CRAZY HORSE

by Kingsley M Bray

  Only Crazy Horse resisted Red Cloud’s blandishments. The Hunkpatila band council repeatedly met to feast and to debate the linked issues of the railroad and the reservation. Yellow Eagle, the nominal band chieftain, presided at first, but increasingly he deferred to Crazy Horse, honoring the war chief’s total commitment to the hunting life. Indeed, he did more than defer; he relinquished the honor place in band councils to Crazy Horse. Flanked by elders like Worm and Human Finger, their circle filled with rising men like Iron Crow and Standing Bull IV, Crazy Horse would sit as Hunkpatila chief for the rest of his life. He was still the most diffident of public speakers, usually asking Little Hawk to speak for him, but he quietly focused debate, unraveling issues, exploring themes. When he tersely indicated that he would not visit the Oglala agency, the band headmen unanimously acclaimed the decision. Little Big Man brought a few Bad Face lodges to join his old war comrade. Late in February, Moon of the Dark Red Calf, as the main village started south, their thirty lodges pressed west toward Powder River.10

  The split was bitter. Crazy Horse and Little Hawk recruited war parties to harry the upper North Platte valley, driving away horses and mules from outposts and waystations. Drover Levi Powell was killed on the north fork of Laramie River, and Hunkpatila raiders drove his ten horses into Red Cloud’s village near Fort Laramie. Red Cloud was at a delicate juncture in talks with the post commander and civilian agent Jared W. Daniels, regarding a proposed relocation of the agency to White River, within the reservation boundary. Unwilling to endanger village solidarity by deploying akicita, Red Cloud impotently disavowed Little Hawk’s raiders. The Hunkpatila example fired the mood of Bad Face warriors all too suspicious of their principal chief. The White River relocation slipped off the radar. When Little Hawk returned north, he could report that Red Cloud had settled at the agency, but that thirty or forty tipis of disillusioned Bad Faces were following Black Twin back onto the hunting grounds.11

  As summer approached, political imperatives reasserted themselves. A great gathering had been scheduled at the Powder River forks to debate the Northern Pacific issue. Black Twin’s camp, including He Dog’s tiyospaye, had joined the Hunkpatilas in April. Early in June, most of the Oyuhpes arrived, disenchanted with their visit to the agency. Sitting Bull’s people arrived from across the Yellowstone. The redoubtable Spotted Eagle led a disillusioned contingent of visitors from Cheyenne River. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were now the most famous of the Lakota leaders uncompromisingly committed to the old life. A wary rivalry still circumscribed their relationship, but the pair grew ever closer on national policy. Crazy Horse remained the junior partner. Now forty years old, Sitting Bull possessed a reassuring gravitas that grounded the nervy charisma of his Oglala counterpart. Reflecting these factors, and the larger proportion of Hunkpapas in the north, Sitting Bull occupied the honor place in the council tipi. He recognized Crazy Horse as his second-in-command, habitually seating him in the guest’s place on his left.12

  Through the following summer, the two men sought to foster an ideology of unity among the disparate bands, creating a single Northern Nation, Waziyata Oyate, that would respond decisively to new American intrusions. Although the pair could rely on the support of war leaders like Spotted Eagle, the great council was still unconvinced of any real urgency. Moderate voices like Black Moon’s and Lone Horn’s argued against premature war commitments.

  Underlining the unity of the Northern Nation, on August 3, four tribal circles attended a Sun Dance sponsored by the Sans Arcs, at which intertribal activities were coordinated by a leader from each village: Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Fireboat (Miniconjou), and Turning Bear (Sans Arc). A major raid on the Crows was planned to start soon after the ceremony, but on the eighth, scouts reported troops marching down the Yellowstone: the Northern Pacific surveyors were approaching the Lakota country.13

  The concerted response revealed the streamlining of Northern Nation leadership. “We’ll go out and meet them,” declared Sitting Bull, “and warn them off. They have no business in our country.” While he and Fireboat organized the village’s withdrawal downstream, Crazy Horse and Turning Bear coordinated the warrior response. A party almost one thousand strong started up the Yellowstone. Late on August 13 scouts sighted the troops in camp on the north side of the river opposite the mouth of Pryor Creek. Some seventy wagons and military ambulances defined the camp of Major Eugene M. Baker and his escort of over 350 troopers. Armed civilians augmented Baker’s effective strength to better than four hundred. This was Crow country, and the chiefs ordered the warriors not to precipitate premature fighting. Sitting Bull wished to parley, but the fall of darkness riddled the sketchy akicita deadlines, and by midnight, eager warriors strung across the Yellowstone, driving away stock. About 3:00 A.M. desultory shots announced the opening of battle.14

  Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull hurried the main force across the river, topped the northern bluffs, and circled downstream to front the troop position. The two chiefs remained atop a hill jutting into the valley at the left of the Lakota line. A quarter mile of bottomland separated the line from the troops, and as dawn grayed, individual warriors galloped along the flat to draw soldier fire. Almost immediately, one man, charging close, was shot dead, and several others were wounded as Baker’s men deployed behind a cutbank. Sitting Bull ordered a pause, but grumbling warriors continued to try their medicine. At length, Crazy Horse, having dotted his face with white paint, laid aside his rifle and mounted. Dressed in white buckskin shirt and leggings, flourishing the Crow Owners Society lance, he charged at a dead run across Baker’s line. Repeated runs attracted heavy fire, but Crazy Horse was unscathed. On the hilltop, warriors whooped their approval.

  Not to be outdone, Sitting Bull walked alone down the hillside and sat on the prairie a hundred yards ahead of the Indian line. After filling his pipe, he called out for men to smoke with him. Four dumbstruck warriors, wincing at the bullets soon plowing up the dust all around them, took up the invitation. Sitting Bull smoked meditatively, then cleaned the pipe, thoroughly unfazed even when a charging warrior’s horse was killed right in front of the little group. At length, he rose and strolled back uphill to renewed whoops of acclaim. “That’s enough! We must stop!” Sitting Bull shouted, as he remounted his bay war pony: “That’s enough!”15

  One of the four who had smoked with Sitting Bull, his Miniconjou nephew White Bull, jostled next to Crazy Horse, who turned and remarked, “Let’s make one more circle toward the soldier line. You go first.”

  “Go first yourself,” replied White Bull. “I’ll follow.” Crazy Horse galloped downhill and veered his mount along the line, White Bull at his heels. Again, ineffectual soldier fire rattled out. Then, just as the pair turned their ponies at the end of the line, a volley crashed, and Crazy Horse’s pony pitched forward, dead. White Bull veered left for the hilltop, leaving Crazy Horse to jump up, unhurt, from the dust. Alone, he ran uphill. Already, warriors were stringing along the bluffs downstream after Sitting Bull. A comrade lingered and Crazy Horse jumped up to ride double as the party turned to ford the Yellowstone and head home.16

  The attack was little more than a show of force. Baker’s casualties—one slain sergeant and a mortally wounded civilian—were minimal, but the survey expedition thought better of entering the Lakota domain. After scouts reported this news, the Northern Nation debated developments before the village broke up. Each division counseled separately. In the Oglala camp, the mood was uncertain. Some people were openly dismayed at the prospect of hostilities. The intertribal council closed with summary statements by the two war chiefs. Crazy Horse was brief: “My friend, if any soldiers or white men come in here and do not shoot first, we’ll not bother them. But if they come shooting, we’ll go after them.”17

  “Friend, you are right,” agreed Sitting Bull. “I hear there is a government of white men somewhere east, and it is sending many soldiers to fight us. That is no way for them to act; it is not right. But if they come, we’ll fight them and kil
l them. Some Indians will be killed, too, until we reach a settlement.” With that, the camps separated. The two war chiefs were at pains to smooth over dissent, but their statements exposed subtle policy differences between the Oglalas and Hunkpapas. That whatever misgivings, Crazy Horse tacitly upheld the more moderate Oglala position. It speaks much for his growing maturity that, despite the rivalry both men displayed in the Baker fight, Crazy Horse instinctively supported Sitting Bull’s harder line.18

  In June 1873 the Oglala, Miniconjou, and Sans Arc villages reunited along the Little Bighorn. Although troops were known to be assembling at Fort Rice on the Missouri, intelligence indicated no departure for the west. The Lakota war leaders were happy to press their favorite concern: the controversy-free war with the Crows. The Mountain Crow village, augmented by forty lodges of Nez Perce visitors from across the Rockies, was on the Yellowstone, and in the first days of July, as chokecherries ripened, a large Lakota war party struck across country toward its target. Confident in their warriors’ success, a contingent of women accompanied the party.

