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

by Terry C. Johnston

  “As soon as I heard of the stabbing,” Fanny sobbed as she wrapped her arms around her husband, “I grew so frightened. But it helped when you sent someone with word that you were all right, and going to stay with the death watch until Crazy Horse died. Come in, Samantha. Oh, please come in.”

  With the Donegans bedded down on pallets in the small bedroom McGillycuddy used as a sometime office, and he and Fanny stretched out on their bed, still fully dressed, Valentine pulled his watch out of his vest pocket and stared closely at its face in the dimmest of lamplight. The hands stood just shy of one A.M. He set it on the upturned hardtack crate that served as a bedside table and interlaced his fingers across his chest as Fanny nestled her head against the groove of his shoulder.

  At the door, he listened to the low, whispered cadence of Touch-the-Clouds singing a mournful death song. In sign, the Minniconjou chief had pantomimed that he was going to post himself at the McGillycuddys’ bedroom door. There he would sit through what dark hours were left until morning, when fears of the night and the unknown could be dispelled, and Crazy Horse laid to rest.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  6 September 1877

  Lieutenant Jesse M. Lee sat at the small writing desk in Colonel Luther Bradley’s office, his hands trembling as he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the small diary covered with a soft kid leather. Quickly he flipped through it from the back, until he located the first blank page. He gazed at his wife, Lucy, for the longest time as he collected his thoughts, grateful that she had finally fallen asleep on the pallet he had arranged for her beneath the small window.

  With a sigh he slid the diary beneath the lamp he turned low. Staring at the flickering flame as he rolled the wick down to dim its light, Lee felt anger and frustration bubbling within his belly. There was nothing left for Lee to do but lay the blame where the blame belonged. Clearly, the U.S. Army, and Lieutenant William Philo Clark in particular, had overestimated Crazy Horse’s political ambitions. While Sherman, Sheridan, Crook, Bradley, and Clark too could maneuver, flatter, and cajole both Red Cloud and Spotted Tail to accomplish what the white man wanted to see done by those Sioux leaders … they simply could not fathom that Crazy Horse held no ambitions to become an important chief, no desire to be vaulted above others.

  He had wanted only to be left alone.

  Eventually, he gazed down at the blank page. On the topmost of those faint blue lines, he wrote in the date, then began to form into words the tragedy that had overtaken them.

  Thursday, Sept. 6, 1877.

  No one can imagine my feelings this morning. I often ask myself, “Was it treachery or not?” To the Indian mind how will it appear? My part in this transaction is to me a source of torture. Started Touch-the-Clouds and Swift Bear to Spotted Tail agency in the ambulance, and told them to look out for the driver. Explained matters to Touch-the-Clouds and he seemed fully satisfied that I was not to blame. He thought “his people would censure him for coming down with Crazy Horse.”

  I had a long talk with Gen. Bradley. He did most of the talking. I felt so miserable that I could scarcely say anything; but told the general how our course was to get Crazy Horse, and that I felt that MY power had departed; my influence over the Northern Indians had gone; I was short of my strength; that this whole trouble was the result of mismanagement on the part of Philo Clark, and mis-interpretation on the part of Grouard.

  Finally he set the pencil aside and rested his throbbing head upon his arm. Closing his eyes to the tears, Lee shuddered with grief. Not for Crazy Horse, because there was no longer any purpose to grieve the dead.

  Rather, Jesse Lee mourned for the living, for Crazy Horse’s people. Where were they to turn? What would become of them now?

  Headquarters Dist. Black Hills,

  Camp Robinson, Sept. 7th, 1877

  Adjutant General

  Department Platte, Omaha.

  Sir:

  When Gen. Crook arrived here on the 2nd inst. he ordered me to surround and disarm Crazy Horse’s band the next morning …

  Crazy Horse and his friends were assured that no harm was intended him; and the chiefs who were with him are satisfied that none was intended; his death resulted from his own violence. There was a good deal of excitement among his people following his death, but it is quieting down. The leading men of his band—Big Road, Jumping Shield, and Little Big Man—are satisfied that his death is the result of his own folly, and they are on friendly terms with us. Crazy Horse’s band is being reorganized under Big Road, a moderate, prudent man, and I think most, if not all, the band can be kept quiet.

