CRAZY HORSE

by Kingsley M Bray

  Red Cloud led a party to the Bighorn crossing of the Bozeman. An Arapaho village, hitherto peaceful, was prevailed on to join in harrying the wagon train laying over at the ferry. Red Cloud personally led a charge that ran off most of the ferry’s herd on July 17. On the same day, Oglala warriors first struck the soldiers’ stock at the new fort rising beside the Little Piney In Red Cloud’s absence, Bad Face leaders at the village also bullied the Cheyenne chiefs, striking them with bows and forcing the Cheyenne village to move south, out of the war zone.33

  Simultaneously, on July 22, raiders struck forts Reno and Phil Kearny, driving off stock in a choreographed opening of hostilities. On the following day, Crazy Horse’s party intercepted a military train as it approached Crazy Woman Creek, killing a lieutenant in the first seconds of surprise. The small troop escort managed to corral the wagons atop a knoll, and for the rest of the day the warriors circled the defenses in headlong charges—a textbook Hollywood Indian fight, but rare in reality. The train remained pinned down through the night, but on the twenty-fourth, relief squads from both posts dispersed the attackers. Crazy Horse’s party fell back to harry traffic south of Fort Reno.34

  Early in August Carrington detached another two companies to establish Fort C. F. . Smith at the Bighorn crossing. Red Cloud immediately sponsored a formal war pipe and proposed major offensives against the two new forts once winter closed military communications. A war pipe meant a formal tribal war, committing large forces to extermination of the enemy—a far cry from the stock-theft “half-war” threatened two months earlier. Man Afraid of His Horse received Loafer messengers inviting him to attend new talks at Fort Laramie. He won tentative approval of the moderate Hunkpatila young men, but a new flurry of raids around Fort Reno in mid-August was Crazy Horse’s unfavorable response to the news. On the seventeenth, warriors boldly entered the post corral and drove out seventeen mules and seven horses. Wealth and war honors continued to accumulate for the hostile Hunkpatilas.35

  Intertribal diplomacy took a new turn late in August. Red Cloud and Man Afraid of His Horse jointly led a one hundred-man Oglala deputation across the Bighorn to the main Crow village on Clark’s Fork. Red Dog, the finest Oglala orator, was on hand to present Red Cloud’s case. Crazy Horse accepted the invitation to attend and won the accolade of the Crow chiefs as the bravest Lakota they knew. In hard-nosed councils, between the feasting, Red Cloud proposed that Crow warriors join the offensive against the new posts: in return, he promised that part of the old Crow hunting grounds east of the Bighorn would revert to a joint-use zone. The Crow leaders were discomfited when some of their young men seemed disposed to accept Red Cloud’s terms. Then Man Afraid of His Horse quietly defused the situation by announcing the offer of new talks at Fort Laramie. Any decision on so momentous a matter as a war pipe should wait until diplomatic channels were exhausted, he contended. Promising a return visit to the Lakota villages, the Crow chiefs declared that their response to Red Cloud’s proposal would wait.36

  By September some five hundred Lakota lodges were pitched within half a day’s ride along the Tongue. The Miniconjous encamped on the Bighorn were also about to enter the war. A tribal war council had named High Backbone as principal chief for the season. Smoking Red Cloud’s war pipe, High Backbone sanctioned small-scale raiding around Fort C. F. Smith in mid-September; late in the month, his warriors joined Red Cloud’s in operations around Fort Phil Kearny. Soon almost one hundred Miniconjou lodges had augmented the Tongue River villages.37

  In October, Crazy Horse accompanied Buffalo Tongue’s camp back from the Powder, satisfied that with civilian traffic closing for winter, they had stolen all available stock along the southern stretch of the Bozeman. Indicating their distance from their own band chief, the Hunkpatila war leaders clustered closer to Red Cloud. The Bad Face leader cultivated them, inviting the younger Yellow Eagle, a close comrade of Crazy Horse, to plan a major raid on Fort Phil Kearny. Young Man Afraid of His Horse also joined the Bad Face war talks; however, Crazy Horse was signally honored to sit on Red Cloud’s left at the honor place in feasts and councils. Some observers viewed Crazy Horse as a key aide or lieutenant to Red Cloud.38

