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

by Terry C. Johnston

  Pull away from them while you still can. Break free. And take a … one final breath of freedom on your own.

  With a shudder, Crazy Horse remembered that frightening part of the vision he had received in his fourteenth summer. So many hands and arms … reaching, lunging, grasping, clawing, pulling at him by the hundreds. His people. Lakota, Oglala. Even Hunkpatila. Friends and family among them. That vision so many summers ago had assured him that no bullet would ever bring him down. Death would find him only when he was held from behind—

  It suddenly shook him to his roots there in the darkness, cold sweat beading him now as if the temperature of that tiny lodge had dropped below freezing. It was as if he were feeling the approach of the death ghost itself, stinging him all the way to his marrow with a shrill warning.

  They were clawing at him—the Lakota were. And the army too. He was now their prisoner, even though the soldiers had never defeated him in battle. Three Stars and White Hat too clawed at him. The agent … and even some of his own people. The way they pestered him to go to Washington before this matter of getting an agency of their own could be settled.

  But the whispers warn you that the wasicu and their army are planning to move Red Cloud’s and Spotted Tail’s people off their lands, all the way east to the Missouri River—no matter what you do.

  “Am I so simple that I could have been deceived by Three Stars?” he demanded of his guardian spirit as his head sank between his shoulders. The steam and the heat were slowly robbing him of the last vestiges of his physical strength.

  You are only one man against the many, Ta’sunke Witko. And you can only do so much—

  “Stay with me,” he begged in a harsh whisper, eyes heavy with fatigue.

  I have always been with you. I will fly above you while your pony carries you up the mountain tomorrow. Once you reach the rocks at the top, I will fold my wings and sit at your side while you fast and pray across the next four days.

  “And then? What then? Will I finally know when I come down from the mountaintop?”

  Yes. Be assured you will see farther from the top of Beaver Mountain than you have ever seen before. Ta’sunke Witko will look down from those heights and see clearly the path where his feet are to walk.

  “To join Red Cloud on this journey to the white man’s country?”

  When you have asked on high, the Great Mystery will tell us … once you have made it to the mountaintop, forsaking your body of food and water. Once you have suffered enough pain that you are finally ready to listen.

  “Wakan,” he whispered as his body sagged. “Is death coming soon? Tell me,” he begged.

  There was no answer. Not from the Great Mystery. Nor a sound from his sicun.

  He looked up in surprise, consciously opening his eyes wider in the total darkness—breathless at the startling sight as his vision cleared: a milky cluster of countless stars brushed across the low dome of the sweat lodge just above his head. And as quickly as he began to shake with fear, the vision was gone and all was darkness again.

  “W-was that the star road?” he asked respectfully.

  It could have been nothing else. You’ve known it, seen it in the sky since your youth.

  “Each star is a Lakota soul taken from this firmament,” he responded, barely audible. “His earth life over so he can journey back to the Real World among the stars.”

  For a long time he sat hunched over, sensing the heat that rose to his face and chest gradually diminishing until the thunderous surge of blood pounding in his ears slowly subsided and he began to hear the muffled voices outside his dark world, hear the faint shuffle of feet passing this way and that. He had his directive: it was time to emerge from the belly of darkness.

  Slowly dragging himself onto his knees, he rocked forward onto his hands and felt his head sag between his shoulders. Starting around the rockpit, Crazy Horse inched toward the place he remembered the opening to be. His right shoulder brushed the willow limbs until he reached the gap and lunged forward.

  Of a sudden the cool night air slapped him in the face. His head and shoulders fell outside the lodge. He felt people murmuring over him, hands pulling him out and rolling him onto his knees, holding him up as a dipper of cool water was pressed against his lips.

  Swallowing, he remembered the vision, and slowly looked up, the water dribbling off his chin.

  It was night. Fully dark above him, where the stars glowed dimly in the blank void of the sky. He turned his head, steadied by hands, and searched. Turned some more, and still could not find it.