  Very respectfully, your obed’t. serv’t.

  L. P. Bradley, Lieut. Col. 9th Inf.

  BY TELEGRAPH

  News from the Northwest—Death of Crazy Horse.

  Indians Driven Out of the Black Hills.

  All Scotland Uniting to Honor General Grant.

  Annual Reunion of the Army of the Tennessee.

  THE INDIANS.

  Claiming the Black Hills—Crazy Horse Reported Dead.

  CAMP SHERIDAN, September 4.—Shedding Bear, with fifteen lodges of Lame Deer’s band, numbering about eighty persons, surrendered this morning to Major Burke, of the Fourteenth Infantry, commanding this camp … These are the Indians that have been committing depredations in the vicinity of the Black Hills, and their coming in leaves that country and the Big Horn country entirely free of Indians …

  CHICAGO, September 6.—Orders have been issued for the apprehension of some of the principal agitators among the Indians in the disturbed regions of the west, with a view of placing them in confinement in Florida, a practice which has proven effective in quelling disorders among the Indians in the Indian territory and elsewhere. Army officers here do not anticipate any serious commotion on account of the death of Crazy Horse.

  It surprised McGillycuddy to find the two of them on the front porch, tall shadows in the gray pre-dawn light. Touch-the-Clouds sat on one side of the door in complete silence, his back against the wall, and Donegan was reclining in a ladder-back chair. Both of them appeared to be listening to the distant keening from the Sioux camps. Both men lost in their own faraway thoughts.

  Likely the two of them are thinking about the same north country, but for different reasons, McGillycuddy reflected.

  Touch-the-Clouds would be brooding on what had been until only months ago—the freedom and their ancient way of life come to an abrupt end. And the Irishman would be yearning for the freedom those free and open plains always gave him, no matter that in recent days he had talked more and more of returning to Montana to fight another Indian war.

  One man whose heart had been broken when freedom was torn from him. The other a man whose very heart hungered after what had been ripped from the Sioux they both had harried, chased, and fought through long months of heat and dust and endless rains. But the Sioux and Cheyenne had been defeated, herded onto these reservations.

  As the inevitable result of his inability to live confined and useless, one solitary man had been killed, a man whose very way of life had ended when he decided he would bring his people in to the agency—knowing that he was throwing away everything that he had ever lived for. Knowing that the reservation would eventually mean the death of him.

  With some crude sign, he made Touch-the-Clouds understand they would now return to the adjutant’s office where the body of Crazy Horse rested. Behind them Donegan’s chair clattered on the planks of the porch.

  “You going over to where you left him after he died?” Seamus asked.

  “Want to come?”

  Donegan glanced a moment at the tall Indian, then said, “Yes. Do what I can … to help. He was a … a…”

  “I think I know what you’re trying to say, Irishman. A noble enemy. A man you fought, but came to respect?”

  “That’s close enough, Doc.”

  As they neared the office the sun was just beginning to splash the eastern horizon with a brilliant bloodred, a crimson so vivid
that it reminded Valentine of the strips of meat Crook’s soldiers had ripped from the flanks of barely dead horses during that starvation march after fighting Crazy Horse’s warriors at Slim Buttes.

  “Sky’s bleeding this mornin’, Doc,” Seamus whispered as the eight sentries at the front of the building watched the two of them approach with the tall Indian.

  “It’s got good reason to cry too,” McGillycuddy added. But there wasn’t a cloud to be found marring the morning blue.

  After asking one of the soldiers to fetch the officer of the day, McGillycuddy entered the office with the Irishman and Touch-the-Clouds, finding the body outstretched in a corner, resting on the blankets on the floor, completely covered with his own red wool blanket … just as Valentine had left things.

  “May I look at him one last time?” Donegan asked.

  For a moment, McGillycuddy looked at the Minniconjou chief. Touch-the-Clouds seemed to understand the desire of the white man and nodded, stepping over to kneel beside the body. Seamus knelt opposite the doctor as Valentine pulled back the red blanket.

