The pursuit continued late into the afternoon. As they entered the Bighorn valley, the Crows were strung out, riding double; a man scuttled along holding onto the tail of a comrade’s mount. At length the Lakota war leaders called a halt and turned exhausted horses for home. When They Chased Them Back to Camp was over.
Days later, this period of fevered activity in Crazy Horse’s life closed with the departure of the delegation to Fort Fetterman. Led by Man Afraid of His Horse and Red Cloud, the party numbered over twenty members, several taking along their wives. A retinue of five hundred people made a colorful exit from the village. Final word from the fort cleared a last-minute sticking point: President Grant had wired Cheyenne to order the Big Horn Expedition not to intrude in the unceded territory. With the wisdom of iwastela confirmed, the delegates left with a firm agenda agreed to by chiefs and warriors. Removal to the Missouri River was unacceptable. Fundamental to all Oglalas was the right to trade on the North Platte. Fort Laramie was the prime choice, but the delegates were empowered to agree to a site as far east as Scott’s Bluffs. An agency so located would secure Lakota rights in the unceded territory, preventing future intrusions. Preservation of the unceded territory overrode all other concerns. Early attempts to locate permanently in the reservation interior were to be underplayed, a position possibly adopted to keep Crazy Horse aboard the peace process.40
Scattering by bands, the Oglalas intended to gravitate to Fort Laramie to meet the returning delegation six weeks hence. Before departure, Red Cloud presented his hair-fringed shirt to He Dog, transferring seniority to his nephew for the duration of the trip. American Horse would handle diplomacy at the forts.41 As the camps started east from Powder River, Crazy Horse was left idle for the first time in seven months. He had suffered privations, struggled with logistical problems, and coordinated activities across a huge arena, using his visionary power and sublimating his personal desires to the tribal good. In idleness, he must have been rankled by the bitterness of his position. His own warriors had lost their lives in the action for which he had been whipped by akicita upholding the new conciliation policy. His mood threw into relief his own needs from life. All through the war years, he had been seized on as a mediating force, binding the frayed interests of Hunkpatilas and Bad Faces. His summary punishment by their police called fundamental allegiances into question.
His outlet from the suffocations of political life had always been war. Calling in comrades like Little Big Man and He Dog’s younger brother Little Shield, he proposed a small-scale war party against the Crows. Still, something was missing; something could no longer wait. In the Bad Face camp, No Water was absent, probably accompanying Red Cloud’s party to Fort Fetterman. It was not the best idea, but Crazy Horse paused once more to talk with Black Buffalo Woman.
Four
WAR CHIEF
13
UP AGAINST IT
About ten days after the Fight When They Chased Them Back to Camp, Crazy Horse departed for the Crow country once more. There was no colorful parade, just a small war party of a few followers only, leaving piecemeal in the early light to rendezvous a few miles from camp. The party struck north and west across the plains toward Powder River. A screen of trusted comrades led by Little Big Man flanked the little column, while scouts fanned out after game and vantage. Riding some distance ahead of the party was Crazy Horse. Beside him rode Black Buffalo Woman. She had elected to leave her husband and elope with Crazy Horse. The pair would take the consequences of their passion.1
All day the party continued across the treeless plain dividing the Belle Fourche drainage from the Powder. Late in May the prairie swells are vivid with new grass, and here the plains earn their clichéd sobriquet of a sea of grass. Centering on modern Gillette, Wyoming, the Thunder Basin region held strong attachments for Crazy Horse. Pasture was rich for horse herds and buffalo, and the startling weeks of spring growth may have retained a honeymoon association for him. As afternoon drew on, the party paused somewhere along the low ridges of the divide, where eastward-draining coulees interface with draws running west to the Powder. Youths were sent to fetch water and pasture the horses. Cooking fires were lit, and the war party settled down for the night.