  Crazy Horse was surely glad to be away from the seethe of politics. On the morning of July 9, he and the line of blotahunka drew up atop the bluffs overlooking the mouth of Pryor Creek. As warriors fanned along the ridge or grouped in the valley bottom, the war chiefs surveyed the Crow camp circle across the creek, opening on the Yellowstone. The defenders had been busy, for an arc of rifle pits fronted the village, and many horses grazed on an island in the river. To the accompaniment of drums, the Crow chiefs harangued for resolve. Along the Lakota lines, heralds rode also, their cries faintly audible to the massing Crows. Warriors, sporting magnificent warbonnets, galloped their fleet ponies back and forth to exhaust them and win the second wind necessary for battle. “I have never seen a more beautiful sight,” recalled Crow warrior Plenty Coups, “than our enemy presented.”19

  At length a few brave men made dashes toward the creek to draw out the Crows. The defenders responded in kind, and the battle set in for a comfortable stalemate. “[T]here were too many leaders among the Sioux,” recalled He Dog wryly, to shape a coherent strategy, and the Crows maintained the advantage of a strong defense. After an hour of this, dismounted warriors began to make demonstrations, standing atop low rises to taunt the enemy to the staccato bark of rifle shots.20

  Recognizing individual mixed bloods and Americans in the Crow ranks, Lakotas shouted laconic insults, daring them to cross the creek and capture a Lakota wife: “They are better than your Crow woman.”21 Others exchanged news of mutual acquaintances, inquired about wasicu and other relations, or simply sat their ponies stock still and shook their lances to attract fire. Women called out obscene insults or shrilled in praise of their warriors. All in all, it proved a relaxing day’s diversion, with minimal casualties until, late in the afternoon, the Lakota heralds noisily ordered back the women. Realizing that the foe was about to disengage, the Crows advanced toward the creek, but the Lakotas fired a Parthian shot, loosing a heavy volley into the enemy front before retreating over the bluffs.

  Hundreds of vengeful Crows streamed in pursuit. In a reversal of the Fight When They Chased Them Back to Camp, the Lakota retreat turned to rout. Across fifteen miles of prairie stretching east toward Fly Creek, Lakotas fled. Several warriors were cut down and scalped by the pursuit, then mutilated by the women. Daylight was failing as the Lakotas approached the creek, adding to the demoralization in their ranks. Crazy Horse and several other leaders fanned back to hold the line at the creek. Beyond the sketchy cover of brush and cutbanks, warriors turned their ponies to open fire on the pursuit, and the fight became equal.

  With night about to fall, the Crows were ready to disengage, and a flurry of action closed the day’s drama. Crazy Horse almost lost his life in these last-minute maneuvers when a bullet smashed into his mount’s right leg. Awkwardly, Crazy Horse managed to turn the pony, but the Crow line overtook him and turned to cut him off. As his pony lurched, the war chief sprang from its back and began to run. Several Oglalas tried to cut through the Crows at his front, only to be repulsed by the enemy rush. The situation was desperate, and a fate like High Backbone’s looked inevitable until Spotted Deer laced through the enemy line. Crazy Horse leapt up behind his comrade, and the pair broke for the open. Closely pursued by the Crows, they reached the breathless Lakota line.22

  Fired by the rescue of Crazy Horse, the Lakotas at last turned the Crow pursuit. Several warriors had been killed, and over two hundred ponies were lost to the Crows. Such a battle hardly stretched the tactical acumen of Crazy Horse, but he liked this sort of clash, which afforded room for the individual exhibitions of courage that made reputations in the Plains Indian world. Each side got a chance to field its champions, air some cathartic insults, and strike coups enough to make the combat meaningful. Considering the Second Arrow Creek Fight, or Battle of Pryor Creek, was one of the largest set-piece battles in the Lakota-Crow wars, losses remained low, and each side could claim something of a victory. Such battles gave life meaning.

