites and headed to the northern plains, finding himself squarely in the land of the Lakota. They had welcomed him warmly and adopted him for what he was, even though the whites he had run across never truly believed Frank came from a faraway island in the South Pacific.3 Instead, because of his dark skin, most white men on the frontier called him “nigger,” declaring that he must have had black blood in him, or at least Indian blood for certain. Truth was closer to the bone than most would have imagined.

  As a dirty, wretched street orphan dressed in rags when he first showed up barefoot in the Utah town of Beaver, Grouard had convinced the Addison Pratt family that his own father had been a Mormon missionary out in California, a man who had followed God’s call to the South Pacific, where he had married an island woman and sired three children before returning with his new family to San Bernadino. As events had turned out, Frank had explained to the Pratts, his mother soon took her two youngest back to the islands and left Frank with his white father. Tragically, the two somehow became separated on a journey east to Utah, and Frank found himself in the kingdom of Brigham Young, the Prophet his father had so often spoken about in lofty and gilded terms.

  Without hesitation, the prominent Pratts became Frank’s benefactors, taking him in, educating him with the finest of books and the strictest of their spiritual teachings. Later, they tearfully bade farewell to Grouard when the young man of fifteen declared it was time for him to make a way in the world for himself. Frank found work hauling freight north into the gold diggings of Idaho and Montana territories, a fitting occupation for a youth who stood six feet tall and had 200 pounds of iron-strap muscle welded on his frame in those adolescent years. He could read and write, handle animals and a gun with equal proficiency, and kept to himself—an admirable attribute on the frontier because it meant Frank Grouard kept himself out of trouble. In 1865 that was a much-sought-after combination in a mule-skinner who could haul trade goods all the way from the coast of California to the gold camps of the northern Rockies.

  Yet it wasn’t until January of 1870 that Frank’s real adventure of a lifetime began. He had hired out to carry the mail from Fort Hawley on the upper Missouri all the way over to Fort Peck at the mouth of the Milk River. Caught in the middle of a blizzard, his horse snorted its nervous warning an instant before Frank was knocked off its back. Of the thirteen Lakota captors he found standing over him when he came to, twelve wanted to cut his throat, steal his weapons, and be done with it. But the leader of the war party smoked a pipe with Frank, and took in the dark-skinned loner.

  For the next two years he traveled with that leader, who ended up adopting Grouard as his son: no less than the Hunkpapa chief named Sitting Bull. Frank had even suffered a grueling ordeal to prove his loyalty to Sitting Bull’s people: remaining stoic while a shaman removed 480 tiny pieces of flesh from each of his arms, from shoulder to wrist. After the women plucked his eyebrows and face of all facial hair, then he was given a Lakota name. At Sitting Bull’s direction, one of the tribe’s shamans stood and pantomimed a grizzly, its arms outstretched, reaching to seize its victim.

  “The Grabber” it was.

  For many seasons before the arrival of Grouard, Sitting Bull had refused to trade with the white man, preferring to deal only with the Canadian Métis, those Red River half-breed traders from the north country, who brought the Hunkpapa everything from
beads and bullets to guns and whiskey too. Back in the white man’s world it was illegal to trade whiskey to the Indians on American soil. So when the Fort Peck trader and some army officers demanded that Grouard lead them to the Métis camp, he felt his loyalties strained, then reluctantly agreed. When the arrests were made, three Santee Sioux in the Métis camp recognized the Grabber, and slipped away to report Grouard’s complicity to Sitting Bull.

  With the Hunkpapa chief furious beyond reason, it was a good time for Frank to move on. He soon found himself among Crazy Horse’s Hunkpatila band of the Oglala, just about the time the war bands were harassing the Long Hair’s Seventh U.S. Cavalry during their 1873 summer survey along the Elk River.4 It was with Crazy Horse, along with his younger brother, Little Hawk, and his best friend, He Dog, that Frank roamed and raided, made war and stole ponies, courted young women, danced, and sang among the Hunkpatila for the better part of three years. Why, the Grabber even tried to settle down and live with one woman, the sister of his good friend He Dog. But problems with her made for bigger problems with He Dog … and Grouard decided it was best he disappear, after some long six years living with the Lakota.

