CRAZY HORSE

by Kingsley M Bray

  While the infantry hurried to reload, Grattan ordered the fieldpieces to fire toward the Miniconjou tipi, but the nervous gunners misjudged the range. Before the soldiers completed reloading, Brule warriors overwhelmed Grattan’s line, killing the lieutenant and five of the gunners. The soldiers and gunners ran, and hundreds of Brules poured after them, exultantly shooting down stragglers until every man was slain.

  Nearby, Man Afraid of His Horse drew up his pony. The line of Oglala warriors, six hundred yards long, was angled across his path. Although he urged them to prevent the Brules from finishing off the soldiers, the warriors quietly refused to intervene, holding their chief’s bridle until the last soldier was dead. Then Man Afraid of His Horse led the Oglalas homeward.

  The involvement of Oglala warriors, including head akicita Red Cloud, in the closing minutes of the fight demonstrated the volatile nature of the situation. Man Afraid of His Horse worked hard to maintain council consensus around keeping the peace. That night heralds harangued the Oglala village, ordering the restless young men not to leave.11

  Man Afraid of His Horse sent Lieutenant Fleming word that his people had played no significant part in the affair. He added that the Oglalas “would establish their camp wherever [Fleming] said, and that they were ready to assist him if he desired it.” Then the Oglalas crossed the North Platte, heading for buffalo grounds along the south fork of the Cheyenne River.12

  Disaffected Miniconjous and vengeful relatives of Scattering Bear sponsored a war pipe to unite Lakotas in reprisals against the Americans. Curly Hair’s family, related to both groups, once more came under pressure, but the council still rejected all efforts to involve Oglalas in hostilities.13

  Scattering Bear, who died of his wounds late in August, had pleaded with his relatives not to avenge his death, but his kinsmen led the reprisals. In September, two war parties stole mules from Fort Kearney on the lower Platte. Such raids, with no fatalities, served notice of a break in friendly relations, but on November 13, six kinsmen of Scattering Bear significantly raised the stakes. Four men—Scattering Bear’s brother Red Leaf, half-brother Long Chin, cousin Spotted Tail, and Black Heart’s Son—with two youths, a nephew, and a second brother of the chief, crossed the North Platte and ambushed a mail coach thirty miles southeast of Fort Laramie. They killed three men and carried away ten thousand dollars in gold coin.14

  Later in November the Brules hosted a massive gathering on the Niobrara River. Winter operations were threatened along the Traders’ Trail between forts Pierre and Laramie, and the following season, all settler parties on the Overland Trail would be attacked. If the Americans sent troops, they would be repulsed. Brule warrior societies joined the Miniconjous in sponsoring the war pipe that was circulating through the Saone zone.15

  Through spring and summer, raiders struck the herds of settlers, traders, and Loafer Lakotas along the Overland Trail between Ash Hollow and Platte Bridge. Late in June a Miniconjou war party from north of the Black Hills attacked emigrant trains near Deer Creek, killing three people. The Brule leadership tried to divert summer war efforts, organizing a large raid against the Omaha tribe. Oglala chiefs continued to demonstrate their commitment to peace by returning stock stolen by Miniconjou raiders—Curly Hair and his family once more in the unenviable role of mediators. Man Afraid of His Horse led the Hunkpatila band south to the upper Niobrara. Despite the absence of buffalo herds this near the Overland Trail, Man Afraid of His Horse and his headmen succeeded in “restraining and preventing their young men from joining hostile bands.” All Lakotas now awaited the expected military response from the Americans.16

  Washington had indeed decided to chastise the Lakotas. General William S. Harney took command of a force of six hundred men, but ahead of him, the Indian Office had dispatched a new civilian agent, Thomas S. Twiss, who arrived at Fort Laramie on August 10. He acted quickly to separate peaceful and hostile Lakotas, declaring the North Platte River “the boundary between hostile and friendly Sioux” and ordering all friendly Lakotas to move immediately south of the river.17

