Debate intensified on resuming hostilities by targeting the growing mining community in central Wyoming Territory. Man Afraid of His Horse and other moderates could point to Cheyenne outrages as triggering the last round of hostilities, legitimizing army intervention on the central plains. The Hunkpatila chief argued for moving winter quarters to the reservation, where diplomacy could buy time. Underlining the growing bitterness between the two leaders, Red Cloud moved to polarize the debate, arguing that only Lakota military capacity could secure their ends. To serve notice of his conviction, Red Cloud personally led a war party south to the Sweetwater valley, returning early in October with a valuable haul of mules. The Bad Faces had shifted away from the iwastela compromise.20
As fall wound on, these tensions snapped tighter. In an unforeseeable twist, John Richard, Jr., wanted for killing a corporal at Fort Fetterman, fled with his Oglala wife to sanctuary on Powder River. Volatile, vengeful, and packing six kegs of gunpowder, Richard used the ammunition to rebuild his Oglala kinship networks, arguing for reprisals against the offending garrison. After Red Cloud accepted some of the powder, widening the scope of hostilities, Man Afraid of His Horse angrily withdrew from council. Detaching twenty lodges, his own personal following, he left the village, bound for the reservation, splitting the Hunkpatila band. Many Hunkpatilas like Crazy Horse were prepared to return to a war footing. About this time, Crazy Horse left his natal band to join the Oyuhpes, where the Shirt Wearer Big Road maintained a simple line of minimal relations with the Americans. The move demonstrated once more Crazy Horse’s disenchantment with the poisoned politics of Hunkpatila–Bad Face relations and his determination to remain a simple fighting man.21
Over the next weeks, scouts and raiders infested the upper North Platte, gathering stock and intelligence, killing straggling soldiers and civilians. Seven or eight parties of twenty-five men apiece were in the field, Crazy Horse among them. Richard maintained contact with his family and, with access to Wyoming newspapers, learned of alarming developments in the territorial capital, Cheyenne. Wyoming entrepreneurs were unhappy with the treaty of 1868, which confirmed the status of the Powder River country as unceded Indian lands, and through the winter of 1869–70, powerful forces organized a springtime invasion of Lakota territory, openly flouting the treaty. The projected Big Horn Expedition would field a massive civilian survey of northern Wyoming’s agricultural and mineral resources. Furnished with a military escort and armed to the teeth against Lakota reprisals, it threatened to set back Indian relations to total warfare.22
Through December the war parties grew. Groups of seventy or more targeted mail patrols between forts Laramie and Fetterman, making attacks of surprising boldness. Crazy Horse took an increasingly central role in war party organization, co-coordinating tactical activities. In midwinter John Richard spread word of the Big Horn Expedition down the Powder River valley. Although Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapas registered no interest in the news, many Miniconjous vowed to join the Oglalas in resisting the invasion. High Backbone’s tiyospaye joined the Oglala village. A few Sans Arc warriors ignored their chiefs’ counsel and joined the growing war faction. More war parties were recruited, constantly traversing the country down to the Union Pacific line to secure mules, scalps, and news. In January, three parties of one hundred men each left the Oglala village.23
En route to Whetstone, Man Afraid of His Horse’s small following fragmented. Checked by news of the Big Horn Expedition and reports that drunken violence was rocking Whetstone after Spotted Tail’s self-defense killing of Loafer chief Big Mouth, the Hunkpatila chief turned back. The crisis over the Big Horn Expedition only convinced him further that a diplomatic solution must be found to the impasse, and that Red Cloud must be brought aboard the peace process.24
In a startling shift, another principal emerged to play the peace card: John Richard, Jr., thinking of his future in a changing world, realized that bringing Red Cloud aboard the peace train might net him a pardon. Through the winter, Richard remained in touch with developments on the frontier and in the East. He was aware that a sea change had taken place in Indian policy. The army’s massacre of 173 Blackfeet Indians on the northwestern plains outraged the eastern public, discrediting the hardline militarism of General Sherman. President Grant moved to counter criticism by removing reservation administration from the military and placing it in control of the churches—Grant’s Indian “peace policy” was born. Astute playing of the new Washington mindset could reap dividends.25
