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

by Terry C. Johnston

  Clark almost felt sorry for Young Man Afraid, knowing how close he used to be to Crazy Horse, in their old army-fighting days together. But with his surrender, Young Man Afraid had vowed to make a new life for himself and his people, and had been doing everything he could to make things better for his band … whereas Crazy Horse took no interest in the affairs of the reservation. Young Man Afraid was looking beyond tomorrow, while his old friend Crazy Horse was still thinking only of the past. Clark felt his heart tug for Young Man Afraid—knowing how hard it must have been for him to suggest what the others were already agreeing to, nodding their heads as the chief spoke to Crook.

  “So say all of you?” Crook inquired. “Bat, ask each one of them if they are in line with taking Crazy Horse into custody.”

  One by one by one, the chiefs and headmen solemnly nodded their assent to making the arrest.

  Crook rubbed the flats of his sweaty palms down the front of his unbuttoned blue vest with a long sigh, as if wiping his hands clean of any blame in the coming confrontation.

  And Clark realized there would be a confrontation. Bloody and messy, and probably deadly too. Crazy Horse would not let himself be taken alive. The lieutenant quickly looked over the chiefs in the room, studying their eyes and faces, men he had begun to know. How many of these men realized, Clark wondered, that Crazy Horse was already a dead man because they knew he would not allow himself to be taken alive?

  “One thing is imperative, Mr. Clark,” Crook said. “These Indians must be in on the arrest. It cannot be made out to be the U.S. Army or U.S. soldiers arresting this notorious chief. Think of the way the press would play that up! No, when the soldiers go to make this arrest, they will be acting in concert with, and supporting, these chiefs and their warriors.”

  The general saw Clark nod in agreement; then he turned to Pourier. “Bat, tell the chiefs they will make the arrest. Say how important it is that it will be a show of these headmen taking control of a troublesome situation. How vital it is that this is a Sioux solution to a Sioux problem. The army is only going along to help if … if major trouble breaks out and there’s a break off the reservation.”

  Clark was euphoric. He never would have hoped for so stunning a solution! The chiefs murmured for a moment, their heads nodding; then Red Dog and American Horse voiced their strong support for the joint operation to arrest Crazy Horse in his camp.

  “I will leave the details of the operation to Lieutenant Clark here,” Crook said after the chiefs had offered their hand-picked warriors for the arresting posse. He turned and removed his rumpled coat from the back of a chair, draping it over his arm as he began to re-button his vest. “Captain Kennington, if you would be kind enough to arrange an escort for me back to the Sidney station so that I can catch a train to carry me on west. I have men and supplies already arriving at Camp Brown for this campaign to capture the wild Nez Perce who Generals Howard and Gibbon haven’t been able to stop.”

  “But you will, General Crook!” Clark cheered, buoyed by this opportunity to make Crazy Horse a prisoner. “If anyone can catch the Nez Perce, it will be George Crook, sir!”

  “Hera, hera!” James Kennington agreed. “I’ll go see to getting your escort formed up, General.”

  The colonel left the room as the chiefs continued to talk among themselves. Crook turned, speaking low and meaningfully to Clark, whispering so his words would be heard by no others.

  “Make this clean, Philo,” he said, using Clark’s middle name, how a mentor would address his protégé. “Do all in your power to pull this off without making a mess. You don’t botch it, there’s a feather in your cap and another rung in the ladder for you.”

  “You have my word, General.”

  Crook placed his hand paternally on the young lieutenant’s shoulder. “Whatever it takes—iron shackles or bald-faced lies—I want Crazy Horse out of here as quickly as possible and on his way to Omaha. I’ll leave word for Bradley and my staff to have the prisoner transferred from Omaha on to Florida.”

  “F-florida?”

  Crook looked at Clark strangely. “Yes. The Dry Tortugas. Where in the hell did you think we would send a man of Crazy Horse’s history?”

  “The Dry Tortugas,” he repeated. “Of course, General. It’s the only place where the bastard won’t ever be a thorn in our sides again.”