  The Hunkpatilas were divided over the impending war. After a year of enforced peace, Man Afraid of His Horse no longer dared compel his council. Faced with Twiss’s ultimatum, headmen were allowed to make their own decisions. Beginning on August 20, family groups began crossing the North Platte at Ward and Guerrier’s trading post, eight miles upstream from Fort Laramie. Curly Hair’s father at length decided to follow, and for over a week, bands drifted in piecemeal. On August 29 Agent Twiss assigned the Oglalas a campground on Laramie Fork, twenty-five miles west of the fort.18

  Two-thirds of the Oglala tribe was represented in Twiss’s peace party. From the Brules, the response to the agent’s summons was less encouraging. Upon news of Harney’s march, the Brule village had broken up. Favoring war or simply frightened, more than half the people moved north toward the Black Hills. By September 5 Twiss had located four hundred Oglala and Brule lodges in a united peace party village thirty-five miles west of Fort Laramie. They anxiously awaited news of Harney’s march into their country.19

  On September 2 Harney reached Ash Hollow on the lower North Platte. Three miles across the valley on Blue Water Creek, just within the war zone, stood forty-one lodges of Brules and Wazhazhas. Two miles upstream were eleven lodges of Oglalas, Miniconjous, and Cheyennes. These people represented an uneasy compromise between war and peace factions. Band chiefs like Little Thunder and Iron Shell may have been inclined to heed the warnings from Twiss, but warriors like Spotted Tail, Curly Hair’s uncle, were determined not to accede to American demands. Spotted Tail’s stance won out when the Brules sent Harney word “that if he wanted peace he could have it, or if he wanted war that he could have that.”20

  Through the small hours of September 3, Harney moved his command across the North Platte. The dragoons cut across country to envelop the Oglala camp, while Harney and the infantry marched up the east side of the Blue Water. The Brules had begun preparations to move as soon as scouts had alerted them to Harney’s approach, but when first light disclosed Harney’s column a mile downstream, the people broke off their preparations and started up the valley, abandoning tipis and tons of dried meat. Harney secured a parley to delay the village until he knew that the dragoons were in position, then he ordered the infantry to advance. Caught between the two wings of Harney’s command, the warriors fought with desperate bravery to cover their families’ escape across the Blue Water. The compact body of people made an easy target for infantry fire. Men, women, and children were cut down until, some thirty minutes after the battle opened, the survivors crested the slope east of the creek. From a total of about 350 people in the camps, almost half had been killed or captured—staggering losses to the Lakotas.

  At Fort Laramie on September 7, the peace party chiefs conceded to Agent Twiss that Harney’s action had been justified. After dividing his captives, sending part under guard to Fort Kearney, Harney marched up the North Platte to Fort Laramie. Twiss arranged a meeting with the peace party chiefs on September 22. Man Afraid of His Horse and Big Partisan “begged piteously” that their people be spared further reprisals. Harney was stern. He announced that he would presently march through the interior of the Lakota country to winter quarters at Fort Pierre. The war was still on, he insisted, and the peace party must remain south of the North Platte deadline, the boundary Twiss had set to demarcate friendly from hostile tribes. His victory at the Blue Water was punishment for the deaths of Grattan’s command. Now Harney demanded that the peace party follow up the Blue Water fugitives and secure the surrender of the mail coach war party and the return of all stolen stock. Once these conditions were satisfied, Little Thunder might sue for peace. If he did not, intimated the general, the Blue Water captives would be turned over to the Pawnees—an image that Lakotas would readily interpret as meaning their torture and death.21

  Harney permitted the anxious chiefs three days to discuss his terms but closed with the warning that “they must do what he
asked or fight.” The Great Father in Washington had been indulgent of his Lakota children, but now he was angry and demanded reparations. Sustained military action would follow until “their buffalo would be driven away, and. . . the Dacotahs would be no more.”22

  The chiefs returned home, and all adult males quickly agreed to Harney’s terms, sending akicita envoys to secure the mail coach raiders.

