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

by Terry C. Johnston

  At his right hand rode White Thunder, one of Spotted Tail’s headmen. An agency Indian. A good man, Crazy Horse thought, but nonetheless a loafer. At Crazy Horse’s left, in that honored position, rode his uncle Touch-the-Clouds. And right behind the Hunkpatila leader was Black Crow, Spotted Tail’s trusted comrade. This Sicangu headman carried a soldier carbine across his thighs. Another coffee-cooler. Neither White Thunder nor Black Crow had fought a battle, made war against the wasicus, in many a summer, many a summer … but here they were, escorting him and Touch-the-Clouds as if they were important enough to ride in the shadow of so honored a pair of Northern fighting men.

  Black Crow’s narrowed eyes clearly showed he was attempting to disguise his fear with haughty indifference. Neither those darting, furtive eyes nor his trembling finger poised over the trigger of that soldier carbine he carried mattered to Crazy Horse. Behind those two Spotted Tail men rode a double-handful of trusted warriors—friends of Touch-the-Clouds—men who had fought beside Crazy Horse in the heat of summer battles, and in the bitter cold of winter skirmishes too. While they did not carry any soldier carbines, these warriors were nonetheless armed with traditional Lakota weapons … and imbued with the same warrior spirit that continued to whisper inside the head of Crazy Horse with every step he took on this road to meet the wasicu agent.

  Out of a gap in the trees ahead came two riders. Behind them came a soldier wagon, with two men inside. He recognized one of the horsemen—the half-blood interpreter called Bordeaux, who had been present at the council when the Grabber made his lie about going north to fight with Three Stars until there wasn’t a white man alive. And the other was the agent for his uncle’s reservation.

  This is a strange thing!

  “Meeting the agent on this road?” he asked his spirit guardian.

  Yes. Ever since the day when you surrendered and came in from the north country, the agents and soldier chiefs have called you to come to council. But now it seems this one is eager enough to talk that he comes to you.

  “A good sign,” Crazy Horse whispered. “Perhaps—as Touch-the-Clouds promised—I can trust this one to straighten out the lies said about me.”

  After Crazy Horse raised his arm and called out to the approaching white men, the agent turned to speak to the half-blood interpreter.

  Translating the agent’s words, the half-blood said in Lakota, “I was coming to the camp of Touch-the-Clouds, where I heard you had come. I received the messenger you sent, with word that Crazy Horse had arrived. This must mean there is serious trouble at Red Cloud’s agency. It is a dangerous thing to run away when so many are wanting to take you prisoner.”

  “So you knew about the soldiers’ plan to take Crazy Horse prisoner?” asked Touch-the-Clouds.

  The white agent nodded.

  Then the interpreter said, “Come back to the agency with us. We will make you safe from harm while we work hard to make all the lies straight again.”

  “We were already on our way to see you,” Touch-the-Clouds explained. “Crazy Horse wants to talk. I told him that you could be trusted to do what is right to make the lies and trouble go away so he can come live in peace with me. Here at his uncle’s agency.”

  For a moment the agent listened as the translator made the white man words; then he said, “The agent cannot say if Crazy Horse can stay here at his uncle’s agency. That will be decided by the soldier chief at Camp Robinson. But the agent wants you to know that he will do everything in his power to make sure you are treated fairly and have a chance to tell your story—so you can correct those poisonous lies the Grabber and Red Cloud have told about you.”

  The eyes of both Touch-the-Clouds and Crazy Horse went to stare at the half-blood’s face in surprise.

  Crazy Horse spoke for the first time, asking, “Do you believe in my truth?”

  Nodding, the man called Bordeaux said, “Yes. With my own ears I have heard the bad words that can come from the Grabber’s mouth. As for myself, I don’t think you would be fool enough to murder Three Stars in such cowardly treachery. Crazy Horse may not be all things good … but I do not think he is a coward who would murder an unarmed man during a peace talk.”

  “Because of your honor, I want you to stay close to me when I talk to the agent this afternoon,” Crazy Horse requested. “I want someone who I can trust when they put my words into the white man’s talk.”