  During July, when a few Cheyenne warriors started down the Yellowstone to reconnoiter the expected approach of the Northern Pacific surveyors, Crazy Horse was happy to resume the congenial duties of scout. With a coterie of trusted Oglalas, he cut across country. On the morning of August 4, in the bottomland opposite the mouth of Tongue River, scouts alerted the party that troops were approaching. Augmented by Hunkpapas from Sitting Bull’s nearby village, as many as three hundred warriors prepared a reception. No longer shackled by the no-first-strike policy of the previous summer, Crazy Horse was determined to attack. Once the warriors were hidden in the timber, a decoy party was hurried downstream.23

  The approaching troops were two companies of the Seventh Cavalry, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer. A further eight companies of the regiment completed the cavalry component of the survey escort. After the Lakota demonstrations of the previous summer, Washington was taking no chances. With nineteen more infantry companies, two Rodman cannons, a caravan of almost three hundred wagons, and a sizeable contingent of civilian and Arikara scouts, fully fifteen hundred men made up the Yellowstone Expedition of 1873. The army chartered two steamboats to ship supplies for the expedition. This formidable force reflected the premium that military chiefs placed on the Northern Pacific. Instructing General Sheridan to afford every assistance to the railroad surveyors, Sherman predicted that the Northern Pacific would “help to bring the Indian problem to a final solution.”24

  The Yellowstone Expedition had departed Fort Rice on June 20. Thirty-three years old (ten months older than Crazy Horse), Custer had earned a vivid if checkered reputation as an Indian fighter on the southern plains, matching a glorious Civil War career. Showy, individualistic, and charismatic, Custer was undeniably brave and a brilliant field commander. Nevertheless, he commanded a regiment bitterly divided between his adherents—many of them related by blood or marriage—and his detractors.25

  As Custer led the cavalry escort up the Yellowstone valley, he welcomed the prospect of another, bigger Indian war in which to prove himself. Custer was no Chivington, not the psychotic butcher or brute racist of revisionist 1960s demonology. Cast in a romantic mold, he had sympathies for the Indian predicament that were not shared by the hoary cynics in control of army policy, but in the final analysis, the plains were simply an arena in which Custer dreamed of winning unimpeachable honors. His adversaries could take their chances.

  Warned by expedition commander Colonel Stanley not to underestimate the fighting abilities of the Lakotas, Custer led a trail-breaking patrol up the north side of the Yellowstone valley. As a baking sun climbed toward noon on August 4, Custer’s ninety-strong detachment made for the shade of a grove of cottonwoods. Suddenly, the noon stillness was shattered by whoops as six Indians charged for the picket line. Custer was nothing if not prompt in his response. Men hurried to deploy and lay down a heavy fire. The warriors turned and galloped upstream.26

  In pursuit wit
h a twenty-man detail, Custer soon outstripped the rest of his command. To Crazy Horse and the other war leaders readying the ambush two miles upstream, this impulsiveness seemed heaven sent. But Custer read the situation cannily. Like Crazy Horse’s, his risk taking served tactical ends. When he and his orderly spurred ahead of the halted detail, Custer gained his desired result: the premature springing of the trap, as a rush of warriors from the timber swarmed toward him. Custer galloped back to his men’s dismounted skirmish line. Rising suddenly from the grass, the troopers loosed three volleys at the warriors, who melted away, regrouped under cover, then crawled forward to infiltrate Custer’s lines. Reinforced by the rest of the detachment, Custer formed a hollow circle of men around his horses and began a slow withdrawal to the timber, under persistent pressure. There he sketched out a defensive perimeter behind the cutbanks, deterring charging warriors with accurate fire. Others tried torching the grass, but there was no wind. The fight stalemated in desultory sniping. About 3:00 P.M. a cloud of dust signaled the approach of more cavalry. As the warriors withdrew upstream, Custer led another charge that effectively dispersed the enemy.

  Few skirmishes in the Plains wars can have been as elegant as this. Throughout the engagement, the troops fought effectively, with conviction and verve. Custer, a distinctive figure in red shirt with flowing yellow hair, made a vivid impression. His neat reversal of the decoy tactic was a ploy that must have won ironic plaudits from the watching Crazy Horse. In response, the war chief and his lieutenants raised their own game. Contrasting with the set-piece formalism—and the disorganized retreat—of the Crow battle four weeks before, the warrior tactics were fluid and responsive. Custer conceded that their charge was “in perfect line, and with as seeming good order and alignment as the best drilled cavalry.”27