CRAZY HORSE

by Kingsley M Bray

  The Fetterman Battle, December 21, 1866

  Trying to prevent precipitate flight, Lieutenant Grummond covered his men, slicing off a warrior’s head with his saber before falling from his white horse. At Grummond’s death, his men broke and fled up the ridge. Crazy Horse’s followers streamed after them to join comrades surrounding the position of Fetterman’s infantry.

  Fetterman managed to maintain tactical cohesion as he withdrew his men as far as a cluster of large boulders. Here he formed a line fronting both ways and ordered concerted firing into the swarming Indians. As the foot soldiers held their ground, the demoralized cavalry fled past them to a position one hundred yards above.

  Downslope the infantry faced the main brunt of the Indian attack. After the first general charge, the fighting slowed, and warriors resumed positions in the gullies. Occasionally a lone warrior would make a brave run through the infantry position, usually to be shot down by the disciplined fire. To break down enemy defenses for a fresh assault, war leaders ordered a volley of arrows from both sides of the ridge. Aiming high, they rained shafts over the ridge, taking a deadly toll among friends as well as foes. Red Dog was just one Lakota wounded by an overshot arrow; a luckless comrade was killed when his forehead blocked another shaft.

  Giving the troops no time to recover from the shock, the cry to charge was called, and Lakotas and Cheyennes overran the infantry position, grappling in hand-to-hand combat with the desperate soldiers. Fetterman remained mounted, exhorting his men, until American Horse smashed his pony into the officer’s mount and dealt a staggering blow to Fetterman’s head, unhorsing the commander. Dazed, Fetterman put up no fight as American Horse leapt from his saddle and slashed open his throat. Exultant warriors poured up the slope toward the cavalry.47

  Overhead the air, palled in powder smoke, was darkening with approaching snow. The temperature continued to drop, freezing bloody wounds and skimming hard the trampled snow. Chiefs ordered the warriors to dismount and fight afoot. The cavalry fell back, struggling to lead their mounts amid a renewed hail of arrows. Some mounts fell dead; others plunged and broke away. The soldiers started to run for a new defensive position at the head of the ridge, letting their remaining horses go in a bid to deter the pursuit. Barely forty-five minutes after the opening charge, the last of the cavalry was overrun. One or two pockets of resistance along the ridge remained to be mopped up: the civilians at the lower end may have been among the last to fall, a litter of Henry cases at their position attesting to their grim defense. Of twelve ponies killed outright on the field, ten lay around the civilian position. By 12:45, as an appalled relief unit topped the ridge to view the scene of carnage, the battle was over. Warriors were moving down the ridge, stripping, scalping, and mutilating; looting clothing, guns, and ammunition; firing arrows to bristle from frozen naked bodies.

  All eighty-one men were dead. Of the Indians, as few as eleven might have died on the field. About sixty were wounded, some fatally: many more, like Crazy Horse’s uncle Black Elk, who had sustained a crippling leg wound, were maimed for life. Dead and wounded alike were removed on makeshift travois from the field, but if a later reminiscence by frontier scout Frank Grouard is to be trusted, it was not until after the battle that one casualty was missed. Crazy Horse and High Backbone did not long savor their triumph, for on the march home, they learned that their comrade Lone Bear was not with the column. The two friends rode back toward the battlefield. It may have been dark before Crazy Horse and High Backbone were able to locate Lone Bear. He had sustained a terrible wound in the leg, and blood poisoning had set in. Already his limbs and extremities were badly frozen, and the luckless warrior clearly would not live. The friends did all they could to ease Lone Bear’s passing, and at the end, Crazy Horse crouched down to cradle him in his arms. High Backbone towered over the prostrate form, weeping. With a vicious norther threatening, the comrades finally mounted and struck down the barren valley toward home.48

  There, four days later, the victory dances began once the blizzard and the grief of mourners were blown out. At celebrations in the Oglala village, political rivals sat together: Man Afraid of His Horse ate beside Red Cloud and Red Dog in feasts to honor the victorious blotahunka and warriors. As the ranking Oglala war chief, Red Cloud “had all the honor” of the battle, according to one eyewitness.49 The victory indeed seemed to bear out all that Red Cloud had predicted at Fort Laramie six months earlier: with the unity of the Lakota people and the justness of their cause, the wasicu intruders could be destroyed.

