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

by Terry C. Johnston

  After he had turned, he listened to the shuffle of moccasins on the ground, the murmurs growing behind him, along with a faint rustling of the layers of starched cloth. “I’m sure as hell glad Samantha doesn’t own anywhere near as many of those god-awful petticoats!”

  “Out here in this country,” Fanny protested firmly, “I don’t have that much of a chance to get dressed up and go anywhere, Seamus Donegan. So I’ll have you know, I figure your Samantha would love to dress up with just as many petticoats as I am wearing anytime she had the opportunity to fluff and prance.”

  “Fluff and prance, eh?” he repeated, watching how the doctor was carefully listening to Black Shawl’s breathing, his ear pressed against her chest. “I’ll bet you’re right. She does make quite the stir when she is all trimmed out.”

  “You can turn around now,” she announced finally.

  He turned obediently.

  “If you would help me down,” Fanny requested, “I’d like to show these women that I can indeed stand on the two legs I have hidden under my riding suit.”

  Dragging the three horses over behind him, he dropped their reins and immediately held up his hands. Leaning into them she eased herself to the ground.

  “There,” she said, pushing herself away so that she stood alone, then delicately lifted the hem of her gown so that she could expose the toes of both boots for all to see. “When was the last time for Samantha?”

  “I beg your pardon, Fanny. The last time for what?”

  She glanced at him but a moment, then looked back over the women and children crowding in to have themselves a look at this astounding revelation. “The last time Samantha got the opportunity to fluff and prance?”

  He cleared his throat, giving himself a moment more to reflect. “I suppose it were … when we had Colin baptized. Back at Fort Laramie it was.”

  “When was that?”

  “Er—a … back, the last part of January,” he answered, finally sure.

  “And the time before that?”

  Seamus swallowed, his hands tightening uneasily on the reins of those three horses. “Had to been our wedding day, Fanny.”

  “A fine husband you are,” she scolded him with a grin. “Give a gal a chance to shine on her wedding day, but not again until the day she christens her firstborn? Shame on you, Seamus Donegan! You’re just like every other man—”

  “Fanny!” McGillycuddy called. “Could you come over please?”

  As she stepped past the tall Irishman, Fanny said, “You just think about what I’ve said, Seamus.”

  He followed her over to the small group standing around the physician and Black Shawl, joining Fanny, Crazy Horse, and Helen Laravie. McGillycuddy held out his hand and helped the Sioux woman get to her feet.

  “Fanny,” he said very expressively, glancing at the translator, “this is the wife of Crazy Horse. Her name in English is Black Shawl.” Then he had Helen explain his wife’s name to Black Shawl.

  “Fon-nee,” Black Shawl repeated unsurely.

  “And this—” the doctor began as he clutched his wife’s shoulders, turning her slightly so she would face the Sioux war chief. “I am proud to introduce my new friend, Crazy Horse.”

  With a bow of her head and a hint at a curtsey, Mrs. McGillycuddy said, “My husband has told me so much about you, Crazy Horse.” Immediately she turned to the half-breed woman, expecting Helen to translate.

  Seamus watched the war chief do nothing in particular to acknowledge the white woman. He did not nod, nor offer his hand. Instead, he looked for a moment into Fanny’s face, turned and glanced at Helen again, then finally looked over his shoulder, gazing directly at the Irishman.

  The Sioux said something so quiet that his words were all but under his breath.

  Helen Laravie looked at Donegan, and translated, “He has seen you before.”

  “Yes,” Seamus said, returning the war chief’s intent stare. “I saw him stop the shooting at the sundance a couple weeks back. And before that, I remembered seeing him the day I brought my family up from Fort Laramie, back in June.”

  While he was explaining, the young woman had begun to translate in her halting Lakota. As he watched, Crazy Horse wagged his head and spoke softly to the interpreter.

  “He says no,” Helen said. “He saw you before. In a fight … big battle. Army and Lakota—the Sioux against the army and the Shoshone.”

  Now it was Donegan’s turn to wonder at that recollection. “I fought his warriors on the Tongue River. I was with Miles—the one they1 call the Bear Coat—when our scouts captured a few Cheyenne women.”

