The battle with the Crows proved joyfully inconclusive. Neither disaster nor victory, it whetted the appetite for warm weather and the resumption of full-scale raiding. In late November, active hunters began to plan surrounds for the winter hunt. Buffalo fur had thickened to a serviceable pelt, and many hunters expectantly awaited the arrival of traders from Fort Laramie. Another kind of planning seems to have been under way in Crazy Horse’s tipi. By their midtwenties, most men settled down to family life: now twenty-eight, Crazy Horse had remained single longer than most of his contemporaries. Like parents the world over, Worm and Crazy Horse’s stepmothers were concerned at this state of affairs. They wanted for their son the deep stability a good marriage offered; and, once tipis rose on the wintering ground, they opened dialogue with a suitable family.
The woman they wanted as daughter-in-law was Black Shawl.2 At twenty-four years old, Black Shawl herself had “stayed single much longer than is usual among our people” —as her younger brother Red Feather observed. Most girls married in their early twenties, bearing their first child by twenty-two. Black Shawl was attractive and had the right family connections, living with her mother Red Elk Woman in the Oyuhpe band. The leader of their tiyospaye was the Shirt Wearer Big Road, instinctively committed to the hunting life away from the reservation. In family background, therefore, Worm and his wives showed real sensitivity in selecting a partner for their son.3
In marriage negotiations of this kind, a leading part devolved on the wooer’s brother and close male kin. For Young Little Hawk, the reckless brother, this was a task of unwonted finesse. He paid a series of formal visits to Black Shawl’s family, who hosted a feast for relatives, redistributing Young Little Hawk’s gifts among the guests as the untried negotiator sought to close the deal. The hakataku, or older brothers of the prospective bride, in theory controlled her disposal in marriage. They presided at the feast and led family discussion. Marriage was in every sense an exchange, and a bride price had to be agreed on. Gifts were concrete metaphors for the obligations that bound families in kinship. Six buffalo robes or their equivalent was the standard price, but any hakataku worth his salt would talk up his sister’s beauty, industry, and modesty to raise the price indefinitely4
At length Young Little Hawk could report to his parents the desired outcome. The two families looked forward to an early wedding, but the happy prospect was blighted by two factors. First was Crazy Horse’s attitude to the match. Normally, family negotiations paralleled an active courtship. As a young man, He Dog remembered, Crazy Horse had courted the girls, but during the war years in the Powder River country, he showed little interest in affairs of the heart. His parents and relatives had canvassed several prospective brides, but Crazy Horse had turned down the matches. Now, with war settling into the old cycle of raids against the Crows, he at last gave in and told Worm that he would marry Black Shawl. Although Black Shawl was an attractive young woman, the courtship seems to have been perfunctory and passionless, perhaps defused by the very familiarity Worm seized on as the key to a good marriage.5
The courtship climaxed with Black Shawl’s brothers inviting Crazy Horse to join them in the family tipi. He was shown to a seat next to the bride-to-be, and she signified her own happiness at the match by smiling on him and fetching him water, food, and a pair of beaded moccasins she had made for this moment. To indicate his acceptance and announce a betrothal, Crazy Horse put on the moccasins.6
Black Shawl’s health was the second factor in turning impending marriage into indefinite betrothal. Although she would live into her eighties, Black Shawl was a sickly young woman, prone to recurring respiratory illnesses. Winter brought on a new bout of sickness and bloody coughing, and her family now sought to postpone the marriage to keep their daughter in the nurturing care of home. Crazy Horse approved the deferral and sent word to Black Shawl’s parents that “perhaps it was the best thing for her to do.”7
Politics now raised its head, introducing a second theme that would dominate much of Crazy Horse’s life for the next eighteen months: the question of the significance of the treaty signed at Fort Laramie. After the raid against the Crows, factionalism broke out anew between adherents of Red Cloud and those of Man Afraid of His Horse. At Fort Laramie, the repaired telegraph line had tapped in General Augur’s order to ban all off-reservation trade. When word trickled north, some Bad Face warriors flatly disowned the treaty and wished to resume raiding. Tensions resurfaced with the Hunkpatilas when they threatened “to kill ‘Man afraid of his horses’ in consequence of his efforts for peace.”8
Hunkpatila partisans were incensed by Red Cloud’s continued dominance of tribal council proceedings. A further element in the escalation of tensions was an unexpected one: scarcity of game. For three years, warriors and holy men had ascribed poor hunts to the American occupation of the hunting grounds, but this winter was shaping into another hungry season. The Piney Creek district was an ideal site, a winter haven for buffalo and elk, but game was unaccountably scarce.