We have no way of knowing the events of the night, but people would consider the elopement as a real if unorthodox marriage: He Dog viewed Black Buffalo Woman as his comrade’s first wife, and we may assume that he ascribed a sexual dimension to this phase of the relationship at least. The months of irresolution were over, and as the preparations of camp went on, the couple had time to reflect and anticipate. In eloping with a married woman, Crazy Horse had put himself in a dangerous position. Ideally, a husband should rise above jealousy, but No Water was within his rights to demand his wife’s return: in such brittle face-offs lay the germ of many a bloody feud. Putting aside reprisals, Crazy Horse must have known that he was unfitting himself to continue as a Shirt Wearer. As much as anything, the sudden resolution of the affair signaled his own disillusion with the political process that had culminated in the Washington delegation and his followers’ beating by council akicita.
Black Buffalo Woman had, if anything, even more to lose. In theory, a woman could terminate her marriage by abandoning her husband, but in practice that was subject to a host of imponderables. If reclaimed, she could expect corporal punishment and even mutilation at the hands of her husband. Even if permitted to make a life with a new partner, she forfeited her property rights, and most significant, she lost all claims on her children. Early that morning, Black Buffalo Woman had left her three children with friends and relatives before joining Crazy Horse. The finality of that separation, the vulnerability of her position, must have weighed on her as darkness fell. No eavesdropping witness recorded memories of that night, so we can only infer the totality of need and desperation to be assuaged by recognizing its obverse in all that was left behind.
On the afternoon of the second day, the country began to break toward the river. Scouts sighted scattered clusters of tipis: several tiyospaye of Lakotas were camped around the crossing. The war party descended into the valley, where the wide gray belt of Powder River, braided with mudbanks, swings between white clay bluffs. Cries of recognition went up from the tipis. Miniconjous, including many of Crazy Horse’s maternal relatives, were encamped here, as well as Oglalas whom Black Buffalo Woman could call kin. Friends and relatives invited the war party to spend the night with them. After two days in the saddle, the warriors were glad to accept.
That night a double tipi was raised on the campground to accommodate visitors. A social dance was staged, with lines of young men and women facing each other across the fire, chastely pairing off in a circle while singers shrilled the bittersweet joys of love. Around the perimeter of the lodge sat the guests, men grouped along one side, women on the other. At the honor place sat Crazy Horse, chatting with his host Touch the Clouds. Enjoying an evening of respectability, Black Buffalo Woman sat with the matrons, while Little Big Man sat on Crazy Horse’s right. Several more of the war party, including Little Shield, clustered near.
Sharp ears might have made out the noise of new arrivals outside. As night fell, a second war party had ridden into the camps. Their leader, dismounting from his pacing mule, was No Water. Returning home to a deserted lodge, he had soon rounded up his children and pieced together the story. He recruited followers and rode night and day in pursuit. He too had relatives here, and he first searched out his kinsman Bad Heart Bull. On the pretense that he wished to go out hunting, No Water asked to borrow Bad Heart Bull’s pistol—according to one account, a small. .41 caliber Derringer.2 Hunting at midnight with such a sidearm seemed an unlikely proposition, but Bad Heart Bull gave the pistol to No Water. The aggrieved husband and his followers rode into the main camp and dismounted outside the double tipi.
Inside the lodge, as tired dancers were ready to settle to the feast and women bustled around the fire, No Water stepped through the open door space. The circle fell silent
as he stalked around the fire to stand four feet in front of Crazy Horse. “My friend,” he rasped, leveling the pistol: “I have come!”3 Touch the Clouds and Crazy Horse sprang up simultaneously, the latter reaching for his belt knife only to feel a restraining hand close on his arm. Trying to prevent an escalation of violence, Little Big Man had seized his comrade just as No Water squeezed the trigger. The gun barked, scarcely a foot from Crazy Horse’s face. Crazy Horse reeled against Little Big Man as the bullet struck just below his left nostril, plowing a surface wound along the line of his teeth and fracturing his upper jaw before exiting his neck at the base of the skull. Released by Little Big Man, Crazy Horse took a step, then pitched forward unconscious into the cooking fire.
The floor space was suddenly electric with motion and noise. Touch the Clouds stepped between his fallen kinsman and No Water. Under the pall of powder smoke, Black Buffalo Woman scrambled to the back of the tipi, pulling up the cover and crawling out into the night air. She raced across the campground to locate a tipi of relatives, begging through sobs for protection.
