CRAZY HORSE

by Kingsley M Bray

After his vision quest, Horn Chips invited Crazy Horse to join him in the purification rite of the sweat lodge. Horn Chips produced a round white stone, as big as “a good-sized marble,” one of the translucent hemispherical rocks found near anthills, that offered more comprehensive protection than any previous charm. He told Crazy Horse to drill a hole through the stone and pass a thong of braided buckskin through the hole. Invested with Horn Chips’ Rock power, the stone was made a spirit rock, tunkan wasicun. Horn Chips then wrapped it in a wopiye pouch of buckskin, and secured it to the thong.22

  Besides the snake, Thunder, and Rock, Horn Chips had dreamed of the eagle. He possessed a powder made from the dried heart of the spotted eagle, mixed with the seeds of the wild aster, to be rubbed over the body before going into battle. Some of the powder he now placed in Crazy Horse’s wopiye. Next he took the two identical feathers at the center of the spotted eagle’s tail. One he attached to the wopiye, the other he directed Crazy Horse to wear in battle, hanging down from his scalp lock. Into the pouch he placed the eagle’s claws, then from the wing bone, Horn Chips fashioned a war whistle. If these medicines were used before battle, Horn Chips recalled telling his friend, “no bullet would touch him.” Then, addressing Crazy Horse’s anxiety about death by stabbing, he added that the stone “would protect him against the knife if his arm was not held; but if it was held,” he concluded gravely, “he would not be protected.”23

  “Crazy Horse put great confidence in his medicine,” Horn Chips recollected. “He seemed to bear a charmed life, and no matter how near he got to his enemy they could not hit him.”24 This was true, and Crazy Horse was never wounded again in battle. But his hunka’s confirmation of the man from the lake’s warning, that if his arm was held, he was vulnerable to a knife, remained with the warrior, an unsettling quibble amid the wakan powers’ assurances of total protection.

  Midsummer, Moon of Making Fat, 1863: As daylight spread over the Pryor Creek valley of southern Montana, a great war party of Oglalas and Cheyennes, augmented by Miniconjous and a few Arapahos, approached the main Crow village. Below them the creek swung in a wide curve, and downstream many Lakota women and older men dismounted atop a bluff that afforded a commanding view of the valley. Behind the bluffs, the warriors paused to put on their war gear and prepare their horses.

  After stripping to breechclout and moccasins, Crazy Horse rubbed his pony down with sprigs of sage, murmuring words of encouragement. Then, following the instructions of the man from the lake, he took a pinch of dust from a pocket gopher burrow and rubbed it between the war pony’s ears. He scattered a handful of the dust over the horse’s head, then threw another handful over its rump. After brushing off the excess, he rubbed the dust gently into the horse’s skin in streaky lines. He tipped out a little more of the dust and spat into his palm, dabbing one or two spots into his hair.

  Perhaps he favored Kicking Bear, a fifteen-year-old Oyuhpe cousin who stood worshipfully at his side, with a portion of the bulletproof medicine: certainly he would give quiet words of support for the youth’s first serious battle as he concluded his preparations. At his throat, he hung the eagle wing-bone whistle Horn Chips had given him. Over his right shoulder, he looped the thong of braided buckskin, securing the round stone wotawe in its pouch high up under his left arm. He unfastened his braids but tied up his front hair in a stiff war knot, thrusting through the pompadour two or three stems of the slough grass the man from the lake had identified. At his crown were fastened two or three hawk feathers from his war bundle, and the eagle tail feather pointing downward. He dabbed his fingertips with white paint and dotted hailstones over his face. Down his left cheek, his finger trailed a wavy red line. Over his body he rubbed a little of the eagle’s heart medicine. His preparations complete, Crazy Horse briefly pondered the elemental powers of Thunder, Rock, and the Underground Powers now at his command. Murmuring a final prayer, he leapt astride his war pony and kneed it forward to join the warriors fanning out to crest the valley bluffs. The column began filtering upstream to a point where the creek could be easily crossed.

  Scrutinizing the Crow village in the rising sunlight, the Lakotas and Cheyennes could see that all was activity. On the plain beyond the creek, the Crows hurriedly took down and repitched their lodges in a tighter circle that left no gap for the attackers. Outside the circle, hundreds of mounted Crow warriors were gathering. Under unusually tight discipline, they formed a densely packed rank protecting the village.