  How pale he looked already. Never had been near as dark as his Sioux brethren. But his pallor was all the more striking now. McGillycuddy had just repositioned the blanket and they were standing when the door opened.

  “The old man is coming,” Lieutenant William Clark announced as he came in with two more officers on his heels.

  “Bradley?”

  “No. I think it’s Crazy Horse’s father,” Clark explained. “They were coming this way.”

  “They? How many men does he have with him?” Valentine asked.

  “Just a woman. Old like him.”

  “Probably one of Crazy Horse’s stepmothers.” The doctor went to the window, looked out, and saw the pair approaching the soldiers who were about to stop the Indians. “She was here with Worm last night, keeping watch.”

  Clark went to the open door and shouted to the sentries, “They can come in. This is the dead man’s parents.”

  Stepping aside, the guards let the old couple climb onto the low porch, then quietly enter the office.

  As they knelt beside the blanketed form on the floor, Clark stepped to McGillycuddy’s elbow and whispered, “I’ve sent for the wagon, and that coffin I asked for last night.”

  “We can turn him over to his parents?”

  “Sooner we do, the better the general will feel,” Clark said. “Bradley’s going to be nervous as hell till Crazy Horse is off this post.”

  Valentine watched how the pair of old Sioux stroked the arms they had pulled free of the blanket they left over Crazy Horse’s face. “Alive or dead, that man still brings fear to a white man’s heart.”

  Clark swallowed. “Damn shame things had to turn out like this. But he brought about his own undoing.”

  “Did he, Lieutenant Clark?” McGillycuddy asked, feeling the fury rise in him, turning to gaze steadily at the young lieutenant. “Or do you say that only because he was the one Indian you discovered you would never control?”

  Clark opened his mouth to speak as the snort of horses and the rattle of bit chains announced the arrival of the springless wagon1 right outside the door.

  Adroitly stepping between the physician and the red-faced lieutenant, Donegan offered, “I’ll help bring in the box.”

  Inside the cramped office, Valentine, Donegan, and Touch-the-Clouds dragged off the top of the coffin, set it against a wall; then the three of them gently lifted Crazy Horse and laid him into the crude pine box before replacing the warped and ill-fitting lid. Clark called in two more soldiers. After they turned their Springfield rifles over to the lieutenant, the two young men knelt with McGillycuddy and Donegan, raising the coffin off the floor, carefully positioning it on their shoulders.

  After squeezing through the narrow doorway, the four of them slid the box into the back of the wagon.

  Clark stepped over to the soldier who leaned against the front wheel, his arm wrapped lazily around the brake handle. “Soon as you get the body to the village, I want you to get on back—”

  “Beggin’ pardon, Lieutenant,” the middle-aged soldier interrupted as he straightened, “but you can’t make me drive this wagon into that camp.”

  For a moment the officer stared at the older soldier, working that around in his head. Then Clark turned and looked over each of the sentries standing at the front of the adjutant’s office, some watching him with great curiosity, others showing the barest interest.

  “Any of the rest of you?” he asked. “All I need is a couple of volunteers to take this wagon into the camp across the river.”

  “Ain’t what I’d call safe duty, Lieutenant,” observed a different soldier.

  A third said, “Not something for a sane man to do.”

  While Clark was looking from man to man to man, Valentine figured he had to agree with the reluctance of these enlisted men. Wasn’t a savvy soldier who would willingly step forward and volunteer to take the body of this particular chief into a village where the angry occupants had been nursing all night long on their hatred for the white men who had killed one of their leaders.

  “Might be best to find some of Red Cloud’s men to drive the wagon,” McGillycuddy suggested.

  A hard expression on his face, Clark stomped away across the parade. In a few minutes he was back with two of his U.S. Indian Scouts, both of them proudly dressed in their blue soldier coats. Without waiting for further instructions from the lieutenant, the pair clambered up the front wheel and settled on the plank seat, where they turned to peer over their shoulders at the tall chief who stood between the old man and woman.