  In the songs and coup-counting contests, the decoy warriors were picked out for special praise. Sword Owner, American Horse—these were the sons of chiefs, born to greatness; their courage on the Fetterman battlefield could only enhance their prospects of political leadership. For Crazy Horse, the diffident son of a holy man, such prospects had never been his goal. But unrivaled bravery and generosity were themselves qualifications for civil leadership. Now, in his precision coordination of the decoy party, he had displayed a gift for inspirational leadership that sympathetic elders might read as another of the four key Lakota virtues—fortitude, the moral courage that is an example to all. Old men singing in praise of Crazy Horse recognized his bravery but talked also of his wakan power in battle. For the first time he was regarded as a future leader of the people. Even Cheyennes began to look to Crazy Horse as a warrior they would follow into the heat of battle. His role as the chief tactical leader in the Fetterman fight meant that Crazy Horse would never return to the world of the plain warrior, sitting dutifully silent through the councils of his elders. Chiefs now would consult him, seek his support to secure warrior opinion around their positions, feast and groom him for a political life. Celebrating the greatest victory of his young manhood, Crazy Horse was at another turning point in his life.

  10

  CLOSING THE ROAD

  For four days and nights, victory dances continued throughout the villages on Tongue River. Then, with surpluses depleted and winter closing in, the bands broke up. Red Cloud’s Bad Face camp moved west into the valley of the Little Bighorn, others gravitated downcountry into the valley of the Yellowstone. In the wake of the Fetterman disaster, the army sought to respond as quickly as a Wyoming winter permitted, and troops were soon on the march to reinforce the Bozeman Trail garrisons. Rumors of larger troop movements were rife, and the Indians remained strung along the Yellowstone throughout the winter.

  After the worst blizzards had blown themselves out, the hostile Hunkpatila leadership reassessed strategy. Rejecting Man Afraid of His Horse’s continued search for a negotiated solution, they shared Red Cloud’s militancy but were alienated by his arrogance in appropriating “all the honor” for the victory of One Hundred in the Hands. Camp leadership devolved on Little Hawk, but the battlefield charisma of his nephew Crazy Horse won new adherents from the Bad Faces and Oyuhpes. Straggling Cheyennes, following holy man Ice, were also drawn by Crazy Horse’s battlefield genius. As many as seventy lodges followed Little Hawk and Crazy Horse up Powder River.1

  After establishing camp downstream from Fort Reno, Crazy Horse’s warriors repeated the pattern of the previous summer. On February 27 they struck a detachment of Companies B and I, Twenty-seventh Infantry. Three soldiers were swiftly killed, but the war party disengaged before the troops could inflict casualties. Although no follow-up attack transpired, Crazy Horse’s men infested the Bozeman Trail, monitoring the movement of troops filtering up the Bozeman to reinforce Carrington’s garrison; by July, nine hundred effective troops garrisoned the three posts.2

  The influx of troops masked two significant facts. First, settler and freight traffic did not resume along the Bozeman Trail. Virtually the only civilian entrepreneurs using the bitterly contested road were military contractors. Second, the army high command had lost the diplomatic war in Washington. The clamor for reprisal immediately after the Fetterman disaster had moderated: initial plans for a punitive expedition were put on hold and a new commission was ordered t
o investigate the causes of Indian hostility. Chaired by John B. Sanborn, a Minnesota lawyer who would figure large in Lakota-U.S. relations, the commission convened in Omaha in March.3

  Word of the commission was telegraphed west and carried onto the hunting grounds by Loafer messengers. It arrived at an opportune moment, just as the scattered bands began to regather. Late in March the main Bad Face and Hunkpatila camps collected at the mouth of the Rosebud.4

  Little Hawk and Crazy Horse resumed their place in the tribal circle. With winter meat packs exhausted, peace proponents won consensus on attending talks at Fort Laramie. Negotiations ensured liberal rationing for Indian participants. With rumors of punitive marches still current, the continuing crisis in ammunition supply did nothing to recommend an entrenched hardline position: besides presents, dialogue that might reopen trade on the Platte was another reason for the public mood to favor negotiations. Ready at last to secure a consensus, Man Afraid of His Horse moved to reassert his seniority in the village.