  He Dog could tell from the way Billy Garnett stammered his words that he was very upset, probably even scared. The half-blood interpreter had rushed off to find some of Crazy Horse’s old friends, he said, finally locating He Dog and Red Feather at the agent’s office more than a mile and a half from the Soldier Town.

  While Red Feather hurried away to tell Crazy Horse of the sinister plan that had been set into motion, He Dog and Agent Irwin hurried back to Camp Robinson, seeking out Crook, even soldier chief Bradley.

  “The commanding officer of this post wasn’t even invited to this little planning session with the chiefs?” Bradley roared as Garnett translated for He Dog.

  The four of them stood inside the soldier chief’s small office. Bradley went to the door, and shouted for a sentry to bring him Clark.

  “How did you expect to get away with this, Lieutenant?” he roared once William Clark had hastened into the room.

  “We’re not getting away with anything,” Clark argued. “This was the plan constructed by General Crook himself.”

  Bradley’s eyes narrowed. “So where is the general now?”

  Clark glanced at the door. “He’s on his way to the railhead at Sidney, sir. From there to Camp Brown to continue his preparation for—”

  “Who the hell did he leave in charge of this operation to arrest Crazy Horse?”

  Stiffening, Clark responded, “Me, sir. I was at the business of notifying the company commanders to ready their troops because we would be leaving the post tonight, accompanying the chiefs—”

  “You … you were readying my troops?”

  Clark swallowed. “Yes, sir. Under orders of General Crook.”

  “And just how long did you figure I would be kept in the dark about you using my troops to arrest Crazy Horse?”

  “As soon as I had everything in motion, I was going to report to you.”

  “Dammit, Clark!” Bradley roared. “I am your commanding officer. Not General Crook. And this is my post. The last time I looked you weren’t in command here, and neither is Crook. Do I make myself clear?”

  He shook his head slightly. “N-no, sir. Not clear.”

  “If there is going to be an operation to arrest Crazy Horse that will involve my troops, it will be under my orders. The very nerve of it!” and he slammed a fist down on his desk, with language and anger even He Dog could understand without Billy Garnett’s translation. “Going after a man like Crazy Horse in the dark! That’s the act of cowards!”

  Clark bristled. “W-we’re not cowards, General—”

  “Any man who will sneak up on another under the cover of darkness and take him at night is a coward in my book! We’re going to execute this in broad daylight—do I make myself clear, Mr. Clark?”

  “You’ve made your point, sir,” Clark backed down.

  “This operation of yours should be carried out by the light of day. The life of Crazy Horse is just as dear to him as my life is to me,” Bradley declared. His eyes fell to the floor and he stared at his boots. “It’s as plain to me as the rising sun that it was a mistake in the first place to give him a pistol and a gun.”

  The lieutenant said, “When he surrendered last May, I don’t think any of us knew it would turn out like this.”

  “Now it’s up to you to clean up the confusion you’ve caused,” Bradley said.

  “Confusion?”

  The colonel turned to Garnett. “Go to the chiefs. Be sure they understand that no one is going to arrest Crazy Horse tonight. Tell them they aren’t supposed to come with their warriors until we send them word that we are ready.” Bradley turned to glare at Clark, saying, “That’s when the soldiers w
ill go with them to make the arrest, when we have enough troops. I will go now to wire Laramie and see that they send me up some cavalry companies.”

  “How many do you propose, sir?” Clark requested.

  “At least four.”

  “I’ll make the request in your name, General,” Clark said. “With your compliments.”

  “You may carry my orders to have those troops sent up here, Lieutenant. But you don’t have my compliments, by any stretch.”

  “General Bradley,” Clark said apologetically, “these are General Crook’s orders.”

  “This is my post, Lieutenant—and you’re letting yourself step awfully close to insubordination.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Now what in blue blazes did you and Crook figure you were going to do with Crazy Horse if you managed to capture him alive?”

  “You and I are to see he gets put on a train and sent to Omaha. From there to the Dry Tortugas.”

  “Maybe it will be better for him to be out of here, away from his people for a while,” Bradley said. “Things might settle down.”

  When Billy quietly explained that to He Dog, the old warrior sensed the breath seeping out of his body and he gritted his teeth in shame and anger.