The national controversy was echoed in the northern Oglala village. The aftermath of the treaty had at least convinced Red Cloud of the necessity of an ongoing dialogue with the government, and with coaxing from Richard and Man Afraid of His Horse, he decided that the channel of negotiation should not be closed. Prompted by Richard, the two leaders sent a joint message to Fort Laramie in the first week of March 1870. They announced that they would arrive at the fort by month’s end, ready to trade or to fight. The intransigent tone appeased all shades of opinion. Immediately the village broke up and started south. The main camp advanced up Powder River, as the second, with the more suspicious Oyuhpe band at its core, moved down the west flank of the Black Hills. Augmented by dissident Hunkpatilas and Miniconjous, the Oyuhpe village numbered about 150 lodges.26
In the Oyuhpe camp, Crazy Horse organized a war party to reconnoiter the Sweetwater valley, now a mining center and a possible avenue for the Big Horn Expedition. The party numbered some of his closest relatives, including Young Little Hawk and his eighteen-year-old cousin Eagle Elk. High Backbone, mourning the death of his mother, may have been in the party. Entering the Wind River country late in March, they found uncomfortable allies in the northern Arapahos, still pursuing their negotiations with the Shoshones. Although the Arapaho chiefs were committed to peace with the neighboring Americans, younger warriors were browbeaten or coaxed into joining Crazy Horse’s party. Scattering into the Sweetwater country, warriors targeted mining communities, picking off stragglers. Six civilians were killed on April 2, prompting the miners to mount a bloody reprisal, attacking the Arapaho camp four days later and killing the principal chief, Black Bear.27
With the warm moons opening, Crazy Horse knew the departure time for the Big Horn Expedition was near. To begin coordinating a screen of war parties operating across southern Wyoming, he departed for the Oyuhpe camp, two hundred miles east. Young Little Hawk remained in the west, his fifty or more warriors continuing to harry miners, troops, Shoshones, and even Utes, relaying reports to Crazy Horse.28
As Crazy Horse journeyed east, new developments changed the situation out of all recognition. Red Cloud and Man Afraid of His Horse, their village still advancing up Powder River, had forwarded a more placatory message to Fort Fetterman, stating they wanted peace and permission to trade. Army top brass and the Cabinet predictably rejected the proposal out of hand, but the diplomatic gamble was about to pay off handsomely for the Oglala leaders. Signaling the new independence of the Indian Office, the commissioner of Indian Affairs announced that the government was ready to locate a trading post “at such point in the Indian Territory as Red Cloud may select as his camp.” This artfully phrased concession was redrawing the political map in the Oglala camps. In the main village near Pumpkin Buttes, Red Cloud and Man Afraid of His Horse were creating consensus for a dramatic break in the logjam of U.S. relations: an Oglala delegation to visit Washington and resolve the burning issues of trade, trespass, and agency location. The iwastela policy was back on track.29
These developments had yet to take root in the warier Oyuhpe camp on Rawhide Creek, where the council remained on a war footing. Crazy Horse started a new war party south, bound for the Union Pacific line to monitor the Big Horn Expedition’s departure from Cheyenne. On the morning of April 19, the warriors forded the North Platte just north of Fort Laramie, then fanned out to reconnoiter the post. Crazy Horse, riding alone up a ravine one-half mile from the fort, confronted a civilian, George Harris, riding down the de
file to hunt ducks. With no time to draw rein, Crazy Horse instinctively raised his rifle and snapped off a passing shot that shattered Harris’s leg just above the ankle. Immediately, more shots echoed, and several warriors appeared on the hills around the post. A shocked garrison turned out, ready to repulse any charge through the open parade ground. Colonel Franklin F. Flint ordered a detachment of mule-mounted infantry in pursuit. Crazy Horse signaled disengagement, and the warriors withdrew across the North Platte, firing at a civilian wagon but doing no damage. Save for Harris’s amputated leg, the little skirmish claimed no casualties but was notable for yielding the earliest printed notice of Crazy Horse by name.30
Throughout late April, warriors from the Oyuhpe village continued to scour the environs of Fort Laramie. Scouting parties were constantly seen on the hills across the river, and patrols followed a crisscross of trails between outlying ranches. Crazy Horse coordinated a party that fanned out across the country south of the fort, gathering stock and intelligence south toward the railroad and east to the Nebraska line. On the afternoon of April 28, the sleepy mail station on Chugwater Creek was jerked awake by the sudden rush of twelve warriors on the stock corral. A second party of eight warriors joined the assault, but the defenders laid down a heavy fire. Crazy Horse knew stationmaster Portugee Phillips to be a resourceful frontiersman from the Bozeman Trail War, and the Oglalas withdrew up the creek, then struck Ben Mills’s herd camp, killing several cattle and cutting off two cowboys. Nearby, several warriors made a dash on a mule herd to be met by herders’ lead that killed two and wounded a third. As the Moon When the Ponies Shed opened, Crazy Horse moved his men down to the Union Pacific. The Big Horn Expedition had announced a mid-May departure from Cheyenne.31