  “Maybe they’d like to make the ride in the back of the wagon, Lieutenant,” McGillycuddy suggested. “Sit with the coffin.”

  Clark made sign to Touch-the-Cloud, offering to let the three of them ride in the wagon with the dead relative’s body, but the chief only shook his head.

  “No, they want to walk,” explained Clark before he signaled the pair of scouts at the front of the wagon.

  The two-horse hitch lurched into motion, followed by those three mourners who clung near the rear gate, as this sad little cortege started toward the shallow crossing of the sluggish river.

  For a moment McGillycuddy watched as the wagon inched its way through the trees. Then he gazed up at the cloudless blue sky, wondering why it wasn’t raining.

  EPILOGUE

  September 7, 1877

  Seamus had been unable to sleep, what with fussing over all the affairs he must see to before setting out in the morning.

  Two new, strong horses purchased from Long Joe Laravie, one of the traders set up for business near the Red Cloud camps, along with a pair of new blankets, and another brace of Colt’s revolvers. Before all the Sioux drifted onto the post grounds yesterday afternoon, Donegan had given a going-over to three new Smith & Wesson pistols trader Johnny Dear had behind the counter in his store at nearby Red Cloud Agency.

  “Company calls ’em the Scofield model,” Dear had explained. “G’won—put ’em in your hand and see how they feel to you. Break it down there, right: with the catch on the frame that breaks the barrel and cylinder forward. Looks to me like they’d be quicker to reload than these Colt’s you’re wanting to buy.”

  Sure enough, with a flick of the thumb the Irishman could break open the cylinder for reloading—six cartridges at a time—instead of loading one cartridge at a time before he had to turn the cylinder to the next chamber in the Colt’s pistol.

  “What’d I tell you?” Dear proposed. “You want to try two of those Scofields instead of these Colt’s you picked out?”

  “No,” Seamus answered, wagging his head as he laid the pistol down on the scrap of blanket Dear brought out when showing off his pistols. “What’s a man on horseback going to do? Neither gun makes it easy for me to reload in a fight, what with me having to hang onto my horse’s reins. Only choice I got in a scrap is to stuff the reins between my teeth.”

  Dear scratched at his two-
day growth. “Hadn’t give a thought to how a man’d get that done in the saddle.”

  “Aye, there’s the rub,” Seamus replied. “So tell me what you want for them two Colt’s I picked out here. If a man can’t reload up in the saddle and on the run … then he sure as hell needs to have more’n two belt guns on him, Johnny.”

  Eighty pounds of salt pork and another fifty of hardbread he would load onto the packhorse. That and all the ammunition he was taking along for that big Sharps buffalo rifle a packer had put in his hands after the Rosebud fight in June of ’76.1 Not to mention the cartridges he was packing for the Winchester, a model ’73, and all the ammunition Seamus figured he might need for those four single-action Colt’s. No frills this trip. The horses would be burdened with enough weight as it was. Speed was what he was counting on: crossing north-northwest to Pumpkin Buttes, striking almost due north from there for the mouth of the Tongue, praying he would reach the cantonment of the Fifth Infantry before Nelson Miles put his regiment of fighters into the field against those Nez Perce who were coming his way.

  While he wasn’t taking along the new straight razor with the ivory handle that Sam had bought him because, as he had explained to his wife, he was going to grow a beard against the coming of winter winds to the northern plains, he had purchased a new toothbrush with stiff, brown bristles … in addition to a pair of photographs he would carry in the breast pocket of his wool shirt, right over his heart.

  Back in late June, when the post and agency was being overrun with one photographer after another, all of them eager to be the first to capture on a glass plate an image of the wild Northern chief Crazy Horse, Donegan had ended up wrangling a deal out of one of the best of the shadow catchers. Two days later the three of them had dressed in their finest, and scrubbed their faces raw, rid now of the dirt and grime and smudge from campfire smoke. After Samantha had used her fingertips to brush what little hair Colin had atop his head, she had taken up her brush and turned her attention to her gray-eyed husband. When she finally had his shoulder-length hair neatly parted in the middle, she finished up by giving a quick going-over to his mustache and Vandyke goatee.