  After she had translated and the chief answered, Helen said, “No. Was not that fight. Summer. On Red Flower Creek.”

  “You mean the Rosebud?” McGillycuddy asked.

  “The same,” she replied, turning again to gaze up at the tall Irishman. “Crazy Horse says you were a brave man, one of the bravest among many very brave men that day. Because of that, he has remembered your face, your eyes, for a year now.”

  Swallowing, he recalled the noise and terror of Royall’s retreat, then turned to the physician. “You and me was there, Doc. The Rosebud. Crook’s fight. Crazy Horse come near to overrunning us three times.”

  McGillycuddy shook his head. “I only saw it from afar, Seamus—because I wasn’t with Royall’s men. Only heard all the stories later, how you were nearly swallowed alive.”

  Crazy Horse whispered to Helen, then held out his left hand.

  “He wants to shake with you, his hand nearest the heart—because the right hand does all manner of bad things,” she explained.

  Donegan took it, about ready to speak, when Crazy Horse continued.

  Helen translated, “He remembers you staying behind, at the rear of all those frightened soldiers. Each time his warriors rushed in close on their ponies, you and a few other soldiers, some of the Shoshone too, all of you turned your faces into the Lakota charge.”

  “Tell him yes … I remember.”

  “You were not a soldier chief?”

  Donegan wagged his head, a lump in his throat, remembering the fallen. “No, not even a soldier.”

  After Crazy Horse quietly spoke a little more, the half-breed woman went on, “He remembers when a soldier chief was knocked off his horse at the top of the flat hill. Crazy Horse saw you stand over that soldier’s dead body and fight like a mountain panther to keep his warriors from rushing in and striking coup on that fallen soldier chief. You, and one other man—a warrior—stood there. A Shoshone perhaps?”

  “Yes,” Seamus answered as Crazy Horse finally released his left hand.

  “The chief says you are brave man to protect the body of a fallen friend who has been killed,” Helen translated. “Crazy Horse had a good friend fall in battle with the Shoshone many summers ago. When he thinks about it … that memory makes him sad … because he wishes he had been able to stand over the body of his friend and fight off the enemies. But … Crazy Horse says he could never get that close to save his friend’s body.”

  Donegan cleared his throat, finding it suddenly clogged with this talk of courage, friendship, and faithfulness, talk of fidelity in battle—standing before the mightiest enemy on the northern plains. “Tell him that the soldier chief who fell from the horse, he was not my friend.”

  The chief’s eyes bore into the white man even more intently as Helen Laravie explained that to him.

  “Captain Guy Henry?” McGillycuddy asked.

  “Yes,” Seamus whispered, not taking his eyes off Crazy Horse’s face. “And be sure to tell him that the soldier chief was not dead.”

  “‘He wasn’t killed?’” she echoed Crazy Horse’s question.

  “No, he lived.”

  Here McGillycuddy spoke up again, pantomiming the wound. “Like you, Crazy Horse. Shot through the face. A terrible wound, as yours must have been. But he survived no matter how hard we worked to kill him afterward.”

  With the faint hint of a smile for the Irishman, Crazy
Horse spoke softly, then took a step backward as Helen began to translate.

  “He says he honors you even more than he thought at first,” she said. “Because the soldier chief was not your friend, and because you were saving his life … not just protecting his body from the enemy. That is the bravest act of a warrior: to offer his own life to protect the life of another, even when it is not his kola, his best friend. As he wanted to protect the body of Hump, his kola.”

  A tight fist seized Donegan’s chest. “There was lots of brave men in that fight,” he said quietly. “On both sides, Crazy Horse. I am honored by your words, but I ain’t no special leader. Ain’t no soldier chief. Tell him I gave that up many a year ago in a war between the white men. I … I’m just a fighting man. A man who’s glad he don’t have to fight no more.”

  Crazy Horse studied the Irishman’s eyes a moment more, then gripped Black Shawl’s arm before he spoke again and Helen translated.