As the shot died away, No Water hurried out of the lodge. His followers knotted anxiously around as he told them he had killed Crazy Horse. Warriors exited the tipi. Touch the Clouds, towering over the throng, snatched away No Water’s pistol. To fading cries of alarm and defiance, the panicky party dissolved into the night, No Water not pausing even to reclaim his mule. Riders mounted to carry the horrific word that Crazy Horse was dead.
Inside the tipi, Crazy Horse’s followers lifted him from the fire and carried him to the nearby camp of his Miniconjou uncle Spotted Crow. The headman and his womenfolk prepared a warm bed for their nephew while healers were called to attend. The ugly wound, blackened by powder smoke from the point-blank range, was cleaned, then a poultice of herbs was secured by a bandage covering much of Crazy Horse’s lower face. The brief examination suggested that he was in no mortal danger, and more riders galloped out to correct the premature reports of Crazy Horse’s death.
Out in the night, warriors scoured the valley for No Water. At length, they turned on No Water’s hapless mule and shot it dead, then sullenly returned to make their base at Spotted Crow’s camp. Elsewhere in the darkness, No Water’s men had spirited their leader from danger. At a remote spot, they built a sweat lodge, and in a hurried ritual, purified him of what they believed to be the killing of Crazy Horse. “Then,” remembered He Dog, “he disappeared.” Close by stood the Badger Eaters camp of No Water’s older brothers. After a few days of wandering, No Water sought protection there. Black Twin told his brother, “Come and stay with me, and if they want to fight us we will fight.”4
Black Twin’s remark reflected a dangerous escalation of tension. Even after Crazy Horse’s recovery was assured, his warriors remained “very angry and thought they ought to have No Water turned over to them to be punished.”5 When messengers returned to the Spotted Crow camp to report Black Twin’s defiance, some of Crazy Horse’s followers argued for an open attack on the Badger Eaters. Black Twin tried to bully Horn Chips into an admission of complicity, claiming that Horn Chips had provided Crazy Horse with love charms to seduce Black Buffalo Woman. Horn Chips denied the charges but rapidly made himself scarce, permanently leaving his natal tiyospaye. “For a while it looked as if a lot of blood would flow,” concluded He Dog.6
Spotted Crow and his two brothers Ashes and Bull Head, the senior headmen in the Miniconjou camp, hosted feasts in which they worked for reconciliation. Touch the Clouds added his weight to their advice. In visits to Crazy Horse’s sickbed, he counseled the wounded man to drop his claims to Black Buffalo Woman, gradually applying the unanswerable authority of an older brother. Initially, Crazy Horse resisted, expressing his fears for Black Buffalo Woman’s safety if she returned to No Water—a concern hinting at his depth of feeling for the woman.
Other forces were soon in play. Bad Heart Bull and his brother He Dog felt implicated in the feud because No Water had used Bad Heart Bull’s pistol. The brothers matched Spotted Crow’s efforts by approaching Black Twin and his relatives, smoothing the way to peacemaking. As the atmosphere gradually calmed, they established a toehold for diplomacy by convincing Black Twin that, whatever Crazy Horse’s offense, No Water’s attempt on his life had been an act of culpable folly. A corner had been turned. After consulting Crazy Horse’s warriors, He Dog hammered out a deal with Black Twin to “cover” the shooting. Tethered near No Water’s tipi were two of his favorite ponies—a “very fine” roan and a “fine” bay. On prompting from He Dog and his brother, No Water sent an intermediary with these ponies, and a third good horse, to Spotted Crow’s camp “to atone for the injury he had done.”7
Touch the Clouds stepped up his efforts to secure a total reconciliation. Unrecorded factors played their part. By happy chance, many of Crazy Horse’s war party were Bad Faces, with relatives in Black Twin’s camp. Conciliatory forces probably took root there. At length Crazy Horse gave in, and Bad Heart Bull was called to the sickbed. Insisting on the condition that No Water should not punish his wife, Crazy Horse gave his consent to Black Buffalo Woman’s return. Bad Heart Bull carried the proposal to Black Twin’s camp and secured No Water’s assurance. At the Miniconjou camp, the council deputed Spotted Crow and warriors Sitting Eagle and Canoeing to escort Black Buffalo Woman home. Fulfilling the terms of the agreement, they left her at Bad Heart Bull’s tipi. Bad Heart Bull added his personal guarantee to No Water’s, and the escort departed. “If it had not been settled this way, there might have been a bad fight,” He Dog summed up.8 Although private feelings continued to rankle, as a matter of public concern, the affair was at an end. Crazy Horse and Black Buffalo Woman would not speak again.