While Crazy Horse’s war parties were busy, Red Cloud and Man Afraid of His Horse had won agreement in the main village to send a delegation to Washington. They elected to open dialogue at Fort Fetterman, weaker and more remote than Fort Laramie, where a number of trusted interpreters and officers were based. After the Indian Office concession on trade, the village council approved a placatory opening gambit: the Oglalas were ready to settle permanently on the reservation if a suitable sector could be agreed on away from the Missouri. They would demand trade, ammunition, and rationing for their people while the delegation was gone. John Richard, indicted murderer and gambling man, was the chiefs’ ace in the hole. The Oglalas would present themselves as his captors—and protectors. Asserting Richard’s diplomatic immunity, they would insist on taking him to Washington as interpreter. There Richard would abide the decision of the federal authorities. The Richard gambit elegantly summed up the Oglala position, matching conciliation with force.32
By late April, the village had reached consensus on this stance. The Bad Face peace chief Brave Bear lent his seniority to the cause, and several warrior societies, meeting for their spring renewals, approved the proposals. Then, in a development that undercut Crazy Horse’s militant position, the Oyuhpe band came on board the iwastela process. Fundamental to this transformation was Red Dog, one of the strategic architects of the Bozeman Trail War victory. Now, convinced of the game crisis on the plains, he threw all his organizational and oratorical skills behind iwastela. The Oyuhpe village started west to join the Oglala Proper. Even before the villages united, Red Cloud, Man Afraid of His Horse, Brave Bear, and Red Dog were named as envoys to open dialogue. Four warrior societies served as escort, validating the chiefs’ credentials. On April 25, they opened four days of talks with the Fort Fetterman commander, urging that their proposals be telegraphed east.
On the twenty-eighth, the same day Crazy Horse’s raiders struck the Chugwater, the envoys departed, promising to unite all the bands and leaving Young Man Afraid of His Horse to relay messages from the fort. Days passed in tense silence. In Washington the president was absent, and General Sherman once more opposed the Oglala initiative. Then, on May 3, a Cabinet meeting signaled the limits of Sherman’s influence under the new dispensation, approving the delegation. A grim-faced Sherman followed up with authorization for limited rationing at Fort Fetterman. Departmental headquarters wired the news to Fort Fetterman, and Young Man Afraid of His Horse, with his father and Red Cloud, departed on May 7.33
Crazy Horse’s war parties were still in the field in the first week of May. His own party shadowed the railroad on the Laramie plains, west of Cheyenne. On the Sweetwater, Young Little Hawk’s party clashed with a Second Cavalry patrol on May 4, suffering casualties in a stiff pursuit. To the Oglala tribal council, these eyes and ears were suddenly loose cannons, endangering the success of the delegation. Messengers were probably sent to announce a truce and summon the war parties home immediately after the Fort Fetterman dialogue, and Crazy Horse was undoubtedly dismayed at the news. Leaving some warriors in the field, he and a bodyguard of faithful warriors rode to the Fort Fetterman area, where Crazy Horse conferred with a local Loafer about the latest developments.34
From there Crazy Horse’s party struck north to join the united village, 350 lodges strong, at the head of Powder River. For weeks he had worked tirelessly, skillfully co-coordinating warriors and scouts across a two hundred-mile front, but no hero’s welcome awaited this return. According to an anonymous Lakota report at Fort Fetterman, Crazy Horse’s party had been singled out for exemplary punishment. Akicita turned out to meet him, demanding the party turn over seven horses and mules stolen along the Chugwater. When the warriors refused, the akicita whipped them and turned over the stolen stock at Fort Fetterman to confirm the return of peace.35