  In late 1875 he made his way into a Black Hills mining settlement, and from there down to Red Cloud’s agency, where his ability to speak Lakota was a great help to then-agent Johnny Dear. Wasn’t long before he came to the attention of Captain Teddy Egan of the Third Cavalry, the man who made sure Frank and what he had to offer the army were introduced to General George Crook. Those six years spent among the Hunkpapa and the Oglala, along with Frank’s dark skin, gave him more in common with the Lakota than he felt in the company of white men, especially the sort of army officer like Lieutenant William Philo Clark, a soldier who always seemed to sneer at him down a long nose.

  Back in the early part of that cold winter of ’75–’76, Crook was searching for scouts who could lead him to where the village of Crazy Horse lay in the valley of the Powder River. Not only could Frank lead Crook’s soldiers north, but he could also speak Lakota, and knew the ways of the Northern People too. The general claimed God himself must have delivered to him Frank Grouard—just the man he needed at the very moment Crook was needing him most. In the dark of night, through the maw of a winter blizzard, Grouard somehow led Crook’s cavalry down on Crazy Horse’s village5 on March 17, just last year. Having proved himself, Frank was leading Crook’s band of civilian and Indian scouts to find the enemy wherever they might attempt to hide in the fastness of the northern plains.

  Yet now that Sitting Bull had been driven far north into Canada, and the rest of the warrior bands were being rounded up and put inside corrals the white man called reservations, Frank figured he would have to find some other line of work … until Crook sent word he wanted Grouard to meet him at Red Cloud Agency. This time the general needed his help during the initial parley with Crazy Horse.

  Here he sat: for the first time in nearly two years Grouard found himself face-to-face with the Oglala war chief, He Dog, and the other headmen who glared sullenly at the man they surely regarded as a turncoat.

  Frank waited while the whispers died away and He Dog began to speak on behalf of his old friend and former Shirt Wearer.

  “Crazy Horse does not know the white man. He knows only the lies of so many white men. But he wants to trust the soldier chief, the man who sits before him today. Crazy Horse wants to trust Three Stars.”

  “Trust?” Crook repeated Frank’s word. “Of course he can trust me.”

  “Crazy Horse will put his trust in you,” Grouard translated. “He will believe in you until your word turns false.”

  “Tell him that will never happen,” Crook said guardedly. “Does he understand that there won’t be any talk of an agency for his own people until he accompanies Red Cloud and the others to Washington City to see President Hayes?”

  Frank nodded. “He understands. He Dog says Crazy Horse will go, because when he returns, you will give him the agency you promised him.”

  There was a sudden, stunned hush in that stuffy room filled with the smoke of pipe and too many honey-soaked cheroots. Frank felt a half-grin crease the side of his face, as he watched the way Crook and Clark and the other officers exchanged looks of surprised disbelief or even some cocky self-assuredness of the sort that claimed, I told you so!

  Finally Crook cleared his throat and turned back to Grouard. “Frank, I want to be very sure of your translation. What did He Dog just say in regard to Crazy Horse and the journey east with Red Cloud?”

  Grouard flicked his eyes for a moment at He Dog, then glanced at the impassive Crazy Horse and said, “Crazy Horse tells the soldier chief he will go with Red Cloud. And when he gets back, the soldier chief will give his people their own reservation up in the Powder River country.”

  Crook slapped both of his hands down on the top of his knees in exultation. “By damn! If that isn’t the news I’ve wanted to hear with my own ears! Crazy Horse going to Washington City to see all the might and power of the nation that defeated him—”

  “What about their reservation?” Grouard asked in interruption.

  Perturbed, Crook turned to his translator as the other officers fell to a hush once more. “Yes. You tell Crazy Horse that when he gets back here after his trip to see President Hayes, then I will allow some of the Northern People to go on a hunt. A hunt in a late-summer moon, a journey to their old land of the Powder before they return here.”

  “W-why return here?” Billy Garnett interrupted the exchange now.

