Simultaneously, another enlistment of Indian scouts was going forward. Crook’s aide Lieutenant William P. Clark, Second Cavalry, was in command of the operation at the White River agencies. Handsome and charismatic, Clark had mastered the sign language to better manage his duties. Of all Crook’s proteges, Clark was the most sensitive to the nuances of Indian culture and politics. Some Oglala veterans of the Mackenzie campaign were already devoted to Waposta Ska, White Hat Clark. Although few were prepared to fight their relatives, everyone understood the necessity of ending the war. By the beginning of April, 120 Lakotas had been enlisted. Cheyennes eagerly enlisted under their chief Little Wolf, expressly “that they might go out to fight ‘Crazy Horse’s[‘] people.” At both agencies, scores more warriors lined up to don army blue.17
A trickle of surrenders continued. On April 5 Spotted Tail arrived at his agency to announce the imminent approach of the Miniconjous and Sans Arcs. The Brule chief’s report only deepened the enigma of Crazy Horse’s intentions. If a spring campaign was necessary, Crook and Mackenzie must implement immediate plans. More envoys were readied to accelerate the peace process. Crook personally conferred with Red Cloud on April 10. Over three days of talks, both Crook and Lieutenant Clark played on the chief’s insecurities following the general’s elevation of Spotted Tail to lead both agencies. Promised appointment as first sergeant of scouts, Red Cloud agreed to lead a deputation to Crazy Horse. Behind the press-release facade of unconditional surrender, Red Cloud was assured of concessions. Besides the head chief, Oglala band chiefs Yellow Bear, Slow Bull, and the lately surrendered No Water would lead the eighty-man party. Accompanied by interpreters Antoine Ladeau, Antoine Janis, and Joseph Marrischale, trailing the obligatory packtrain of rations and presents, Red Cloud’s embassy left the agency on April 13. While the Camp Robinson garrison anxiously anticipated the outcome, Red Cloud’s party swung up the west flank of the Black Hills toward Bear Lodge Butte.18
At Bear Lodge, after the frantic activity of winter, the pace of Crazy Horse’s life shifted abruptly down gear. The Oglala village took time to regroup, resting and recouping stock. Gradually, the Moon of Red Grass Appearing, ushering warm sunshine and spring downpours, yielded a carpet of nourishing green for the winter-worn pony herd. Small family hunting parties scattered to forage in the foothills. Wedges of northering geese signaled the anxious people of the reassuring cycle of the seasons.19
After two months of dispersal, the village reorganized into a single circle of about 155 lodges, almost one thousand people. Most were Oglalas, but approximately twenty-five lodges of Brules, ten of Miniconjous, and five of Sans Arcs were scattered among relatives. The elders nominated Little Hawk, Little Big Man, Old Hawk, and Big Road as Deciders and named He Dog as head akicita, while Iron Hawk reprised his regular function as village herald. Kicking Bear, Good Weasel, Little Shield, and Hard to Hit were among the warriors recruited as police. The appointments left ambivalent the status of Crazy Horse. With peace proclaimed, the function of the war chief was in abeyance, but everyone knew that Crazy Horse’s cooperation was crucial.
During the week after his return, Crazy Horse seemed listless, despairing. “This country is ours, therefore I am doing this,” he had told the Black Elk family a month before. Now, oral tradition affirms, he seemed to believe that “[a]ll is lost anyway. . . the country is lost.”20 News would continue to confirm his despair. The main Miniconjou–Sans Arc village surrendered at Spotted Tail Agency on April 14. Reports from the north located Sitting Bull’s village high up Milk River, within fifty miles of the Canadian line. Comprising 135 tipis of Hunkpapas, Sans Arcs, Miniconjous, and a few Oglalas, it would finally cross into Grandmother’s Land during the first week of May, bringing the total of refugee Lakotas in Canada to some three hundred lodges.
During early April, the Cheyenne village straggled past Bear Lodge en route to surrender. Still lodged in wretched shelters, many Cheyennes nursed personal grievances against Crazy Horse. Matching Little Wolf’s promise, they declared that upon surrender many would volunteer as scouts.