  Suddenly, ten Crow warriors raced forward to challenge the enemy. A few arrows were exchanged, and a string of Cheyennes pursued them back toward their line. One Crow struggling to keep up was brought down. A lone Cheyenne, Brave Wolf, rode right into the Crow ranks. Awestruck, the Oglalas watched their comrade’s suicidal bravery. Circling his horse, Brave Wolf began to ride back, arrowshafts bristling from his body.

  One hundred whooping Crows followed the wounded Cheyenne as far as the creek, where Brave Wolf at last slipped from his saddle and fell into the water. One Crow leapt from his pony and splashed into the creek. Kneeling to take Brave Wolf’s scalp, he gestured that this would be the first of many that day. To the shrill tremolos of the watching women, the Lakotas and Cheyennes charged across the creek, spreading out in a long line to outflank the Crow defensive line.

  Crow leaders ordered forward men noted for their marksmanship. Armed with bows and muskets, these warriors were rushed to a point forward of their vulnerable flank. As Crazy Horse and other leaders formed the Lakota line for a charge, a loud command was heard from the enemy line, and the Crow marksmen opened a concerted fire, emptying several saddles. Regrouping, the Lakotas and Cheyennes charged again in a dense rank that folded the Crow countercharge and pressed it against the circle of tipis.

  Along a broad front, individual warriors clashed in daring combat. Young Man Afraid of His Horse, his pony shot twice in the breast, pursued one dismounted Crow almost to the lodges. Elsewhere He Dog overhauled a fleeing Crow, counting coup with the Crow’s own saber. But no warrior outshone Crazy Horse. At the head of the charge, he galloped through a hail of arrows and lead, shadowed by young Kicking Bear. A dismounted Crow fleeing for the tipis attracted his attention, and he heeled his pony forward. In the melee, his pony was struck, and Crazy Horse vaulted from the saddle to pursue his foe on foot. Right up against the lodges he caught the Crow, and in single combat killed him, scalped him, and threw the lifeless body against a tipi. With a whoop of triumph, he withdrew, still unharmed, to join his men. They gathered around him in a protective cluster, crying out his name in tribal pride.

  Pressed up against their camp, the Crows at last remustered their strength. Charge and countercharge followed, but neither side could dislodge the other, raising the casualties to five Oglalas and five Cheyennes. Distant dust portended Crow reinforcements, and Crazy Horse and the other leaders ordered a disengagement.25

  If hardly the battle to end all battles with the Crow people, it had been a day of glorious action. The Battle Defending the Tents would go down in Lakota and Crow annals as a memorable encounter of the war years 1858–65. To some outside Crazy Horse’s band, the battle marked the beginning of his rise to greatness, when his name was on every tongue. By the mid-1860s, the Crow war had seen Crazy Horse rise among his people to a revered status as an inspirational warrior. Courageous yet never foolhardy, he had completed the rehabilitation of his family name. The recklessness that characterized Male Crow was not a feature of Crazy Horse’s war ethos. Although he made a point of never being outstripped in a charge, he fought with careful forethought. Unlike those who wished to die in battle, he never threw aside his gun to charge with quirt or club: “Crazy Horse always stuck close to his rifle,” remarked He Dog. Moreover, he tried to instill the same cautious ethic in his followers. “He always tried to kill as many as possible of the enemy without losing his own men.”26

  By 1865 those followers were growing in number. The least sociable of men had a clique of warriors convinced of his invulnerabil
ity, his luck, and his power. His war parties were doubtless the most informal affairs, trailed by a quiet feast and rapid word-of-mouth. Logistical preparation is unlikely to have devolved on Crazy Horse himself, but he had friends aplenty on whom he could call for practical help. Moreover, these comrades were not confined to his own band. Close comrades like Lone Bear, Good Weasel, and He Dog formed a significant core of support in the important Bad Face band. As a regular visitor among the Oyuhpes, Crazy Horse could always rely on key friends within that band, including such coming men as his cousins Fast Thunder, Black Fox, and Kicking Bear, or the grimly redoubtable Low Dog. Miniconjous like his kola High Backbone maximized Crazy Horse’s reputation among his mother’s people. Although he had no ambitions to be a chief, Crazy Horse had built the sort of interband support fundamental to tribal leadership.