A big council was held in December at which these issues came to a head. To forestall dangerous factionalism, the village split. Man Afraid of His Horse and his followers, about two hundred lodges, moved south. The split probably divided Crazy Horse’s and Black Shawl’s families. Man Afraid of His Horse led his camp to new winter quarters on Lance Creek sixty miles north of Fort Laramie. Red Leaf’s Wazhazhas went south also.9
Game was no plentier on Lance Creek, and the village was soon augmented by seventy-five lodges of southern Oglalas. Wary of military reprisals after a season of warfare on the Republican, headmen Whistler and Pawnee Killer reported that the rest of their band had joined the trek to the Missouri River. As the year turned, removal to the reservation became a live issue. The chiefs and Shirt Wearers debated a visit, but news from the Missouri was discouraging. They learned that an agency had been established for the Brules and Oglalas at the mouth of Whetstone Creek, but provisioning was inadequate and game virtually nonexistent. Man Afraid of His Horse, Red Leaf, and Grass declared again that they would not go to the Missouri River.10
Further discouraging news came regarding trade. Grass visited Fort Fetterman in mid-January to seek traders but was told flatly that all trade must be conducted on the Missouri reservation. Spider, Red Cloud’s regular envoy, appeared late in January to debate with his father-in-law Man Afraid of His Horse. Visiting Fort Laramie, Spider declared that Red Cloud would come to the post in the spring, expecting to trade: closing commerce on the North Platte would threaten the fragile peace won by the treaty.11
In March Red Cloud and Man Afraid of His Horse reunited and swung south to Rawhide Creek to appeal at Fort Laramie for provisions. An inconclusive parley at the fort, in which both sides attempted to cow the other, concluded with commander Dye issuing limited rations. Faced with another rejection of the reservation, he advised the chiefs “to go north at once, where they can find game.”12
The northern Oglalas returned to upper Powder River, where Red Cloud, who had continued to plan a vengeance raid against the Shoshones, reasserted his status as tribal war chief. Oglala war parties operated in the Wind River country from April through September. A tribal policy of opening the Shoshone ranges to Lakotas is detectable, surely acclaimed by Crazy Horse and the Shirt Wearers. Loosely cooperating with the northern Arapahos, whose chiefs were pursuing a negotiated joint-use zone on Wind River, the Oglalas pressed raids against the Shoshones. They also harried new American mining settlements near South Pass, as well as Camp Augur, a military post established to oversee the Shoshone reservation. Crazy Horse was undoubtedly involved in this warfare, stealing stock and killing outlying enemies both Shoshone and American.13
The raiding season would be the last carefree summer of Crazy Horse’s life. Raid and counterraid against the Shoshones made a relaxed coda to the war on the Bozeman Trail. Both Crazy Horse and his brother distinguished themselves in the fighting. They made an incongruous looking pair. The elder brother remained plainly dre
ssed, but Young Little Hawk, at twenty-three still the family pride, was always turned out in fine clothing, riding a mettlesome pony hung with fancy saddle trappings. The boundless confidence instilled in him as a child beloved was reflected in a recklessness that lent a dangerous edge to his courage. Some elders already opined that his bravery would make him a greater warrior than even his elder brother; fighting men like He Dog concluded that Young Little Hawk was too reckless, exposing himself to any danger regardless of tactical considerations.14
A skirmish recalled by Short Bull may have taken place this summer. The Oglala war party was pursued down Little Wind River by an outnumbering Shoshone force. Crazy Horse and Young Little Hawk formed the rearguard, making crisscross maneuvers across the retreat to hold off the Shoshones. At length, Crazy Horse’s pony played out, and he turned the exhausted animal loose. Young Little Hawk dismounted and drove off his own mount. In set-piece combat, the pursuers reined in and two Shoshone warriors rode out to fight hand to hand. Dismounting, the warriors closed on the Oglala brothers for a fair fight.