  The star road he had glimpsed inside the sweat lodge was not to be found anywhere in the sky. He filled with utter despair … knowing that, at least for now, even the spirits of past warriors and heroes of the people had turned their faces from him.

  This last difficult journey of his life he would have to make on his own.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Early July 1877

  “I think what she needs now is some rest, Seamus,” confided the army’s assistant post surgeon.

  Donegan studied the face of Dr. Valentine McGillycuddy with uncertain intensity. He trusted the physician, mostly because he was genuine, never having tried to be something that he wasn’t. Why, McGillycuddy had regaled Donegan with many a story of how, in those days before he came west to serve with the frontier army, he had started his medical career riding with the police ambulance corps in Detroit, treating wounded sailors on the rough-and-tumble streets, dragging in the most serious to the hospital wards.

  “Sh-should I be worried for her?” he asked the doctor.

  “Just a little exhaustion, I’m going to assume,” McGillycuddy said. Then turning the Irishman aside, and stepping away, he added in a low voice, “We don’t know all that we should know about the gentler species, Seamus. Their makeup, how they’re put together—we can study all of that. But … how women truly are different than we men,” and he wagged his head, “I’m afraid we’re going to be a long, long time in learning about these creatures we call our wives and mothers, sisters and friends.”

  Earlier that morning, Samantha had awakened with a thundering headache, and she had not gotten any better throughout the day. In fact, when she finally begged Seamus to fetch a fort physician, Sam was feeling so weak and puny she couldn’t budge from her pallet of blankets and two buffalo robes Donegan had made for their bed in a wall tent he had borrowed from the quartermaster, having pitched it down by the oxbow of Soldier Creek. At least they were close to Camp Robinson’s hospital.

  By the time Seamus got back to the tent with McGillycuddy, little Colin was crying for the attention his mother couldn’t give him and Samantha lay on her side, her legs drawn up, whimpering with the pain of the cramps knotting her lower belly.

  She confided that it was far worse than the pain she had endured while delivering her first child. Seamus had seen how that declaration clouded the doctor’s face with worry, McGillycuddy turning to asking the Irishman to leave the tent with the fussy child so that Samantha might be calmer, suggesting Donegan return to the hospital and ask Fanny to come back to the tent and help out. His examination of Sam was completed by the time Seamus and Mrs. McGillycuddy returned in a rustle of skirts, panting after she trotted all the way to keep up with the big-footed Irishman who dashed back with his son locked securely in his arms.

  “The way she was curled up there, clutching at her belly,” Donegan whispered as McGillycuddy led him a little farther from the tentflaps. From inside they could hear how Fanny cooed at the child, and talked quietly with Samantha. She was a calming influence on them both.

  “It seems to have passed for the time being, whatever it was. She’s had … There’s nothing to indicate to me that there’s something dangerously ill with her … insides, Seamus.”

  “You’re sure?”

  McGillycuddy stared up at the taller man, his gaze fixed on the older Irishman. “Listen, you thick-headed Mick. I want you to harken back to those days we shared together on the Big
horn-Yellowstone Expedition.1 Back farther still to Crook’s fight on the Rosebud.2 I’m not about to side-talk to an old fighting comrade. And surely not about the woman he loves as dearly as you love your Samantha.”

  “It shows, does it?”

  “Enough to know that you’d not do well if you lost her.”

  Breath caught in his chest before he could squeak out the words, “I-I’m not going to lose her?”

  “By heavens no!” McGillycuddy reassured him, reaching into a vest pocket. “Just give her one of these pills three times a day for the next two days, and make sure she can get to a latrine quick enough. I’ve got more up at the hospital when you run out of these.”

  “Latrine?”

  “These pills will pass right through her with the power of a steam locomotive, Seamus. She’ll feel weak as a kitten by the time these pills have worked their miracle on her.”

  He looked down at the pills in his big palm, then stuffed them down the front pocket of his canvas britches. “Starting when?”

  “Soon as she is able to swallow one of them, with lots of water. Make sure she drinks plenty of it.”