  When Crazy Horse led a war party, his followers felt an easy confidence in their success and safety. If he felt unsure of a coming fight, he would call it off, regardless of the ribbing he received from less cautious comrades. Leading a party against the Shoshones with High Backbone among his followers, Crazy Horse concluded that defeat was likely, and he simply turned home. “He didn’t like to start a battle,” recalled He Dog, “unless he had it all planned out in his head and knew he was going to win. He always used judgment and played safe.” The same ethic of careful preparation was carried into the heat of battle. “All the time [He Dog] was in fights with Crazy Horse[,] in critical moments of the fight Crazy Horse would always jump off his horse to fire. He is the only Indian I knew who did that often. He wanted to be sure that he hit what he aimed at. That is the kind of a fighter he was.”27

  As well as possessing supreme courage tempered with calculation and caution, Crazy Horse was uncommonly generous as a war leader. A guiding principle of Lakota life was the adult’s careful mentoring of the next generation. Crazy Horse possessed this virtue in full measure. About 1862 Crazy Horse’s brother Young Little Hawk joined his first war party in a raid against the Utes of the northern Colorado Rockies. As his tribesmen fought a stiff defensive action, one Ute marksman “came forward and no one could go up against him. Then Crazy Horse went for him and shot down the Ute. He rode right up to him. The Ute fell, and Crazy Horse called for his younger brother to come and get his first coup.”

  By the mid-1860s such behavior was commonplace. Crazy Horse delighted in setting up situations where youthful comrades could gain war honors: “He does not count many coups,” expanded Eagle Elk, “He is in front and attacks the enemy. If he shoots down an enemy, he does not count coup. He drops behind and let others count three or four coup counts. He takes the last coup. . . I often wondered why he did that. He had such a reputation that he did not have to get more of that.”28

  No wonder Crazy Horse inspired such loyalty among the young. He remained fiercely protective of his younger brother. In a skirmish soon after the Battle Defending the Tent, Crow pursuers caught up with the Oglala war party. Crazy Horse’s pony, the latest in a long series, was shot from under him, and two Crows cut off Young Little Hawk and another “younger brother.” Leaping astride a new mount, Crazy Horse charged at the Crows, killing and scalping one and single-handedly driving back the enemy.29

  At home he won the accolades of the old as well. His generosity was a byword. He made it a point of honor to retain no battle spoils except weapons. Horses and other booty were distributed among the old and the poor, in exhibitions of the sort of spontaneous generosity that expected no return.30

  By his early twenties, Crazy Horse had acquired the stature, physical appearance, and mannerisms that would characterize him throughout life. Standing at about five feet eight or nine inches, Crazy Horse just topped medium height among the Lakotas many he still seemed slender, even slight, compared to the run of his tribesmen. His fine waist-length hair, at home usually plaited in two braids, still hung in a lightly colored wave. Like his hair, his skin was comparatively light, “much lighter than the other Indians.” Most people thought his face was narrower than the norm: “His features were not like those of the rest of us,” summed up He Dog’s younger brother Short Bull. By Lakota standards his nose was small and finely made, “sharp [and] aquiline” according to one acquaintance, “sharp and high” and “straight and thin” to two others.31

  His eyes were remarkable, characterized by a sidelong glance “that hardly ever looked straight at a man, but they didn’t miss much that was going on all the same.” Noted as the generic Indian black in the records of his brief enlistment as an army scout, they too might have been lighter than most Lakotas’: vividly describing her one meeting with the man, Susan Bordeaux Bettelyoun recalled them as hazel. To a newspaperman in 1877, Crazy Horse’s eyes were “exceedingly restless and [they] impress the beholder fully as much as does his general demeanor” of unusual dignity. Perhaps they contributed to an overall impression of youth that stripped years off many estimates of his age. They lent an androgynous quality—testimony to his mother’s famous beauty—reflected in Agent Irwin’s initial impression of the thirty-six-year-old Crazy Horse as a “bashful girlish looking boy.”32