  “The chief says he is glad too. He wants you to know he was just a fighting man, protecting his Lakota people. The women and the children, he fought for them. Just a fighting man who is glad like you—glad he won’t have to fight no more.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Mid-July 1877

  “Will you show me the knife the big soldier chief gave you when you became a little chief among the soldier’s scouts?” Billy Garnett asked Crazy Horse, while Black Shawl passed out fluffy hunks of the fry bread she had cooked in a spitting kettle set over the fire outside the lodge.

  The hot dough burned his fingers. After dropping the bread on that stiff piece of rawhide parfleche they were using as plates, the half-breed interpreter placed his finger and thumb inside his mouth and sucked on them, not only to ease the pain but also to lick them clean of the savory grease Black Shawl used to fry her bread.

  “Say that American word again for me,” Crazy Horse requested.

  “Sergeant,” Billy said in American.

  Reaching behind him, Crazy Horse brought out the leather sheath, inside it a knife with a bone handle he handed to the young half-blood. “I like the sound of that wasicu word. Sar-jent.”

  Garnett took the sheath and pulled out the knife to inspect this gift from Lieutenant Colonel Luther Prentice Bradley on the occasion of the swearing in of the Northern headmen as scouts who would serve under Lieutenant William P. Clark. Handing the knife back to Crazy Horse, he resumed using his mother’s Lakota language: “It is the rank of a little chief among the soldiers. Not so high a chief as the White Hat—”

  Interrupting, the Oglala leader snorted, “I would not dare to think that I would be above White Hat!”

  The other men at the fire laughed along with him.

  “But neither are you an ordinary warrior like the rest of the soldiers either,” Garnett explained. He watched Crazy Horse’s eyes drop back to the low fire glowing in the pit at the center of the lodge. And asked his question again: “It is a good thing to you—this making the vow to serve as a scout?”

  “Yes,” the war chief answered, looking at his new knife with admiration. “I wear this gift all the time now. It is a fine weapon.” Crazy Horse laid the sheath aside and went back to tearing at his fry bread, his fingers shiny with grease. “Look here at Little Big Man, this good friend beside me. See how he wears his soldier coat to my dinner.”

  “This is a special occasion,” Little Big Man protested proudly, his mouth still full of the stringy beef Black Shawl had prepared for their guests at this dinner. “I am akicita!1 I always wear my very best for a special occasion!”

  In recent days, Crazy Horse had been officially sworn as a noncommissioned officer in the U.S. Indian Scouts. Although a quiet ceremony by army standards, it had been a momentous occasion, during which he, along with some fourteen other Northern headmen who had been enlisted as privates, promised to serve the White Hat faithfully. With his strong tradition as one of the most loyal of Crazy Horse’s akicita leaders, Little Big Man had eagerly stepped forward to serve as a soldier scout.

  Billy turned back to his host. “What about your soldier coat?” he asked, his eyes glancing about the lodge to look for it hanging from the dew-liner rope. “Where is it?”

  Crazy Horse shrugged. “Oh, it is a nice color. Yes. And the buttons are very shiny too. Like an oiled gun they shine brightly. But … the cloth is too heavy for me to wear.”

  Big Road fingered the wool of Little Big Man’s shirt and asked, “What did you do with your shirt, Crazy Horse?”

  “I gave it to Black Shawl for safekeeping,” he answered and continued to tear at his bread. “If she needs it to keep herself warm while she is healing from the coughing sickness, she can wear it. But … I have never liked such things.”

  “Even when the women and boys took all the soldier shirts and leggings off the white bodies at the Greasy Grass!” Little Big Man roared, slapping a knee, but quickly fell silent as every eye in the lodge turned to Billy Garnett.

  “I know all about that fight,” Billy confided quietly, with only the slightest edge of anxiety, sensing how the others in the lodge suddenly went quiet and wooden. “The soldiers came after you. They charged your camp. Lakota and Shahiyela warriors had no choice but to fight those soldiers. There should never be any shame for killing all the soldiers you could kill that day. It was a great fight.”

  “Little Big Man is right!” Big Road enthused with a happy sigh that lit up his old and wrinkled face. “There were lots of soldier clothes for the women to strip off the pale, fish-belly bodies when the battle was over!”