  In the peace party village, the nervous consensus to placate Harney masked much disquiet. On hilltops around the village, scores of red cloth offerings were tied to secure the favor of the spirits and liberate the Brule captives. Curly Hair, a pious youth, doubtless joined in the prayers. For Curly Hair the defeat at Blue Water, the captivity of many of his relatives, and the humiliating terms imposed on his people capped two years of mounting tension between Lakotas and Americans. During those years, his family had come repeatedly under pressure to honor hunka obligations to Miniconjou relatives and join in reprisals against the Americans. After the death of his stepmothers’ cousin Scattering Bear, Brule kinsmen like his uncle Spotted Tail added their voices to the demands for vengeance. But a deeper threat, aimed at the Lakota people’s independence, registered in the youth’s reflections. Curly Hair’s unease at the events of 1855, as his band repeatedly moved camp at the whims of Twiss, Harney, and other soldier chiefs, was recalled in oral tradition.23

  Still only fourteen years old and unproven in war, Curly Hair was in no position to take the warrior’s path. Family ties bound him to the same tiyospaye in which Man Afraid of His Horse lived, and his father had warily approved the consensus for peace. But misgivings were natural in a brooding boy whose deepest instincts had been formed in the conservative environment of Kapozha, where his father and grandfather had long embodied a tradition of minimal relations with the wasicu. Those instincts were only confirmed by the youth’s deep affinity with Miniconjou comrades like High Backbone and his respect for relatives such as Spotted Tail, now proclaimed a wanted criminal by the U.S. Army.

  As for any young person, adolescence brought emotional turbulence into Curly Hair’s life. The awkward threshold between childhood and adult life was no easier for nineteenth-century Lakotas to negotiate than it is today: the same conflicts of interest between the sexes and generations were present in Curly Hair’s teenage world. For a Lakota youth, it was time to seek resolution of these issues by begging the wakan for a vision of guidance that would clarify his future course and assure him of spiritual protection. It is tempting to believe that the acute inner conflicts triggered by the Lakota political crisis were also fundamental to Curly Hair’s state of mind as he told his family that he was ready to “cry for a vision.”

  Two

  THUNDER DREAMER

  5

  CRYING FOR A VISION

  Moon of the Black Calf, September 1855: During the days following news of the Blue Water disaster Curly Hair spoke earnestly to his father about his decision to cry for a vision.1 Now in his midforties, the older man had gained a reputation over the previous decade as wicasa wakan, a holy man with powers to foresee the future. He stood in an ancient tradition of Lakota spirituality, one that Curly Hair profoundly respected. Moreover, Crazy Horse was a Thunder dreamer, and Curly Hair confided that in dreams he had been told that he too would receive power from the Thunder Beings.2

  Whatever tensions had marked their relationship since the death of Rattle Blanket Woman, the shared concerns of Curly Hair’s new visionary life would foster a renewed intimacy between father and son. Curly Hair would first undergo the purificatory rites of the sweat lodge.

  Trusted friends like Horn Chips, another Thunder dreamer, aided Curly Hair in cutting willow saplings and lashing the springy boughs into a dome-shaped framework about six feet across and four feet high. The earth at the center of the sweat lodge was dug out, then carried carefully outside to mark a path ending in a low mound symbolizing Unci, Grandmother Earth. Near the mound, the helpers prepared a ritual fire. First sticks representing the Four Directions were carefully laid, while Curly Hair was instructed to paint red a number of smooth round stones. Then the sticks were capped by the stones, and the fire lit.

  Meanwhile buffalo robes were flung over the willow framework. A holy man entered and, after strewing the floor space with sage and tying tobacco offerings to the framework, placed pinches of tobacco around the center hole. He incensed the lodge with lit sweetgrass braids and filled a pipe for Curly Hair. By reverently placing in the bowl pinches of tobacco representing each of the Sacred Directions, the holy man ensured that the totality of wakan powers was present in the pipe, making it a channel of sacred potency. Finally, he sealed the bowl with a plug of buffalo tallow and tied sprigs of sage to each end of the stem. Then the holy man crawled outside and instructed Curly Hair to lean his pipe against the Grandmother Mound, its bowl facing the Thunder Powers of the West. All participants then stripped to breechclouts and followed the holy man back inside. The holy man took his seat at the rear, Curly Hair at his left. A helper passed through another pipe. The rest sat along the inner wall, praying quietly.