  Crook looked even more bothered than before, his eyes narrowing above that bushy beard as he glared at the half-breed. “Grouard—tell them that I will allow them to go on a hunt if they promise to return here after forty days. Maybe that hunt will take their minds off this new agency they want somewhere up north where they’ll be dangerously close to Nelson A. Miles.”

  “Why no talk of giving him his agency?” Frank asked.

  Crook’s cheeks flushed with crimson. “Because the government wants all these Sioux—Red Cloud’s and Spotted Tail’s Indians, all of ’em—moved to the Missouri before winter. Now you just tell them about the hunt I’m going to give his people, and don’t worry about a damned thing you can’t do anything about—like this business of the army moving these Sioux to a new reservation!”

  Frank slowly translated the offer of that hunt in the Powder River country as the Lakota murmured among themselves, all save for Crazy Horse. He was staring—his face an impassive mask that dared not betray his emotion as his eyes flicked back and forth between Grouard and Crook.

  Not knowing if he should feel a sense of elation or the impact of betrayal, the Grabber realized what promise Crook had just made to the Northern People … and what promise Crook had just taken away.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Wipazuka Waste Wi

  MOON OF RIPENING BERRIES, 1877

  BY TELEGRAPH

  WASHINGTON.

  Sitting Bull Will Remain North.

  WASHINGTON, July 14.—Major Walsh, of the Canada mounted police, visited Sitting Bull near the headwaters of French creek. Sitting Bull said he desired to remain with the Canadians during the summer; that he would do nothing against the law; he came there because he was tired of fighting, and if he could not make a living in Canada he would return to the United States. Spotted Eagle, Rain-in-the-Face, Medicine Bear, and a number of other chiefs of the hostile Sioux, were present, together with two hundred lodges. It is believed there must be some four or five hundred lodges of hostile Sioux now north of the boundary line, numbering at least 1,500 fighting men.

  “Yes, I remember the sun-gazing dances of old,” Crazy Horse told his spirit guardian as its gold-kissed wings moved restlessly inside him.

  Will you offer yourself in the sacrifice dance this summer?

  “No,” he answered. “How can I when I have nothing to celebrate?”

  It felt as if the wings found some rest within him as he answered the question. Perhaps his sicun was
satisfied with his answer. If not, at least he had put a stop to the question that nagged at him day and night. Now that he had agreed to go east with the other chiefs to make the soldiers happy, Crazy Horse grew unsure he was doing the right thing by his people, for himself, for his spirit. This had begun to make him angrier than anything else—how more and more he caught himself deciding something one way and within days he felt differently about the matter. Never before had he been so indecisive. Not once in his life had he ever vacillated back and forth on a concern of his people. He had always been the sort to make up his mind, announce his decision, and move on.

  But his new life here on this tiny patch of ground the army and the wasicus allowed his people had done something to corrupt him in a short time. He desperately wanted to be sure of things once more—to see things clearly, not blurred as if his vision were rippled on the wind-whipped surface of a pond.

  Perhaps he should get away from everyone and everything as he had done before. To beg for an answer, he thought. Leave the camp and just walk into the hills on a quest for a vision. To pray and hope he was given an answer. Four days to cleanse himself and make ready to consider every matter he must consider now that this new life had begun, his people surrounded here by the white man instead of wandering free as the Hunkpatila were meant to live. As his heart was meant to roam.

  He turned his eyes down the slope and watched the throngs making ready the arbor where they would erect the sacred pole and the shady arbors for the spectators, braiding the long rawhide thongs and bringing forth the grinning buffalo skulls. Clearing that dancing ground of vivid gray sage and clumps of dark green grass. Of a sudden he saw her, just beyond the sun-gazing site, as she settled in the shade of an overhanging tree on the bank of the creek. When she motioned to them, her two small children scampered off to play at the water’s edge. He did not have to be any closer than this to know it was her. For the first time, he finally admitted to himself that his eyes had looked for her from the moment he had brought his people in to the agency. After all, this was where No Water lived with his good friend Red Cloud.