  During these fall weeks, Crazy Horse and Red Cloud were closer than they ever would be again. Nineteen years older than Crazy Horse, Red Cloud had been the greatest Oglala warrior of his generation. Possessed of a powerful physical presence, and an astute political operator, Red Cloud probably viewed the slight Hunkpatila with bemused curiosity. Crazy Horse would have seen that Red Cloud was not personally engaged in combat operations but fulfilled the role of a strategic war leader. Raiding was carefully coordinated with buffalo surrounds so that hunters were able to lay up vital surpluses. Meat was supplemented from the hundreds of oxen and cows seized by raiders along the Bozeman. Although diplomacy was officially off the agenda, Red Cloud encouraged visits by Loafers to secure intelligence and to trade robes for firearms and ammunition. Besides bows and lances, most warriors were still armed with Northwest muskets and percussion Hawkens. Repeating rifles were an unknown quantity, but revolvers were becoming a common sidearm. Red Cloud also sourced new lines of supply. Through fall, a series of one-day truce-and-trades was held with the Crows along the Bighorn. Another vital new channel was to the Canadian Métis traders, directly or through Santee and Hunkpapa visitors like Inkpaduta and Sitting Bull.39

  During the crisp weeks of fall, Crazy Horse and his comrades joined the Bad Faces in harrying Fort Phil Kearny. Repeatedly, they targeted horse herds, straggling pickets, guards, and the watchmen atop Carrington’s lookout tower on Pilot Hill. As haying details were succeeded by woodcutters laying up winter fuel, Indian attacks focused on the trail between the post and the pinery in the foothills upstream of the post. The attacks, though small scale, kept Carrington on the defensive. As the state-of-the-art defenses of Fort Phil Kearny testified, its commander was a meticulous designer of fortifications but temperamentally unsuited to aggressive operations. To do him justice, even the modest reinforcements he received in November, raising his strength to some four hundred effective troops, could not have implemented the search-and-destroy missions urged by superiors and subordinates alike.

  By the beginning of December, the plans of Red Cloud and High Backbone had matured. Taking advice from Crazy Horse and his fellow tactical leaders, they decided that a single blow should be delivered at Fort Phil Kearny. On December 6 Yellow Eagle led a dry run. The strategy would be to send decoy warriors to lure Carrington’s troops out of the fort, over Lodge Trail Ridge into the Tongue River drainage. Beyond support of reinforcements, the pursuit would be overwhelmed, and the Indian forces would move to invest the fort.40

  Yellow Eagle’s attempt was foiled when the cautious Carrington called off pursuit of the decoys. During the second week of December, however, all Lakota camps consolidated on the Tongue, seventy miles north of the fort. High Backbone and the other war chiefs met and sent messengers to summon key warriors to join them as blotahunka. Crazy Horse was so honored and was treated with conspicuous favor by his Miniconjou kola. The war council decided on an attack at the time of the new moon.

  On December 19 the massive procession, joined by the Cheyenne Crazy Dog Society and some seventy-five Arapaho warriors, moved up Tongue River to Prairie Dog Creek, straddling the modern Montana-Wyoming boundary. Leading the column, High Backbone bore in his arms the wolf-skin bundle containing the war pipe. A row of blotahunka including Red Cloud flanked the pipe bearer, while immediately behind rode the Miniconjou contingent fronted by Black Shield.41

  Between the Miniconjous and the Cheyenne contingent at the rear rode the Oglalas, led by Crazy Horse, who was flanked by his comrades Long Man and He Dog. Determined to win battle honors, Crazy Horse had selected his war pony wisely, borrowing his brother’s famous bay racer, distinguished by its white face and stockings. Young Little Hawk had gladly turned over the bay to honor his elder brother. Now Crazy Horse rode an ordinary traveling horse, leading the prized war pony
on a short rein to preserve its strength.42

  After making camp, many warriors rode to the vicinity of the fort and made a rousing attack on the wood train. Relief troops appeared and the warriors, drilling maneuvers, speedily disengaged. As on the sixth, the troops were cautious, and the blotahunka discussed the need to lure a large force beyond hope of support from the fort.