  An assistant carried four white-hot rocks on a forked stick and placed them in the center hole, marking each of the Sacred Directions. As each stone was laid, the holy man touched to it the foot of his pipe bowl, and the seated men with bowed heads murmured thanks. A pipe was smoked in solemn communion, then the holy man ordered the lodge closed, and the helpers outside pulled down the door flap.

  Darkness enveloped the interior. Curly Hair strained to hear the hushed voice of the holy man intoning prayers. As eyes accustomed to darkness, they made out the pulsing glow of the stones. Breaking off his prayers, the holy man ordered Curly Hair to implore the powers for aid. The youth began to cry and pray. Steam hissed as the holy man dashed water onto the stones. “Ho, Grandfather!” cried all as steam released the sacred energies of the stones. Louder, the voices joined in prayer. Briefly, the door opened, and one of the helpers passed through Curly Hair’s pipe. Holding its stem to each shoulder, Curly Hair cried to Wakan Tanka, “Be merciful to me! Help me!” before passing the unlit pipe around the circle. The helper then took it outside and leaned it against the Grandmother Mound, pointing east. The door was closed, and the heat mounted again. Sweat pricked the skin, and the men and youths dabbed at their bodies with sprays of sage.

  The holy man began to talk to Curly Hair, reiterating the solemnity of the vision quest. He asked how long Curly Hair wished to fast and pray: four days and nights, the youth replied. What guidance did Curly Hair hope to receive? Awkwardly, hinting at his misgivings over the situation of the Lakota people, the youth explained that he wished “for [a] vision and power to serve his tribe.”3 This was unusual: most youths wanted power only to steal enemy horses, to live long, or to charm the village girls.

  Four pauses punctuated the prayers and lectures. Helpers threw up the lodge coverings, permitting the group time to relax, changing the mood to broad joking as they gulped water noisily or poured it over their heads. Then new stones were brought from the fire. Each time the holy man imparted practical advice and spiritual counsel, indicating the high place where Curly Hair should go to cry for a vision. Friends who had themselves dreamed of Thunder, like his father and Horn Chips, should accompany him to prepare the sacred place. After the fourth session, ending with the Lakota amen—mitakuye oyasin, all my relations!—Curly Hair crawled out the door to sit, wailing, on the sacred path facing the Grandmother Mound. Bodily impurities had been removed by the sweating, and he felt spiritually revitalized by the rite. Curly Hair’s helpers placed around his shoulders his buffalo robe, and in his hands the sealed pipe. Then friends led up saddled horses, and a small procession of comrades started out of the camp circle. Bringing up the rear rode Curly Hair, holding his pipe before him.

  A fifty-mile ride down the North Platte valley brought the party to the foot of Scott’s Bluffs. In summer this was a settler landmark. The twin ruts marking the Overland Trail were visible, but in early fall the road
was empty. They rested overnight near the foot of the bluffs, but in the darkness before dawn, his helpers roused Curly Hair and ritually fed him a piece of dried meat and a sip of water. Then the party walked the winding trail to the summit. The helpers cleared away vegetation and dug clean the sides of a shallow pit, long enough for the dreamer to lie in, scattering tobacco over the bottom, lining it with fresh sage, and covering it with brush. Plum bough poles were set up at the four corners of the pit, each representing one of the Sacred Directions. The fifth pole stood at the center of the vision pit, linking earth to the zenith and identifying the pit as the symbolic center of the world, where all powers inhere. A red blanket was cut up to make banners that would stream from the poles as offerings to the powers of each Direction. Strings were tied between the poles and hung with tiny tobacco bundles, wrapped in cloth or in squares of skin cut from Curly Hair’s own thighs and forearms, so that the vision pit was bound with a web of sacred offerings. Curly Hair was led to the pit and told to remove his moccasins and breechclout and stand at the eastern pole facing the rising sun, holding his pipe stem toward that greatest manifestation of Wakan Tanka. Then the party left Curly Hair alone as the sun rose over the earth.