  “So you and Crook are taking Crazy Horse out of my hands?” Bradley asked. “Is that the plan?”

  “Yes, sir. To get the man as far away from here as possible, so he can’t cause any more trouble for you.”

  Bradley turned and stared out the one smudged window in his cramped office. When he finally spoke again, the colonel only said, “Lieutenant Clark, you have your orders. Get those troops up here from Laramie—on the double.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Canapegi Wi

  MOON WHEN LEAVES TURN BROWN, 1877

  BY TELEGRAPH

  Horrible Details of the Sacking of Saghra.

  The Turks Jubilant Over Their Successes.

  WASHINGTON.

  The Sitting Bull Commission.

  WASHINGTON, September 1.—Gen. A. G. Lawrence, of Newport, R.I., has accepted the position on the Sitting Bull commission representing the interior department and will act in conjunction with General Terry in conferring with the Sioux chief, provided he still remains in the British possessions.

  “We are alone?” asked Red Feather.

  Crazy Horse looked strangely at his brother-in-law, winded and excited as he was that early evening when he came running up to the nearly deserted camp. “Only your own sister is here. Why?”

  The younger man’s eyes were watchful, darting here and there. “Where is the trader’s daughter?”

  “She is staying the night at the agency,” Crazy Horse explained, sensing his brother-in-law’s unease. “Visiting her family. So we are alone.”

  “Truly?” Red Feather asked.

  “We can talk, brother. Rest a moment, because you need to catch your breath.”

  “There is so little time,” Red Feather huffed in excitement, his eyes wild and wide. “You never came to the council grounds.”

  “We watched from the hillside for Three Stars, but he never showed,” he answered. “Why should I go somewhere I am not wanted, go to talk to someone who doesn’t show?”

  “Woman’s Dress turned him around. He told Three Stars you have plans to kill the soldier chief.”

  If such a betrayal hadn’t been so serious, Crazy Horse would have felt like laughing. He heard a tiny gasp, and turned to see Black Shawl’s eyes fill with terror above her hand that kept the sound of utter fear rushing out of her throat.

  “Did Three Stars believe Woman’s Dress?”

  “It seems so,” Red Feather admitted. “He sent on his two interpreters to the council grounds, where they talked only to the agency chiefs.”

  Crazy Horse took his eyes off his wife, saying to his brother-in-law, “How can they think that I would plot to kill Three Stars? I have given my word and we have already untied our ponies’ tails! Have these old chiefs so muddied Lakota honor that the wasicus can believe such a foolish lie as this?”

  “I see the White Hat’s hand in this,” Crazy Horse grumbled. “When I first came in, he acted as if he had just become my new best friend. But when he found out I was not going to be his lapdog like all the rest of Red Cloud’s and Spotted Tail’s men, the White Hat turned his face against me.”

  “Three Stars told the chiefs they were to gather at the Soldier Town, but not in a big group.”

  “Yes, he would want them to come in twos and threes, so it would not look suspicious to any of our friends.” Crazy Horse felt a tensing of that warrior spirit that lay deep beneath his breastbone, like the flexing of a muscle he had not used in a long, long time. “They went to the Soldier Town?”

  Red Feather nodded and gulped. “All of the chiefs who have whispered behind their hands went into a secret council with Three Stars, the White Hat, and another little chief too.”

  “Behind their log walls?”

  “Yes,” he answered his brother-in-law. “I did my best to find a place in the shadows to hide and listen, but the soldiers came and drove me away.”

  “So how is it you know these things they said about me?”

  “I hid and watched until their council was over,” Red Feather disclosed. “I saw the half-blood translator come out. I followed him until I could talk to him in secret. He told me of the plans to come for you.”

  “They are coming for me?” he asked, his chest tightening.

  “The agency loafers—they were asked to pick their own men. A lot of them are coming here together,” Red Feather admitted. “Along with some soldiers … to take the Crazy Horse village.”

  “Aiyeee! All this for one lone man?” Crazy Horse said, shaking his head. “I can see their cowards’ faces—these brave men who come in a crowd for me.”