  The agent and the soldier turned their wagon around, and together with the white men and their interpreters, all continued toward the agency buildings, the log stockade coming in sight through the shimmering afternoon heat waves. Along the road were gathering those women and old ones who had overheard the first news that Crazy Horse had reached their reservation. Of a sudden, a great pounding of hooves and shouts from many voices struck his ears. From their left appeared a large party of horsemen, all of them armed, beginning to yell the instant they spotted Crazy Horse. Leading this force was his uncle, Spotted Tail.

  Behind him the Northern men began to holler. Crazy Horse turned as one of Touch-the-Clouds’ warriors whirled his pony around and galloped off, heading back to the Mnicowaju camp to report the threatening arrival of these friendlies. Spotted Tail halted his men with a wave of his arm, and the horsemen quickly spread out in a broad crescent, the horns of which nearly surrounded the Northern men. Both sides hollered and boasted, shouting challenges to one another, shaking their weapons—either firearms or bows—making curses against the other band until Touch-the-Clouds told his warriors to be silent.

  Not to be outdone, Spotted Tail quieted his men, who outnumbered the Northern warriors by more than ten-to-one. More Mnicowaju warriors arrived from the camp of Touch-the-Clouds, narrowing the odds down to no more than two-to-one, but now the scene could not have been more tense.

  Swinging out of his saddle, the agent waved his arms and shouted for quiet. Then he turned back to face Crazy Horse, speaking loudly in his white man tongue. Bordeaux talked loud too, assuring his translation could be heard over the noisy clamor of hundreds upon hundreds of voices.

  “Crazy Horse. You must go back to the Soldier Town at Red Cloud’s agency. That is the only way you can tell your story to the big soldier chief there, the soldier chief who will decide about the lies said of you.”

  “Go back to Red Cloud’s agency?” shrieked many of the Northern men.

  Other Northern warriors bellowed, “They are cowards and back-shooters there!”

  “We will never let Crazy Horse go back to be murdered by Red Cloud’s cowards!”

  From behind Spotted Tail came boasting challenges, arguing that Crazy Horse was an Oglala and as such did not belong here.

  You do not belong here? Where do you belong if not with these people? If Red Cloud’s Bad Faces have turned their hearts from you … don’t you deserve a home with your uncle’s people? To camp with Touch-the-Clouds’ northerners? To live out the rest of your days camped beside your father?

  The Sicangu of Spotted Tail became restless behind their chief, daring to press closer to Touch-the-Clouds’ warriors. At the same time, these Mnicowaju veterans were not about to be intimidated as they urged their ponies forward, growling their own threats.

  Of a sudden, his spirit guardian spoke again.

  You are the only one who can stop the fight from breaking out right here, Ta’sunke Witko! You are the only one who can prevent Lakota from spilling another Lakota’s blood!

  “Stop!” he roared aloud, flinging his red blanket across his lap and raising both arms in the air—his hands empty to show that he was unarmed. “We are all the same people! Do not hurt your relations!”

  Mitayake oyasin! Yes—we are all related!

  Like he had passed his empty hands over both angry sides, the voices were suddenly stilled and this patch of open ground between the agency buildings fell deathly silent. Only the restive, nervous ponies snorted and pawed at the trampled earth.

  The white agent spoke to his interpreter; then the half-blood said, “Crazy Hors
e, the wasicu says you are a good man with your people. You just proved it to him—stopping the trouble so no blood will be shed here on your account. I am sure none of your people would see you hurt. And neither will I. I promise you—if you will put your trust in me—I will see that you get to Red Cloud’s agency unharmed, so you can talk with the soldier chief there.”

  Instead of responding, Crazy Horse stared at the sky, the late-afternoon sun slanting through the dust raised by all those hooves like shafts of gold the color of cottonwood leaves in autumn. Autumn, when Three Stars promised us our hunt. Autumn, when the Hunkpatila always went in search of the buffalo, to make meat and take the hides that would keep the People fed and warm through another winter. Autumn was a crucial time for the People.… With no hunt, they would have to live on the white man’s skimpy handouts of moldy flour and stringy meat from the spotted buffalo.

  “If Crazy Horse has no words to speak,” Spotted Tail announced in his dramatic and stentorian voice as he slid from the back of his pony, “I have some words to say to him.”