  With a deep sigh, Seamus nodded, and laid his hand on McGillycuddy’s shoulder. “When she’s doing better in a week or so, we’ll have a fine evening together. Have you and Fanny come down to our wee camp. I’ll go hunting perhaps, make it a treat for us all—something better than army pork or skinny cow. Samantha will cook up something special for dinner.”

  The doctor held out his hand to shake and called softly to his wife through the tentflaps. Then McGillycuddy said, “Give her plenty of time to see how she responds before you let her take on any responsibilities—if you know what I mean. Then I’ll count on us making an evening of it, old friend. How I’d like you and your Samantha to stay around the post for as long as you possibly can. Truth is, I think your wife is damned good medicine for my own!”

  He grinned a little, for the first time that afternoon, shedding a little of the apprehension as Fanny came out of the tent to hand Colin over to his father’s arms. “Those two have hit it off, ain’t they?”

  Laying his short morning coat over one forearm, McGillycuddy crooked the other for his wife to take hold of before they started away. “I’ll check in with her tomorrow, mid-morning. See how you passed the night.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” he said in a hush. “Gives me some peace knowing an old friend of the wars is here for to take care of my special ones.”

  He watched the couple smile and turn away, moving off through the lengthening shadows, back toward the hospital.

  “Seamus?”

  He turned at the sound of her weak voice from the tent. “Yes, Sam.” And started toward the flaps.

  “I could use your strong hand to hold in mine,” she said as he pushed through the flaps with the boy on his hip.

  Her color was a little better. That ghostly pallor had had him scared. Seamus Donegan had seen that same pasty gray on enough dying men.

  “Here it ’tis, my love,” he whispered as he began to kneel beside her pallet, scooping her fingers inside his big paw. “You’ll have mine to hold in yours … till all of eternity takes its last breath.”

  * * *

  He had lain here for what seemed like an entire turn of the seasons. In reality it had been three long summer days and now into a third night, waiting. Waiting.

  Crazy Horse had been gathered up by his friends from the front of that small sweat lodge, a blanket draped over his shoulders, then helped to the closest fire. There he was given small strips of boiled meat and a cup of cold creek water. Not a soul dared ask him about his time in the darkness. It was enough that he had emerged on his own, was hungry and thirsty. And, besides, he inquired if the five stones had been brought down.

  “Just as you directed the young men to do before you went inside the sweat lodge,” He Dog had replied.

  “Where?”

  “In the dance arbor.” Big Road was the one who answered. “And we arranged them just as you directed.”

  Slowly, he started to stand, still weak, but strong enough to look hard at those on either side of him who sought to help, then backed away when they recognized his harsh glare. “I must see them, and the men who danced for me.”

  The five boulders were arranged in a crude V, its opening facing to the east. A stone for each of the five dancers had been brought down from the side of Beaver Mountain by young, strong men. It was well after dark when Crazy Horse had emerged from the sweat lodge, so the fire’s glow welcomed him to the site where a crowd had gathered around the five faithful warriors, each of whom was leaning against a rock, eating for the first time in days, taking small sips of creek water, his every need attended to by friends and family. It brought Crazy Horse deep satisfaction to see this closeness. The indomitable strength of the Lakota had always been, and would always remain, in family and friendships.

  Crazy Horse came to sit among them, joining the five and their families at the fire that flickered off the rocks and the tired, haggard faces. These five who had offered their blood and their flesh in his honor.

  “Tomorrow I go to the top of the mountain,” he said quietly as the crowd fell to a hush around them.

  “To pray?” Kicking Bear had asked.

  Immediately Flying Hawk offered, “We will go with you.”

  “No,” he answered sternly. “The five of you have done more than I could have asked of any man, much less all five of you. This … no, this I must do on my own. There are answers I alone must seek up there. To hear the whispers of the Great Mystery, my ears and my heart must be quiet.”