  On the morning of the twentieth, the whole war party left the village and rode up Prairie Dog Creek to a wide flat at its forks. Perhaps fifteen hundred strong, they huddled in blanket coats or winter robes, fanned out in a long line across the bleak valley. The blotahunka ordered forth their chosen war prophet. Astride a sorrel pony that zigzagged over the hills rode a winkte, a male instructed in a vision to live as a woman. All sat in hushed expectation as he rode back and forth between the war chiefs and the distant hills. Each time he returned, his fingers clutched more convulsively, and he leaned this way and that in the saddle, first declaring he held in his hands ten soldiers; then twenty; then fifty—to be dismissed as bringing too few enemies for such a massive war party. On the sacred fourth try, the winkte hauled in his pony only to fall from the saddle as if balancing an impossible load. He struck the earth with both hands and, looking up at High Backbone and his comrades, cried in his fluting voice, “Answer me quickly, I have a hundred or more.” Down the line, Crazy Horse joined the others in a shrill yell of triumph. They kneed forward their ponies and, leaning in the saddle, struck the ground all around the winkte’s hands, as if counting coup on enemies whose fates were already sealed.43

  The war party moved up the valley, now lightly blanketed in snow, through a bracing winter day. At a point ten miles north of the fort, the blotahunka announced camp would be made on a wide flat dotted with small timber. First, however, the warriors were ordered once more into line. Two chiefs turned out and rode along the line to select the decoy warriors for the next day’s battle. Heads craned to observe the selection, knowing that only the coolest warriors, the best riders with the swiftest ponies, would be chosen for this essential task. Pausing before a candidate, the two chiefs leaned forward in their saddles, took hold of the warrior’s bridle, and led horse and rider out of the line. Two Cheyenne, two Arapaho, and six Lakota warriors were chosen and turned to face their comrades. Three of these were Oglalas: American Horse, the son of the True Oglala chief Sitting Bear; Sword Owner, a nephew of Red Cloud’s; and Crazy Horse, proudly sitting on his brother’s bay. The blotahunka named Crazy Horse leader of the decoy party, and Sword Owner his assistant in ensuring the precise coordination of the operation.44

  The ten warriors would lure the soldiers from the fort, over the ridge north of Big Piney, and down the slope toward the headwaters of Prairie Dog Creek, where the war party would lay an ambush and overwhelm the troops. The decoys would prepare themselves and their ponies and start before dawn to be in place for a morning attack. The whole war party would follow at sunrise. Instructions imparted, individual war leaders might ride forward and present to the decoys weapons, staffs, or coup sticks.

  As the rising sun lit an infinite barren December plain, Crazy Horse rode out at the head of his little column. West, a jumble of low ridges climbed toward the dark shoulders of the snow-capped Bighorn Mountains. Icy hollows pocked the boulder-strewn hillside that topped out on a high saddle overlooking the Big Piney. The Bozeman Trail descended to the creek three miles southeast. On the flat beyond stood the formidable stockade of Fort Phil Kearny. Despite the tight discipline of the akicita, almost thirty warriors slipped past the decoys and descended into the bottomland brush facing the stockade. Immediately before the decoys, the ground fell steeply away down Lodge Trail Ridge. Crazy Horse’s men dismounted and silently took up positions near the eastern end of the ridge.

  High Backbone’s plan called for the troops to be lured over this upland, and Crazy Horse examined the landscape minutely. Broken by draws and studded with scrubby pine, Lodge Trail Ridge fronted the north bank of Big Piney Creek for over three miles. Below them the frozen course of the creek glittered through a straggle of bare cottonwoods. Scanning the back trail, the warriors would see the main war party halting at the foot of the narrow ridge they had ascended. Blotahunka made assignments and the force divided, some led by Red Cloud, filtering along the draws framing the west side of the ridge, taking cover in the bare clusters of ash and box elder timber. Warriors without horses hid in the long yellow grass along the course of Peno Creek, in position to block any troop advance. Miniconjou warriors were assigned places in the draws down the east side of the ridge.45

  When the morning wood train started for the pinery, accompanied by a strong escort, signals were passed to alert the war party, and a contingent of warriors was dispatched around the western end of Lodge Trail Ridge. As Crazy Horse continued scanning the valley, these warriors launched an attack that forced the train to stop and form a defensive corral two and one-half miles west of the fort. Now Crazy Horse keenly scanned the stockade for signs of a response. To ensure the bait was taken, he and a scatter of warriors rode along the ridge. After several anxious minutes, Crazy Horse made out the watchmen in Carrington’s lookout tower signaling the wood train’s plight. Finally, the fort’s gate swung open and a force of some fifty infantry marched out of the stockade, commanded by Captain William J. Fetterman, a brash fire-eater with as low an opinion of Indians as Grattan’s twelve years before. Carrington issued strict orders for Fetterman to relieve the wood train and on no account to follow Indians beyond the summit of Lodge Trail Ridge. Instead of following the wood trail, Fetterman angled toward the Big Piney, as if to follow upstream and cut off the attackers’ retreat.