  Crazy Horse watched his uncle step across what little open ground remained between the two opposing forces, the tall chief stopping right before his nephew.

  “For many winters you have roamed around like a fire in the north. You are of the Oglala. The Oglala are your people. Something good should happen to you with them. Instead, you have run away like a wolf with its tail between its legs.”

  Grumbling arose on both sides, but Spotted Tail raised his arm and quieted the angry crowd. “Look around you, Crazy Horse,” he commanded. “At my agency the skies are clear, and the air is still and free from any dust stirred up by trouble. This is my tribe. I am the chief here. Spotted Tail … is the chief. Every Indian must obey me. Sicangu, Mnicowaju, and Hunkpatila too. You say you want to come here to live in peace. If you stay, you must listen to me in all things. We never have trouble here because I am chief. That is what I have to say to you!”

  Your uncle—he did not even acknowledge that you are his nephew! Look how he stands, haughty like Red Cloud! He wants to separate you from his family, don’t you see? The great Spotted Tail has no nephew named Ta’sunke Witko!

  “These are my words, Crazy Horse,” Spotted Tail continued, his face passive, not showing the bond of family between them. “If you stay here, you must obey me!”

  In the background, Crazy Horse heard the muffled clicking of more gun hammers than he could ever count.

  Suddenly, the face of an old friend appeared through the crowd pressing in on all sides. Chips! The shaman who made for him the bullet-proof medicine of the eagle’s heart!

  Apparently alarmed by the noisy emphasis given to Spotted Tail’s demands by the clicking of all those gun hammers, this Bad Face Oglala had leaped into the open, grabbing the soldier chief’s arm.

  “Crazy Horse is a brave man,” Chips pleaded. “But today he is tired and his medicine is too weak for him to die. If these Sicangu cowards have to kill anyone … tell them to kill me! Kill me instead!”

  “No,” injected the interpreter as he eased the excited shaman back toward the Mnicowaju line. “No one is going to be killed today.”

  With deep appreciation in his eyes for what Chips had offered, Crazy Horse turned to stare at his hard-talking uncle.

  I still have a few good friends … but who are you, Spotted Tail? The warrior of old? Or another wasicu dog loafing around the white man’s forts?

  “You are not Sicangu,” Spotted Tail continued haughtily when Crazy Horse did not give him the honor or courtesy of a reply. “You are Oglala. That is why I want you to go back to your people before something bad happens to you here. If you come live on this reservation, you must do what I tell you.”

  Just like the white man, he scolds you! Spotted Tail—the one who was arrested and put in a prison, coming back a changed man. A chief who heeds the scolding words of the white man … and now he scolds you as if you were a naughty child! “You must do this! You must do that!” Or what will happen? Or what, Ta’sunke Witko?

  Spotted Tail warmed to his harangue. “The best thing for you to do is go back to your people. Some of my chiefs will accompany you back to your people as soon as possible. I have spoken!”

  This great Sicangu chief who once spilled the blood of many wasicu soldiers—he is saying you are no longer his relation? Scolding you to go back to the friends of Red Cloud who lie about you, plot against your life? This is all Spotted Tail has to say to his nephew?

  “‘It is time that Crazy Horse comes into the agent’s house,’” announced the half-blood after Spotted Tail finished, translating the white agent’s words. “‘You will be safe there.’”

  He turned to look at his other uncle. Touch-the-Clouds nodded. “Yes,” was all Crazy Horse said to the agent and his interpreter.

  Inside the log building with the two wasicus, along with Touch-the-Clouds and Spotted Tail too, Crazy Horse felt like a wild animal that had been trapped. He continually gazed outside where he saw the two lines of angry warriors snarling like starving dogs growling over a bone.1 The Northern men would protect him from the Sicangu, who wanted Crazy Horse so they could turn him over to Red Cloud’s scouts, to get him off their reservation, to put an end to this trouble.

  But then the interpreter was talking, asking why he had left his camp.

  “I fled only when a great war party of soldiers and scouts came to take me prisoner. They brought two wagon guns with them too, marching toward my camp of women and children. All this might to take one man into their custody? I dared not let the very young and the old, the innocents, be hurt when it came to fighting. And … be assured it would come to fighting when they took me prisoner.”