  That night he had fallen asleep on the ground and among the good friends and cousins at that fire, rolled up in the blanket beneath a dark and starless sky. And when he had awakened in the coldest part of the day, at the first graying of the horizon, Crazy Horse went in search of his pony. He had returned to the fire with the gelding and a handful of white sage. Throwing some more limbs on the embers until the flames crackled, he held the first of the sage over the fire until it started smoldering. In the graying light, he brushed the smoke over the pony’s back, its strong flanks, its mighty legs, until the horse had been immersed in the sacred smoke. Then he smudged himself, completing the ritual by deeply inhaling some of the sweet, pungent incense.

  That done, he had tossed the smoldering sage into the low flames, turned, and led the pony out of the five rocks where the others still slept after their exhausting trials of the last four days. Among the plum and chokecherry thickets at the base of Beaver Mountain he located the game trail he had always taken to start for the top. Crazy Horse had climbed atop the pony, and kicked it into motion.

  Emerging from the trees at the top after a difficult climb, he had dismounted and turned the horse free, giving it a slap on the rump. If it should grow thirsty, it would find its way down the mountainside to the creek again, where it would once more be among friends and its own kind. He had watched it go, wondering if he would ever know that feeling, the serenity of being among his own kind.

  Having brought no blanket, he lay among the rocks and what tough grasses grew on the heights of Beaver Mountain. This was a place his body knew well, a place he had come to time and again to find answers that came to him nowhere else. The cold wind knifed deep into his bones. And here he was among the rocks, stones that contained the living spirit of the earth—that spark of life they threw off when they were struck together. Yes, he would lie among the rocks for as long as it would take, for these stones were the very flesh of this earth, the same earth that each day gave his people their life.

  The first night he had spent in agony, simply because he still was too much within his body, suffering the ground, every sharp pebble poking into his skin, and the cold that settled over him as the patternless stars came into view overhead.

  Crazy Horse spent the entirety of that next day sitting in the sun, clutching his small pipe in his hands, praying that he would be granted an answer. Over and over he had r
un his thumbs over the two inverted Vs, one on each side of the red pipestone bowl, brushing his fingertips across the five raised circles he had carved on the bowl. One for each of the five small stones he had rolled together at the top of this mountain that first time he came here to pray many years ago. This was his secret place, symbolized by the two prominences of this mountain and those five rocks commemorated on his pipe.

  But he did not smoke—would not until his prayer was answered. Often he thought of how White Buffalo Woman had been the one to bring the pipe and tobacco to the People, instructing them how the smoke was the rising of their prayers to Wakan Tanka, the Great Mystery. Crazy Horse would wait to smoke, wondering why the Creator was so long in giving him his answer.

  It was here among the stones, the inyan, that he came to dream himself into the Real World, to somehow flee from the dark despair of the Shadow World in which all seemed madness. Time and again, Crazy Horse had lost himself in dream, striving to glimpse what really was on the other side. With dream, as in a vision, he knew he was in touch with sacred forces. The power he received in his dreams became as much a part of him as were his arms and legs. For a long time now he had believed that his dreams were even stronger than the day-to-day reality of life itself.

  So it was that during the second night he began to drift in and out of dream, thinking of fights and battles and massacres. In the haze of growing thirst and hunger, he began to remember the events of so long ago in his life. As a youngster, Curly—his boyhood name—had witnessed firsthand the bravado of a young soldier chief who marched his soldiers and two cannon into a Lakota camp, demanding the thief who had stolen a white man’s cow along the Holy Road. The soldier chief and all his men were cut down where they stood; then the Lakota took down their lodges and hurried away.3

  The following year soldier chief Harney came looking to even the score. He found a camp of women and children and old ones on the Blue Water, and killed all who could not get away. Crazy Horse had not seen the massacre happen, but days later had come upon that camp. Never would he forget the sight of those bodies, young and old, or the smell of decomposing flesh. That wasn’t the camp of those who had slaughtered the soldiers, but it had been a Lakota camp just the same. An important lesson was being driven home to young Curly.