As the Moon of Making Fat opened, the Oglala bands continued sifting southeast toward the rendezvous point of Rawhide Butte. Gradually Crazy Horse regained strength, but he would remain convalescent for several months, nursing his broken jaw in much pain and discomfort. The days confined to bed were conducive to reflection, and he pondered carefully his attitude toward both his chieftainship and his personal future.
Man Afraid of His Horse returned from Fort Fetterman to report that the delegation had departed for Washington on May 22. The official line would be that he had taken sick, but others would recall that the Hunkpatila chief “backed out” of the trip east, unhappy at the favor shown Red Cloud. As the key architect of the iwastela policy, Man Afraid of His Horse must have been rankled to see it coopted by the hitherto intransigent Red Cloud. Man Afraid of His Horse’s return permitted a session of the chiefs’ council to debate the issue of Crazy Horse’s adultery. It came to an inevitable conclusion: Crazy Horse had made himself unworthy of his status as Shirt Wearer, and the elders formally demanded that he return his ceremonial shirt.9
Crazy Horse’s reflections had prepared him for the decision. The tribal adoption of the iwastela policy toward the Americans imposed restrictions on him that he was no longer willing to tolerate. For over a decade, he had honed a self-image as the Lakota warrior, using Thunder’s power to protect the people. From now on he “[d]isdained the compliment of being great—a great leader, or anything of that sort.”10 According to a late oral tradition, Crazy Horse brought the shirt to the council tipi, saying simply, “I’d rather be a plain warrior. I’m not an orator, I’m not a politician.”11
In the private sphere, too, the enforced days of idleness had spurred reassessment of his life. His father and stepmothers redoubled their efforts to ensure a secure domestic life for Crazy Horse. The crisis underscored what they had been saying for years: their son needed a good marriage to stabilize him. Crazy Horse at last agreed. The stalled negotiations with Black Shawl’s family were reopened. The menfolk had already agreed on a bride price, and after a final gift of horses was sent to Black Shawl’s family, the mothers moved to finalize details. By the middle of June, barely a month after the disastrous elopement, preparations were complete.12
On the day of the wedding, Black Shawl rose
early. After bathing, her mother, Red Elk Woman, orchestrated the preparations. She and her kinswomen carefully painted Black Shawl, outlining the part of her hair in red and sketching in the fine stripes of the hunka ceremony. Her hair was plaited in two braids to hang, in recognition of her new status, over her breast. She was dressed in the finest of clothing, moccasins and knee-length leggings topped by a graceful dress of fringed buckskin, its yoke heavily embellished with beadwork.
Other relatives had packed a number of ponies with Black Shawl’s dowry. A bride was expected to take with her the minimal requirements of family life: a tipi, a pair of robes, and the basic domestic toolkit of awl and thread, kettle, axe, and knife. Mother and aunts packed the materials for a feast. Black Shawl’s brothers, Iron Horse and Red Feather, led the best of Crazy Horse’s gift ponies and helped their sister into the saddle. Holding the bridle, they led a procession from the Oyuhpe camp. Well-wishers watched as the line, flanked by singers, approached the Hunkpatila lodges. In Worm’s tipi, Black Shawl sat on the buffalo robes that marked Crazy Horse’s bed space, shyly facing away from the lodge interior. At length, her new mothers-in-law, attended by Crazy Horse’s sister and other kinswomen, welcomed her, coaxing the shy maiden to turn and face her new relatives.
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