Yet as the days passed, Crazy Horse underwent a change of heart. More envoys appeared at Bear Lodge. In private talks with them and the Deciders, Crazy Horse mulled over Crook’s offer of a separate reservation. As the plan matured, Crook had sectioned off the southeast corner of Montana Territory for the projected reserve. Bounded on the west by the Little Bighorn and Bighorn rivers, on the north by the Yellowstone, the tract served as a bargaining counter on which diplomacy might build.
Furthermore, the Deciders told Crazy Horse that the presidential election of 1876 had placed a new Great Father, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, in Washington. Hitherto Crazy Horse had denied the kinship status of the president and the U.S. government, but word that Hayes was an old Civil War comrade of Crook’s boosted confidence that the general really could deliver on his promises.
Gradually, Crazy Horse began to formulate a more measured response to the offer of peace. He warily accepted that only through diplomacy could his people retain their lands. He remained reluctant to undergo the humiliation of surrender, but in solitary contemplation, he decided that he would gamble on Crook’s promise and go to Red Cloud Agency. Over twenty years, the most far-sighted of Lakota leaders—Man Afraid of His Horse, Lone Horn, Spotted Tail, and Red Cloud—had progressively concluded that only legally guaranteed reservations could preserve the Lakota land base. Now Crazy Horse reluctantly embraced the principle. In a startling shift toward pragmatism, he even approved two provisional agency sites—one on upper Tongue River, the second west of the headwaters of Beaver Creek, barely fifty miles south of the village at Bear Lodge Butte. The Deciders moved to lock the war chief into the peace process and announced a feast and council in Crazy Horse’s honor.
About April 10 akicita rolled up the lodgeskins to permit public view of the great assembly. Haltingly, Crazy Horse made the briefest of speeches and immediately resumed his seat: “This day I have untied my horse’s tail and layed [sic] my gun aside and I have sat down.”
The envoys pressed him to order the camp moved. Respectful of the Deciders’ jurisdiction, Crazy Horse demurred: “Not until I rest, then I will be willing to go. But before I go, give lots of ammunition to my people. I have set a place for my people that will be the reservation.”21
Crazy Horse acknowledged the new Great Father in Washington, “who was a very good man, and would probably do more for the Indians than any who had preceded him.” The simple concession of kinship status to the president was itself a radical departure for the war chief. The decision at last had been made. Six messengers, including the Strong Hearts Society headman Moccasin Top, were sent to Red Cloud with positive word. The village would leave Bear Lodge and cross the Belle Fourche on April 16, hoping to arrive at the Oglala agency as early as the 28th.22
Several more days of layoff afforded time for fattening stock for the journey. Even Crazy Horse began to relax, able at last to contemplate matters other than the overriding obsession with “my country.” All but invisible to the military authorities that would increasingly circumscribe Lakota activities, Crazy Horse witnessed in the last four months of his life a florescence of his spiritual questing. Over the summer, one military observer learned that Crazy Horse habitually left camp as many as three times a day, to pray and meditate on his visions.
One vision that commanded immediate attention was the gift of Eagle power. With Black Shawl’s health to consider, Crazy Horse needed to consult with other healers and holy men, grounding the revelation in the matrix of Lakota ceremonialism. Rooted in the yuwipi rituals of his friends Horn Chips and Long Turd, Eagle doctoring shared the spectacular nighttime displays of sparks and flashing lights, the flitting whispers of mysterious objects. Inside the blacked-out lodge, startled participants felt the whirring brush of wings and the prick of eagle claws. Yet Eagle power would evince a unique combination of elements. Crazy Horse dispensed with the theme of binding and escape. He did not use sacred stones
in the divinatory rites. Given the rationing culture to which he would be shortly exposed, it is significant that later practitioners have insisted that only native foods like dog and pemmican be served at Eagle meetings.
To relatives and elders who still loved him, the move into the sphere of healing must have been a heartening development. They would have remembered that Worm, at the same stage of his life, underwent the crisis of Male Crow’s death. Rising above personal and tribal tragedy, Worm was able to shape a worthy life as a holy man. Like many difficult sons, Crazy Horse was assuming the characteristics of his father. One final time he was able to demonstrate his belief and love in the coming generation of Lakotas. Two Oyuhpe youths, Living Bear and Little Warrior, in later life transmitted knowledge of Eagle power into the twentieth-century Lakota world. The development speaks of the hard-won maturing of Crazy Horse, spiritual growth born during the sternest weeks of his life. The dim outline of a future beyond the war chieftainship shows the ghost of an aborted human possibility.