  “Does Crazy Horse intend to fight instead of going back to speak to the soldier chief so he can get the lies laid to rest and put behind him?” asked the interpreter.

  “When I came in I gave my word to the White Hat, and later to Three Stars,” Crazy Horse said. “I gave my promise that I wanted peace, that I would not make war again. Then the soldier chiefs came to me, asking me to go back on that war road for them. I said no. They became very angry with me—wanting me to break the honor of my word! Finally I said I would go north with them, camp my people right next to the soldiers, and we would fight until every Nez Perce was killed.”

  “So those were the words twisted by the Grabber?”

  Crazy Horse nodded. “Yes. He made Three Stars believe I was not to be trusted. I never plotted to go on the warpath against the white man, or to kill Three Stars.”

  “But today you ran away to the camp of Touch-the-Clouds?”

  “Yes,” and Crazy Horse looked into the face of the wasicu agent. “I brought my wife here, so she could be with my relations, with the people who could help her. Please, understand that I only want what was guaranteed my people when I came in to surrender.”

  The half-blood asked, “What were you promised?”

  Tell him what you were promised, Ta’sunke Witko. Tell this white man you trust exactly what you want from him before you give yourself over to the soldier chief at Red Cloud’s agency.

  “White Hat and Three Stars told me I would have my own agency in my old country,” Crazy Horse said quietly in that hushed room, sensing that his feet were already walking an uncertain road. “I want to know—now—if someone will promise me that my people will have their own agency … before I am taken away from them.”

  Those last words the interpreter made for them caused the two white men to rock back in their chairs and look at each other strangely. Frantic, Crazy Horse hoped this interpreter he was trusting had not made a mistake like the one the Grabber had committed.

  “You know you must leave your people?”

  “Yes. I want you to go tell the soldier chief the truth I speak … before I am made to leave this land.”

  “Your words are good, Crazy Horse,” the interpreter said. “But you yourself must go to talk about these things with my chief at Red Cloud’s agency. I w
ill promise no harm will come to you. And I promise that I will help get your people moved to this agency.”

  Crazy Horse considered that, then turned to Spotted Tail to ask, “Uncle, after I go explain all these things to the soldier chief, can I come live beside my father, among the Northern People, here on your reservation?”

  “If you obey my orders, and the orders of the agent,” Spotted Tail said. “When you go back to your people at Red Cloud’s agency, I will give you a good horse to ride as a gift, and send some of my chiefs to ride along with you.”

  This man who had once been a close relation, had been his uncle, brother to his father’s second and third wives—this Spotted Tail had become a different animal for the time he had suffered in the white man’s prison. Made over in the white man’s image. So now the only relations he still had on this reservation were his father and his mother’s uncle, Touch-the-Clouds. With deeply sickening regret, he realized he had nothing left among the Sicangu.

  First his old friend, Red Cloud—chief of the Bad Faces—had turned away from him. And now his uncle had thrown him away too.

  “I trust you,” he said sadly when he had turned back to the agent. “And I trust your promises.”

  But … you are a warrior, Ta’sunke Witko! Always have been a warrior. And as a protector of the Lakota People, you have always been prepared to throw your life away if need be.

  “‘It is nearly sundown, and I am sure you haven’t eaten all day while you were riding here,’” the interpreter spoke the agent’s words in Lakota. “‘For tonight, I will give you over to the care of Touch-the-Clouds. You will sleep in his lodge. Come the morning, you and Touch-the-Clouds will return here … so that we can start on our journey to see the soldier chief at Red Cloud’s agency.’”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  5 September 1877

  Camp Robinson, Neb., Sept. 5, 1877.

  General Crook,

  Cheyenne.

  Major Burke sends word that he, with Touch the Clouds, Swift Bear, High Bear and Crazy Horse are coming in ambulance to-day. [Crazy Horse] will be put in guard-house on arrival. I think he should be started for Fort Laramie to-night and kept going as far as Omaha, two or three Sioux going with him so that they can assure people on return that he has not been killed. I hope you will telegraph Gen. Bradley. Everything quiet and working first-rate.