“Take care of yourself,” Crazy Horse told Young Little Hawk; “I’ll do the fancy stunt.” Crazy Horse ran at the first Shoshone in his characteristic rush—blindingly quick, seemingly without any forethought; it was his most obvious use of the kicamnayan tactic, tripping up one’s foe by sheer speed, wresting the initiative from the situation. The two men grappled, but in the struggle, Crazy Horse got the better of his foe. The second Shoshone showed a clean pair of heels, and Young Little Hawk joined his brother. Mounting the two enemy horses, they shook the Shoshone scalp in defiance and watched the pursuit melt away. The exultant brothers galloped after their comrades.15
Another strand in Crazy Horse’s life surfaced in the carefree aftermath of the Shoshone summer. Already he had begun a clandestine relationship with a married woman: by fall, it had become public knowledge—and “trouble” for the Shirt Wearer. Famously beautiful, near Crazy Horse’s age, Black Buffalo Woman was Red Cloud’s niece. Moreover, her husband was No Water, the brother of Black Twin. Now thirty-seven, No Water was associated with the pro-American factions: he had been one of the akicita recognized under the Harney agreement of 1856. More recently, he was allegedly passed over as candidate for Shirt Wearer in favor of Crazy Horse. Bad blood might have existed between the men since the ceremony; certainly the Hunkpatila–Bad Face dimension of the affair carried potential for a dangerous feud.
Mari Sandoz decided that the couple had been childhood sweethearts separated by a cruel ruse of Red Cloud’s, and that Black Buffalo Woman had yearned for Crazy Horse through years of unhappy marriage. Sandoz’s romantic, hugely influential reconstruction may possibly have roots in Pine Ridge gossip, but the major sources she consulted are entirely silent on the matter. The single most important source, He Dog, simply remarked that Crazy Horse “had been paying open attention to the woman for a long time” when the affair climaxed in May 1870.16
“Paying open attention to the woman” hardly amounted to a full-blooded adulterous affair, brazenly carried on in the open spaces around camp—such were many liaisons. Rather, it suggests the kind of transparent solicitousness that begins in uncharacteristic meetings, unscheduled visits, halting words. To talk to a woman was one Lakota idiom for courting, and talking, communication, may have been important in Crazy Horse’s emotional makeup. Certainly, in the last love affair of his life, the passionate relationship with Nellie Larrabee, was an unusual level of trust and communicativeness, a willingness to accept her words unprecedented in Crazy Horse’s dealings with anyone other than the holy men he revered (see chapter 23). This need for communication, like so much else in Crazy Horse’s life, may be rooted in the loss of his mother. Certain women were able to cut through the defenses of withdrawal and reserve, the heyoka melancholia, and speak with the living man.
Crazy Horse may have openly courted Black Buffalo Woman, stopping to talk intimately as she labored over scraping hides or in the bustle of moving camp. Perhaps during No Water’s absences, Crazy Horse haunted the spaces in back of her tipi, attempting the plangent minor-key themes of the Lakota love flute. Certainly, gossip credited him with securing love philters to seduce Black Buffalo Woman. Such images contrast with the perfunctory courtship of Black Shawl, suggesting that the affair had its origin in the months before his family opened marital negotiations on his behalf.
“No Water did not want to let the woman go,” recalled He Dog, which suggests that the possibility of a divorce was openly discussed and dismissed by No Water. Marriage was essentially a civil matter, contracted between individuals and families. Adultery, laziness, incompatibility—all were reasonable grounds for either husband or wife to initiate divorce. Although lifelong fidelity and successful marriage represented an ideal, Lakotas were realistic about personal happiness—divorce was reasonably common and carried little opprobrium, the security of children being cushioned by the deeper continuities of the extended family. No Water’s measured response also suggests that his reactions were constrained by the lack of evidence for sexual infidelity. A cuckolded husband might avenge himself on the lover and inflict punishment on his wife, to the extent of cutting off the tip of her nose before publicly throwing her away. No Water did not take this course. The fragmentary evidence indicates that though everyone knew of the emotional attachment, no one knew for certain if sexual intimacy had taken place.