Events left Crazy Horse no time to brood. Lakota society moved quickly to rehabilitate offenders, and councils were constantly in session to finalize the delegation, even proposing Crazy Horse be a delegate. But as Thunder Tail recalled, Crazy Horse “did not have confidence” and quietly refused the invitation. He made his first remembered speech in council: “This nation will,” he conceded, “gradually [iwastela] be living with the wasicu,” but he went on to spell out his misgivings: “I fear the land will be taken under duress without payment.” Urging the messenger to return to the North Platte, he confirmed, “Soon I shall come. If I were present,” he reiterated, “I would not sell [the land] to the wasicu. So take the message: I shall go slowly [iwastela].” The speech skillfully summed up his doubts, identifying his minimal demands of the delegation while assuring the council that he remained committed to dialogue. Finally, he turned the season’s buzzword around and placed his own take on iwastela, playing on its literal and figurative connotations to assert the primacy of his own agenda.36
A major raid on the Crows was being planned, an enterprise to unite all shades of opinion. The Crow Owners Society was staging its spring reunion, and society leaders nominated Crazy Horse as one of its lance bearers. A pair of black-painted officers, stuffed crowskins fastened to their hair and feather bustles at their hips, manhandled Crazy Horse to the society shade and seated him roughly on the floor space. Beside him sat He Dog, the pair chosen once more to illustrate tribal solidarity. Thrust into the ground before the candidates were two short lances, bound with otter skin and mounted with a crow’s head. As a herald harangued, the society singers led the membership in songs memorializing previous bearers. Lance owners were chosen to die, pledged to thrust their lances through their society sashes and peg themselves to the ground in battle. As Crazy Horse and He Dog grasped the lances, they vowed to go immediately to battle—” to tempt his fate, or to test his virtue.”37
The Fight When They Chased Them Back to Camp would go down in Lakota annals as one of the great set-piece battles against the Crows.38 Now, in the second week of May 1870, it united the northern Oglalas around a common cause. Warriors streamed north, following Crazy Horse, He Dog, High Backbone, and a score of lesser leaders: Bad Heart Bull, Sun Eagle Feather, Iron Magpie, Little Big Man, and Pumpkin Butte. A village of Miniconjous and Sans Arcs was gathering on Rosebud Creek, its warriors scheduled to join the war party, but the Oglalas felt confident enough to o
pen the fighting alone. The main Crow camp was located on the west side of the Bighorn River, near the modern community of St. Xavier, Montana, hundreds of tipis lining the bank. The Crow horse herd, several thousand head grazing on the east side of the river, made an irresistible target. In the morning, Lakota raiders were sent ahead to round up the herd and start driving them east. A few warriors rode boldly down to the water’s edge and reined in to let their ponies drink. Crazy Horse, carrying the Crow Owners lance, joined High Backbone, distinctive in red turban and cape, in this display of cool machismo.
In the Crow village, pandemonium broke out. Mounting the war ponies tethered outside lodges, hundreds of warriors strung across the river to combat the Lakota menace. Hooves thundered as the Oglala raiders started the Crow herd to a run, and a long chase began over the flats toward the Little Bighorn, fifteen miles east. The Oglalas were hoping for the Miniconjou reinforcements to turn the tables on the pursuit, but the miles went by without a sign. Here and there, warriors turned to challenge single combatants, but as the sun climbed to noon, fresh Crow horseflesh was wearing out jaded Oglala mounts. The Crow assault poured forward. High Backbone tried to form a defensive line atop a hill. A cluster of Oglala warriors drew rein. As the line of Crows swung to charge along the slope, twenty-two-year-old Thunder Tail would remember, the Lakotas touched up their wotawe paint designs. Pointing to the bloody trophies waved by the Crows, High Backbone taunted his men to vengeance: “When it is a day like this it is men who are brave. Get busy!”39
It was not enough to stem the tide, and the Oglalas fled again. At length they splashed across the Little Bighorn and urged their ponies up the slope. Here, six years later, Crazy Horse would secure his greatest victory against the Americans. Suddenly, across the eastern hills, dust signaled the arrival of the Miniconjous. As if by a collective nerve, the fleeing Oglalas stiffened and turned to confront the pursuit. A knot of Miniconjous and Sans Arcs, all wearing trailer headdresses and waving warrior society lances, swept down on the Crows. Amidst fleeing comrades, one Crow dismounted as if pledged to die. High Backbone shot him, and Crazy Horse, shadowing his kola, struck the coup. The chase reversed itself, traversing the same country back toward the Bighorn. Out on the plain one Crow’s pony foundered, and the warrior stood at bay as the Lakota line approached. Crazy Horse and High Backbone, still working as a team, closed in. The Crow bravely bluffed at Crazy Horse, but the Oglala snapped off a shot that dropped him. High Backbone rode forward to take this coup.
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