Since the 1930s, and the publication of John G. Neihardt’s hugely influential Black Elk Speaks, much has been written on Crazy Horse as a “mystic warrior of the plains.” As we enter the twenty-first century and New Age gurus weave grab-bag religions from Buddhism, astrology, Jungian psychology, and Native American shamanism, it is important not to lose sight of the intimate human truths that underlie their ecumenical generalisms. Just as Jesus Christ might have difficulty in endorsing many of the churches founded in his name, so Crazy Horse would not have recognized himself as the spiritual ecowarrior proclaimed in scores of books, CD-ROMs, and self-help manuals for the terminally bewildered.
Ultimately, these readings are based on Neihardt’s own dualistic Christian ideology. Expanding on Black Elk’s terse account of his cousin, Neihardt claimed that when Crazy Horse secured his youth vision, he “went into the world where there is nothing but the spirits of all things. That is the real world that is behind this one, and everything we see here is something like a shadow from that world.” In battle, Crazy Horse “had only to think of that world to be in it again, so that he could go through anything and not be hurt.”23 Built on by Mari Sandoz in her portrait of a Lakota Christ, this account is unrecognizable in Lakota terms but readily translates into Neihardt’s Christianized Neo-Platonism. It foreshadows postmodern deconstructions of the past and its inhabitants—where wish fulfillment and narcissistic self-projection create not men and women, but demons and impossible saints.
Crazy Horse’s real—only vaguely understood, cut tragically short, but real—mystic career demands our sympathetic critical engagement with the scanty sources. As in his youth, begging for power to conquer his people’s enemies, Crazy Horse sought the sicun that would enable him to shape events in this world, whether they be the great tribal issues of land and peace or the intimate concerns of his family’s health and well-being. Such strength and visions were given by the wakan powers in return for self-denying observances and taboos. They came at the price of perpetual vigilance, alert reinterpretation, and profound reflection. Out of such meditation, many holy men grew into woksape, wisdom. More elusive than the other cardinal virtues that Crazy Horse had so gloriously embodied, wisdom resonated with mystical insight and the ability to consider the greater good of the people. Like us in this, at least, the war chief moved haltingly along the Red Road that represents spiritual growth. During these final months of life, wisdom would sit beside suspicion, paranoia, and the reflex to violence as a political solution, in the protean enigma that remains Crazy Horse.
True to the schedule announced by their messengers to Red Cloud Agency, the Deciders ordered camp struck on Monday, April 16. Craftswomen had put the two-and-a-half-week layoff to good use, and the people turned out in their best clothing for the march. About April 20, within sight of Pumpkin Buttes, scouts reported the approach of Red Cloud’s deputation. Red Cloud’s heralds had a simple message: “All is well; have no fear; come on in.”24
Nervousness was inevitable as the agency leaders and northern Oglalas met, but Red Cloud handled the amenities well. He reassured Crazy Horse and the Deciders that no arrests would follow surrender. Carefully he explained the procedure of surrendering stock. All would be given up to the agency scouts and later redistributed among the northern village. The herd, though still in poor shape, was exceptionally large, about twenty-two hundred head. Every person in the village owned more than two ponies on average. Keen to affirm their kinship status with the deputation, the northern Oglalas pledged five hundred head as presents. On the subject of firearms, Red Cloud could offer no good news. All guns would have to be turned in, he explained, perhaps sniping at Spotted Tail, who allegedly claimed that the army would demand only captured weapons. Here was the first flashpoint for trouble, but Crazy Horse merely remarked, “All right, let them have them.”25
If any leader needed careful handling, it was Crazy Horse. A startling concession was immediately matched by resistance over minutiae. The firearms issue provoked no response, but to simple inquiries about his intentions, Crazy Horse lashed back defensively. “Hehe, Yes, yes,” he snapped, declaring that he “would not be ready to endure just anything” to make peace—the unconditional surrender originally demanded. Warning the deputation not to apply pressure, he affirmed that although “you Lakotas make me feel unsure of myself, I am going.” Signaling something of his deep-seated misgivings, and the premonitory dreams that would trouble the weeks ahead, he concluded darkly, “I am aware that I will not live.”26