  Nodding, Red Feather said, “The White Hat offered a sorrel horse and a lot of the wasicu money for the man who killed you.”

  “So this little chief really doesn’t want to make me a prisoner, does he?” he asked, knowing he had finally discovered the truth about the White Hat after so many moons of lies and bad talk behind his back.

  “No Water stood up and made a vow that he would be the one to kill you himself.”

  “Ah, my old friend, No Water,” he growled. “He could not kill me as a man, so he comes after me with many others, like a pack of hunting dogs running down the fox.”

  “Even Young Man Afraid…”

  He saw how sad that made Red Feather to tell him that. And Crazy Horse swallowed hard with the stab of that news. Young Man Afraid, a childhood friend. So long, so long.

  “How about Little Big Man?” he asked with anxiety. “My old akicita friend who has become an agency metalbreast?”

  “The half-blood did not mention his name,” Red Feather admitted. “I don’t think he is the kind to come after you in a pack like the other yapping dogs.”

  With a sigh of relief, Crazy Horse reached out and touched Black Shawl on the arm. “By the time they get here, we will be gone a long time.”

  “Three Stars has given orders for extra bullets and guns to be handed out to the friendlies.”

  “When?”

  “The half-blood told me they will come for you tomorrow morning.”

  “That does not leave us much time to go,” he said with bitterness. “There is so much to do to get so many packed up and started away from this place—”

  “My brother,” Red Feather interrupted, putting his hand on the chief’s arm, “you must no longer think of everyone else. Now is the time to think only of yourself … because most of the others who have depended upon you for so long—now you won’t be able to depend upon them.”

  He studied Red Feather’s eyes for some time. “I am alone?”

  Squeezing his brother-in-law’s forearm, Red Feather said, “Not completely. Your truest friends will always be at your back.”

  “When I first came to this place, I wanted nothing more than peace a
nd quiet, to be left alone,” Crazy Horse explained with deep regret. “Instead, I was talked to and talked to by the white man—morning, day, and night. So many voices talked to me until my mind was a whirl of confusion and I could not sleep. I haven’t slept in so many nights.”

  Turning, Crazy Horse reached behind him and took from the leather loops that rifle the White Hat had presented him the day when the Northern People became scouts for the army. He ran his hands down the barrel, caressing the smooth wood of the stock. Then handed the weapon to his brother-in-law.

  “Go now, brother. Tell the others everything, exactly as you have told me. If they are going to stand beside me, they must be ready to ride at any moment. That is, if … they are going to stand beside me.”

  Red Feather could barely choke out the words as he stopped at the doorway: “We will never desert you … even unto the death.”

  Sept. 3, 1877

  Hqs., Dept. Missouri

  General Crook

  West-bound Train

  Union Pacific Railroad

  I do not like the attitude of affairs at Red Cloud Agency, and very much doubt the propriety of your going to Camp Brown. The surrender or capture of “Joseph” in that direction is but a small matter compared with what might happen to the frontier from a disturbance at Red Cloud.

  Philip H. Sheridan,

  Lieut. General

  The White Hat’s scheme to capture Crazy Horse did not go off as he had hoped the morning of the third because Lieutenant Clark was still waiting for those cavalry troops to arrive from Fort Laramie.

  All that day and on into the night of September third, when three additional troops of Third U.S. Cavalry rode in, Billy brooded darkly on that—why it was going to take so many Lakota and so many hundreds of soldiers to take one man into custody. If the soldier chiefs were worried about all the Northern People putting up a costly fight to protect their leader, as Lieutenant Clark argued to justify the overwhelming force he was gathering, then to Billy’s way of thinking all those spies the White Hat had in the Crazy Horse camp weren’t doing a very good job at all.

  While it was true that the Hunkpatila chief had surrendered with more than 200 warriors back in May, by now, in the first flush of September, those still fiercely loyal to Crazy Horse had to number less than half-a-hundred. Why, even his old friend He Dog had moved his own clan’s lodges away from the camp weeks ago, out of concern for the safety of the women and children in that highly charged atmosphere of rising tensions.