  The elders staged feasts and dances, inviting new members to sit with the council. Members donned buffalo horn headdresses, their naked bodies painted white, and danced the buffalo dance as a plea for a season of plenty. They moved to recruit key war leaders who had helped secure the victory against Fetterman: American Horse and Sword Owner were among the intake. Although surely invited to feast and confer with Man Afraid of His Horse, Crazy Horse was not among the intake, hinting that he remained unwilling to come on board a revived peace process.

  Red Cloud was deeply dissatisfied with the political reversal. He united around him a following of sixty lodges, chiefly Bad Faces, and withdrew to join the Oyuhpes and Miniconjous, where no peace movement had taken hold. Rejecting the authority of the chiefs and elders, Red Cloud’s faction recognized a new council comprising younger war leaders, the Ska Yuha, or White Horse Owners. About 135 lodges remained with Man Afraid of His Horse.5 The fragile restoration of Hunkpatila band unity also held. That Little Hawk and Crazy Horse, committed to an even more radically militant policy than Red Cloud’s, chose to remain in the main village speaks to the profound mistrust and jealousy that already existed between their faction and the Bad Face war chief.

  Late in April, the village contacted Red Leaf’s Wazhazha camp and Lone Horn’s Miniconjous, both eager to settle the Bozeman Trail issue and resume the status quo. Runners arrived from Fort Laramie with the first formal invitation from the peace commissioners.

  Even as the chiefs were conferring, however, a new arrival from Fort Laramie brought unsettling news. Far to the south, on the plains of western Kansas, General Winfield S. Hancock’s command was not constrained by the Sanborn commission’s truce. Hancock had marched on the combined southern Oglala–Dog Soldier Cheyenne village. Frightened of another Sand Creek, the people had deserted their lodges on April 14, fleeing north. Five days later Hancock ordered the tipis and camp equipment burned, signaling a new war on the central plains. In Indian country, rumor and fact usually tangled in an intransigent knot: even as Man Afraid of His Horse’s tipis were being struck and people mounted, ready for the Deciders’ order, a Loafer named Smells the Ground brought sensational word that “the whites were all going to war” along the Overland Trail.6

  The fragile consensus was shattered, and the village broke up. Scouting parties were ordered to watch the Bozeman Trail. Crazy Horse and his party returned to Fort Reno, where they served notice of their outrage by attacking detachments from the post on April 26 and 27, killing one soldier and escaping again without casualties.7

  The sudden switch in mood seems to have convinced militant leaders to respond to a new invitation. North of Powder River forks, a massive gathering of northern Lakotas was planning summer operations. Besides Miniconjous and Sans Arcs, the main Hunkpapa village had arrived to coordinate strategy. Word had it that the Hunkpapa warrior societies would nominate a principal war chief, a northern Lakota counterpart to Red Cloud.

  Crazy Horse and his followers brought their camps into the gathering, forming a smaller Oglala circle, adjoined by Ice’s Cheyenne camp, upstream of the three host villages. Two Kettle, Sihasapa, and Yanktonai visitors clustered around the larger circles. Councils were dominated by the issue of war. Sans Arc leaders pledged to assist the Miniconjous in operations against the Bozeman Trail posts: Crazy Horse’s campaign against Fort Reno was promised aid. Hunkpapa speakers undoubtedly dwelled on new forts in their own country. Fort Buford, at the mouth of the Yellowstone, had been besieged through the winter, much as the Oglalas had assailed Fort Phil Kearny.

  The gathering climaxed with the nomination of a titular national war chief. Crazy Horse was invited to sit with the host chiefs in the great council shade. The four Hunkpapa Shirt Wearers carried their nominee on a buffalo robe and seated him in the honor place. It was Sitting Bull, the Strong Hearts leader Crazy Horse had met ten years earlier at the Bear Butte council. Now thirty-five, a stocky broad-chested man with an expression that moved easily from dour to playful, Sitting Bull had matured into a reverent but unpretentious Lakota. The envious might question his war record, but his generosity was as famous as Crazy Horse’s, and though an accomplished political operator, Sitting Bull viewed the play of interest and faction with a wry detachment. He made an unconventional leader, imbued with a charisma all the stronger for his commonplace unpretentious manner.8