By late 1869 the affair was becoming a talking point. Horn Chips was one of the disillusioned Oglalas who drifted west from the reservation that fall, and living in Black Twin’s tiyospaye, he was well placed to observe the intrigue. As a Shirt Wearer, of course, Crazy Horse had pledged a life of self-denial for the people’s good. The affair sat uneasily with that pledge, carrying potential for an explosive feud in the already strained relations between the Hunkpatila and Bad Face bands. That it continued for so long without an obvious resolution may reflect the pressure on Crazy Horse of elder opinion and advice to suppress his desires. Similar forces might have enjoined forbearance on No Water. Perhaps elders were involved in the dialogue resulting in No Water’s refusal to divorce Black Buffalo Woman, which would indicate the seriousness with which Crazy Horse viewed his relationship with her and the wish to formalize the situation with formal divorce and remarriage. To go beyond these outer limits of speculation, however, would require suspending critical faculties and, like village gossips, offended husbands, and romantic novelists, creating a pleasing fiction.
By late summer, Lakota political debate continued to center on the reservation issue. Reports to the military agent at Whetstone indicated that the northern Oglala leadership was contemplating a goodwill visit to the agency. Even Red Cloud had dropped his categorical opposition to the Missouri reservation. The spring changeover in akicita clearly was a factor, but continuing depletion of game resources in the upper Powder River country was fundamental. Through the 1870s, buffalo range would perceptibly contract north into Montana. As fall approached, Shoshones gathered in strength to reoccupy their Wind River hunting grounds, and the Oglalas were left with a choice: seek government rations or move farther north.17
In 1869 a new concept emerged in the Oglala political lexicon. In the familiar context of resolving threats to tribal solidarity, chiefs and elders formulated a middle way in defining future relations with the Americans. Amazingly enough, the concept is known from a rarity: a political speech by Crazy Horse. “Living with the wasicu gradually” (iwastela) became such a buzz phrase that even Crazy Horse was forced to use it. The iwastela concept recognized that the old nomadic life was not indefinitely sustainable: game was contracting, and Lakotas would eventually have to adopt the reservation solution to their predicament. What was at issue was the timeframe for the transition. Iwastela proponents envisaged a gradual adoption of farming and reservation life spread over a generation or more. Bands and individuals might move easily between reservation and hunting grounds, easing tensions and reducing the demands placed on the buffalo herds.18
By the end of summer, a trickle of disaffected Oglalas gravitated back from the reservation. Their reports were not encouraging. Rationing and supply problems were compounded by a proliferation of unsupervised whiskey traders, threatening Lakota communities with disruptive violence. Reminded of their pledge to provide healthful campsites, Crazy Horse and the Shirt Wearers demurred from the incipient consensus. Council agendas shifted, iwastela was put on hold, and the Oglalas shifted north to Tongue River in September.
During the cooling Moon of the Black Calf, new arrivals in the village confirmed the closure of Lakota hunting options. A straggle of families arrived from the Republican River hunting grounds of the southern Oglalas. Twenty-one-year-old Little Killer was among them, the younger brother of Club Man, husband to Crazy Horse’s sister. From now on, Little Killer would travel with his brother’s family, which split its time between Black Twin’s tiyospaye and the Hunkpatilas. Little Killer told Crazy Horse that troops had cleared the central plains of Indians, defeating the Dog Soldier Cheyennes at Summit Springs in July and driving the fugitives in flight—south to the Indian Territory reserve below the Arkansas, or north to refuge in Lakota country. Many more southern Oglalas were trekking into the reservation to seek safety in Spotted Tail’s peace party village. General Sherman’s path smoothed by reckless warrior outrages, he had been able to wrest control of an unceded hunting-ground zone recognized in the treaty of 1868. Uncontested by Indians, American hide hunters moved onto the central plains. The expansion of transcontinental railroads facilitated a new market for buffalo products, just as steamboat power had driven the robe trade of the previous generation. Over the next five years, hide hunters would hunt out the remaining buffalo on the central plains, shipping millions of hides to feed the demand in eastern factories for industrial belting.19
CRAZY HORSE Page 20