  The decoys defiled down the ridge as Fetterman approached the crossing. One man dismounted in plain view of the fort and sat against a tree, his red blanket making a bright target. Before Fetterman could reach the ford, Carrington ordered his gunners to drop a case shot squarely in the bottomland brush, unhorsing one warrior and flushing the hidden thirty, who fled up the gullies of Lodge Trail Ridge. To the west the firing on the wood train ceased, evidence of the tight choreography deployed by High Backbone and Crazy Horse. A force of twenty-seven cavalrymen led by Lieutenant George W. Grummond followed Fetterman. A clutch of volunteers and civilians made the total force leaving the fort to be eighty-one effective men. After Grummond united with Fetterman’s infantry, the command moved in skirmish formation up the creek. Decoys, scouts, and war leaders signaled each other to synchronize minutely the next few minutes’ crucial action. First, the warriors disengaged from the wood train, having lured out a significant proportion of the garrison. High Backbone’s plan did not entail a costly running fight. Feigning alarm, the warriors strung back northward, leaving the wood train free to press forward.

  Here was the critical moment for Crazy Horse, and without pause, he mounted and led the decoys out along the lower slopes of Lodge Trail Ridge. With shrill whoops, the warriors strung west along the ridge, keeping just beyond rifle range. Fetterman ordered his men in pursuit, crossing the frozen creek and deploying his infantry as skirmishers as they climbed. A bugle sounded, and the cavalry charged after the decoys, who quirted their ponies up the slope. The pursuit opened fire, raining lead around the warriors, but then suddenly halted: to the warriors, it looked as if they would follow no more. The last warriors retreating from the wood train were visible, climbing the west end of the ridge two miles away. Perhaps alarm bells briefly rang in cooler heads. Then, greatly daring, decoys charged again, forcing the cavalry to resume the pursuit. As bullets struck around them, they held in their ponies, slowly climbing the slope.

  Knowing that these soldiers had many times faced the timeworn decoy tactic, Crazy Horse’s men played virtuosic variations on the theme as they neared the crest. Here a man dismounted as if his pony were lame, causing the foot soldiers to run in pursuit. Topping the ridge one by one, warriors galloped along the summit, turning to shoot downslope and braving the return fire, yelling taunts. Others dismounted and tugged
at the bridles as if their ponies were played out. As Fetterman’s command topped the ridge and halted where the Bozeman Trail cut the icy summit, the decoys were stringing down the ambush ridge. To their practiced eyes, telltale signs indicated that the trap was set. In every gully, warriors flexed bowstrings or eared back musket hammers, pinching their ponies’ nostrils to keep them from whinnying an alarm.

  Big Nose, the Cheyenne rearguard warrior, rode right at the soldiers, lacing around the cavalry before galloping after his comrades, making an irresistible target. Fetterman ordered his whole command in pursuit. The cavalry took the lead, while the civilian sharpshooters picked off shots at the decoys. With the troops within the jaws of the trap, Crazy Horse picked up speed, stretching his party’s lead to three-quarters of a mile as the trail flattened out. Behind the party, the troops were strung along the length of the ridge, the cavalry outpacing Fetterman’s slow-moving foot soldiers. Out on the flat, the decoys divided into two diverging lines, then turned their ponies and began to ride back the way they had come. The maneuver happened with appalling swiftness. If the cavalry registered it at all, they had no time to respond. The two lines of decoys recrossed. The instant of intersection was the signal. “Hopo! Hokahe!” Leaders yelled the war cry to shrill yammers of response. A rank of dismounted warriors rose from the creek bottom and poured a volley of arrows into the vanguard, felling an officer’s horse, its rider scurrying uphill. Down each side of the ridge, warriors sprang into their saddles and clapped heels against their ponies’ flanks, their charge engulfing the trail.

  In the lead, the civilian volunteers and a handful of troopers dismounted and opened heavy fire from the cover of a few boulders. This was the theater of action closest to Crazy Horse. Fittingly, it was where the Indians met the stiffest resistance. The civilians laid down a blistering fire, levering shells from their sixteen-shot Henry repeating rifles, augmented by single-shot Springfields. Warriors circled the position, leaning behind their ponies’ necks to snap off shots at these cool fighters. The civilians felled many ponies, driving off the initial charge, and behind them the cavalry withdrew up the slope after opening heavy fire from their seven-shot Spencer repeaters. If a late oral tradition is to be trusted, Crazy Horse led the charge into the cavalry, hacking around him with a hatchet as he repeatedly rode among the troopers, braving sustained and deadly fire.46