  Hunkpapa speakers harangued, investing Sitting Bull with the power to decide on peace or war: “When you say ‘fight,’ we shall fight: when you say ‘make peace,’ we shall make peace.” Indicating the validating presence of Crazy Horse and other guests, they told Sitting Bull he was made head war chief of the Lakota nation. After being presented with a magnificent calumet, a bow and arrows, a flintlock musket, and a superb trailer headdress, Sitting Bull was led out of the council tipi to where a fine white horse was held. A Shirt Wearer and an akicita leader lifted him into the saddle. Then Sitting Bull led a warrior society parade around the campground.

  The show of solidarity could not mask the divisions that characterized Oglala politics. A significant minority of Hunkpapas favored treating with the Sanborn commission. Outside the Hunkpapa sphere, many northern Lakota leaders articulated a similar but independent line to Sitting Bull’s. What the investiture did was dramatically focus and personalize issues, creating a symbolic leadership for Lakotas who sought a minimalist peace with Americans. Crazy Horse’s visit was brief, but he established a good working relationship with the Hunkpapa war chief. To the introspective Crazy Horse, the more expansive Sitting Bull may have articulated key ideals for the future of their people, rooted in older northern Lakota attitudes that favored wasicu noninterference in Lakota affairs.

  Crazy Horse and his Oglala followers left the gathering in early May, trekking up the Powder River valley to pitch their tipis on Clear Fork. Clearly, Crazy Horse and Little Hawk resisted any resumption of diplomacy. Their warriors, augmented by some of Ice’s Cheyennes, besieged the district south of Fort Reno. At Bridger’s Ferry they mounted an attack on the first supply train of the season, driving off the cattle of Jules Ecoffey, a trader turned army contractor. The train’s cavalry escort promptly recaptured Ecoffey’s animals, but on Sage Creek a couple of days later, Crazy Horse’s warriors targeted the train again. Hovering around the camp, they sought to drive off more stock, withdrawing when escort commander Captain John Green led a fifty-man detachment in pursuit. For two miles the cavalry followed the war party, killing one warrior and one pony, before the Oglalas mustered enough fire to fell two cavalry horses. Both sides were happy to disengage, and the train continued past Fort Reno to arrive at Fort Phil Kearny on May 31.9

  Responding to the growing traffic along the Bozeman, the war party returned to Bridger’s Ferry and attacked a detachment of Troop E, Second Cavalry, on May 23. Having honed their tactics they managed to kill two soldiers before withdrawing. Around Fort Phil Kearny, Red Cloud’s followers were also opening the raiding season.10

  Meanwhile Man Afraid of His
Horse and the other Deciders had reasserted their control and laid down strict prohibitions on further raiding: all war parties were ordered in as the village prepared to attend talks at Fort Laramie. Crazy Horse’s war party would be the stiffest test of the Deciders’ resolve. Crazy Horse’s warriors warily authorized Man Afraid of His Horse to attend peace talks at Fort Laramie. The chiefs impressed on them that the commissioners might recommend the closure of the Bozeman Trail posts. Some warriors joined the village movement south; others, like Crazy Horse, who still refused to travel to Fort Laramie, agreed to observe a new truce pending negotiations.

  At the village, the warriors met in council and formally transferred to the chiefs and elders control of negotiations. All would support a central line: closure of the posts, restoration of peace, and reinstatement of trade. Other topics—land cessions, farming, even the restoration of annuities—were not up for discussion. Finally, as proof of American goodwill, the chiefs must secure substantial presents of ammunition. Through his mouthpiece Little Hawk, Crazy Horse may well have been one of the warriors articulating the tenets of this minimalist peace.11

  The crestfallen delegates returned two weeks later with nothing achieved. The commissioners had conceded merely that the Bozeman Trail might constitute a just grievance. Insisting that their agenda was purely investigative, they had refused even to dispense ammunition. Foreseeing a troubled summer, Man Afraid of His Horse had bleakly observed, “The powder must be very strong, if you are afraid to give us [even] that much.” Hoping to secure desertions to Spotted Tail’s friendly village, at the Platte forks, the commissioners finally turned a blind eye while traders exchanged stockpiled buffalo robes for powder and lead.12