The following morning, the village started. “We all went in to the agency in good spirits,” recalled Short Bull; there “was no bad feeling among the chiefs or anybody.” That night, a council was called to debate another momentous issue. Red Cloud explained that a delegation of Oglala leaders would be invited to Washington to counsel with the president about Crook’s reservation proposals. Another switch had tripped in the war chief’s mental defenses. Asked outright if he would go, Crazy Horse answered with unexpected conviction: “Hou. Mni kte lo, Alright, I will go.” Welcoming the opportunity to lay the Northern Nation’s case before the new Great Father, Crazy Horse questioned Red Cloud closely about delegation protocol.27
Despite thaws and hard rains that reduced trails to mud, about April 25, in a happy state of reunion, the village forded the South Fork of Cheyenne River opposite the mouth of Beaver Creek. In the symbolic geography of the region, the crossing represented a significant transition. Hitherto the village had traveled through country the Northern Nation claimed as its own. Now they approached the zone controlled by the agency Lakotas. Another council was staged to reflect the shift. Rising from his seat at the honor place, Crazy Horse personally spread a buffalo robe for Red Cloud to sit on. Then, in a startlingly conciliatory gesture, he removed his war shirt and placed it over Red Cloud’s shoulders, transferring symbolic primacy in the village to the agency chief.28
Assured of his mission’s success, Red Cloud hurried six messengers homeward to report that the village should arrive about May 4. Fatigue and anxiety were setting in, however, and the village made one more short move. At a point on the Fort Laramie–Black Hills road three miles north of the Hat Creek stage station, progress stopped about April 27. Lodges were pitched along the quagmire of Sage Creek, within fifty miles of the agency. Six more northern messengers were selected. Rations were now essential, and Red Cloud sent word that the village was “out of supplies, stuck in the mud.”29
The messengers found Red Cloud Agency buzzing with activity in preparation for the expected surrender. General Crook had been on hand to receive the capitulations at Spotted Tail Agency, but divisional headquarters called him to a conference in Chicago. By a potent irony, General Sheridan was about to apply the brakes on the northern reservation scheme just as surrenders climaxed.
To expedite surrender, Lieutenant J. Wesley Rosenquest was ordered to take out ten wagons of rations and one hundred beef cattle. Accompanied by a small detachment, agency interpreter B
illy Garnett, and fifty Oglala scouts led by American Horse, Rosenquest left Camp Robinson on the morning of April 30. On the 31st, five miles short of the village, Rosenquest ordered a halt. The scouts washed and painted by the creek, then each donned a crisp white cotton shirt (courtesy of the agency trader’s store), mounted, and galloped wildly around the circle of tipis.
The northern Oglalas rode out to meet their kinsmen. American Horse had the scouts sit in a row across the trail. As the northern people halted, there were scenes of great joy at the symbolic reunion. Each scout was presented with a pony. To Rosenquest’s surprise, his hand, too, was clamped on the rein of a gift horse, a token of the village’s desire for peace. And, in a pregnant moment, Crazy Horse came forward silently to shake hands with the officer.30
After weeks of hardship, the people feasted all too well on beef, hardtack, tea, and pilot bread, overeating so that “nearly all the children sickened, and the march could not be resumed next day.”31 Over Rosenquest’s protests, the village lay over a further two days, but under the facade of conviviality, old anxieties reemerged. After shaking hands with the lieutenant, Crazy Horse refused to talk further. He Dog tried to coax his friend to accept the situation gracefully, but even he was troubled at developments. Only as they neared the agency, He Dog recalled, “I found we were coming to surrender,” and would not be allowed to return immediately to the north. Little Killer, catching up with one of the last hunting parties, remembered that Crazy Horse remarked he had been “‘captured,’” believing himself a defeated enemy rather than an equal making peace.32
There were causes enough for disquiet. Although they repeatedly tried to clarify the matter with Red Cloud, people were uncertain just what they would have to surrender. During the layover, Iron Shield, a Lakota messenger from Bear Coat Miles, appeared. Besides reporting the April 22 surrender of three hundred Cheyennes and Miniconjous at Tongue River Cantonment, he claimed that Miles sent private word to Crazy Horse. Bear Coat allegedly warned the war chief that if he surrendered at the agencies, the authorities would “arrest the young men, and put them in the Guard-House.”33
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