  Finally Little Hawk spoke up across the fire, looking directly at Garnett when he declared, “Our friend, Crazy Horse, has never been one to wear fancy clothing or an elaborate bonnet either.”

  “Only that full skin of the red-tailed hawk,” Good Weasel declared.

  Jumping Shield said, “It was a good fight.”

  “We were all proud to follow Crazy Horse into battle that day!” He Dog added.

  The other headmen nodded knowingly, and they all went back to chewing at the stringy beef, tearing at their fry bread, and drinking their soldier coffee.

  With an unselfconscious ease that surprised Garnett, Crazy Horse eventually broke that uneasy silence, looking directly at the half-breed translator. “You must start teaching me to eat in the white man’s way.”

  Billy noticed how Crazy Horse held up three of his fingers on one hand and made a poking motion toward the slab of beef on his rawhide platter. “They call it a fork,” and Garnett pronounced the last word in English.

  “Fork,” Crazy Horse repeated the sound without too much trouble and smiled like someone proud of himself for it. “Yes. I will need to know how to use this fork before I go east to visit.”

  Garnett said, “After you protested that you wouldn’t go for so long, White Hat was very happy when you finally told him you would journey with Red Cloud and the others, to see the wasicu grandfather.”

  When Crazy Horse was silent for a long time, Looking Horse observed, “Red Cloud and Spotted Tail want our chief to go with them when they make their protests to this wasicu grandfather. So that the strong word of Crazy Horse will be listened to, and the government will not make the agencies move to the Muddy Water River.”2

  But Crazy Horse did not elect to take up this subject of tribal politics. Instead he set his bread down and stared at Garnett. “I have another question of you.”

  “About eating?”

  “No,” the war chief replied. “How does a man … How will I … relieve myself if I am in the wooden house that rolls on the iron road?”

  “In the wooden house, the soldiers will show you a small room where you can go to be by yourself,” Billy explained with an impish grin, thinking how foreign a concept this must be to a people who did not even understand the white man’s use of privies and latrines. “There you will be in private, where you can remove your breechclout, and will sit down to relieve yourself.”

  Crazy Horse thought about that, an uncertain
shock crossing his face. “What I leave behind … it stays in that small room?”

  “N-no!” Billy said with a chuckle. “It drops through a hole below you, and falls on the ground of the iron road.”

  “Ah, this is good,” the chief responded with a wry grin. “I imagined how that small room would smell even worse than those little lodges the white man uses to relieve himself, instead of going out to the bushes.”

  The Lakota headmen all nodded, knowingly, slyly glancing at one another as they grinned with that joke on the backward wasicus.

  After taking a few more bites, Garnett broke the silence. “Is it true what I am told: that you never danced at a sun-gazing ceremony?”

  Little Big Man leaped in, “Crazy Horse has never taken part in any dance our Northern People have ever held before coming here to the agency.”

  Looking Horse nodded. “He’s never danced.”

  “I leave the sun-gazing to others,” Crazy Horse explained, holding up his tin for Black Shawl to re-fill with hot coffee the moment she entered the lodge with a steaming, blackened pot. “And I am not an energetic young man anymore.”

  “Especially when the only reason we are dancing is to put on a show for the white people,” Little Hawk grumbled.

  “For the longest time, all the wasicus had to do was to talk about the wild Indians of the north—in those summers you were fighting for the Powder River country,” Garnett explained. “Now these whites finally have a chance to see those same untamed Indians: dancing, drumming, singing—acting every bit as wild as the frightening nightmares they had of you!”

  They all began to roar with hearty laughter; then Crazy Horse commented, “They do like coming out to our camp to watch the young men and women dance, don’t they?”

  “And they think Indians always wear blankets!” He Dog sputtered around a piece of meat in his mouth. “So they want us to wear our blankets … even when it is now the mid-summer moon!”

  Billy leaned forward slightly, in that manner of a man about to confide a secret confidence, and said to the Hunkpatila headmen, “I have overhead many of these white men and women talking about how excited they become just to watch the dancing and the drumming, knowing they are looking at people who, only a few moons ago, were making war on their army and killing their soldiers. It makes their hearts beat so much faster to think they are watching your warrior bands do what you have always done in freedom—”