  He dressed plainly. Following the instructions of the man from the lake, he never wore a warbonnet, and he restricted his body paint to the hailstones and lightning streak of his heyoka vision. Habitually he fought naked, again like a heyoka, except for breechclout and moccasins. At home he usually donned a plain shirt, leggings, and blanket, while his single item of ornament was a plain necklace of “Iroquois” dentalium shells. After 1859 he, with pals like He Dog, began that other preoccupation of young Oglala men: courting the girls. Riding around the camp circle, plying a nonchalant eagle-wing fan, potential beaus spent summer downtime conducting affairs and intrigues, idling outside the tipis of the fair to snatch minutes of whispered conversation before chaperones interrupted. The lovelorn might play plangent melodies on their flutes, or approach Elk dreamers for love philters, but Crazy Horse’s attitude to girls remained, thankfully, uncomplicated. He Dog’s memory indicates that in this sphere at least, Crazy Horse was simply a healthy young man.33

  Similar to his kicamnayan tactics in battle, his taciturn manner could be off-putting and contradictory, a mixture of the diffident, the off-hand, and probably on occasion the studiedly enigmatic. “Never was excited” was Black Elk’s curt assessment. Reflecting another conscious switch in mental energies, Black Elk noted that in private gatherings at home, his cousin was reasonably sociable, but in formal situations, as when leading a war party, “not at all” so. Even at home he was hardly talkative; doubtless his silence and that sidelong scrutiny could be unsettling to an unfamiliar visitor. “He was a very quiet man except when there was fighting,” summarized He Dog. Around the camp he always seemed alert and self-possessed, on his guard “even with his own people,” according to statements given interpreter John Colhoff. Although eligible to attend councils, Crazy Horse had no interest in politics. The day-to-day logistics of camp life, where Deciders and elders debated the problems of pasture, wood, and water; the availability of game; and the next remove—these held no interest for him. At this stage he also stayed away from more momentous talks—about Lakota relations with the Americans, say, or akicita assemblies to declare hunt edicts and lay down disciplinary guidelines for tribal events. Consequently, he attended few councils. When he did, he was usually seen to listen attentively, but he hardly ever spoke.34

  “He had no ambition to be a chief,” stated Billy Garnett. Of all the duties and roles he fulfilled, that of simple scout was probably the most satisfying. Self-reliant, solitary, but of vital value to his community—such was Crazy Horse’s own idealized self-image. When moving camp, Crazy Horse usually rode alone, off to one side of the column, as if he had profoundly internalized the role. Lakota society recognized three emblematic roles for younger men: hunter, warrior, and scout. Few excelled in more than one, but Crazy Horse, together with his kola High Backbone, was said to be superb in each role.35

  “Qu
eer in his ways” ; “He was a queer man.” Such were some of the off-the-cuff recollections by friends and relatives of Crazy Horse’s habitual peacetime manner. Enemies, like the Crows and Shoshones he fought every summer for most of his adult life, did not see this side to the man’s character. To them, even more than to his own people, the awesome power he assumed on the battlefield suggested a man truly granted Thunder’s aid. By the mid-1860s, as the Crow war was about to be superseded as Crazy Horse’s prime military concern by renewed conflict with the Americans, the Crows had already concluded, “We know Crazy Horse better than we do you other Sioux. Whenever we have a fight, he is closer to us than he is to you.”36

  8

  TILL THE ROAD WAS OPENED

  On Monday morning, July 20, 1863, barely a month after the Battle Defending the Tents, Lakota scouts posted on the pine-studded foothills of the Bighorn Mountains watched a civilian wagon train form a defensive circle at the crossing of Little Piney Creek. A large party of chiefs and warriors hurried forward and, through train guide Rafael Gallegos, indicated that they wished to speak to the “Captain.” John Bozeman stepped forward and stated that he was pioneering a route linking the Overland Trail to the new gold diggings in western Montana: his route sliced north from the North Platte to the valley of the upper Yellowstone, crossing the rich new Lakota hunting grounds of the Powder River country.

  Settlers later recalled that the chiefs had come “to warn us not to proceed farther through their country, that they were combined to prevent a road being opened through there.” Bozeman’s party turned back to the Platte and followed instead the uncontested route to the mines through Crow country, west of the mountains.

  Within three years, the trail blazed by Bozeman would complete the degradation of the uneasy peace that descended on the northern plains after the Harney campaign and the great council of 1857. The Crow war would be sidelined as Lakotas combined to oppose a new American advance. And Crazy Horse would play a significant part in the war to come.1