To civilian visitors, Crazy Horse continued to be welcoming. Later in the day of the beef issue, Richard and Clay Dear, brothers of the agency trader, took a party to the northern village. The visitors were welcomed by Crazy Horse, “seated on the ground. . . surrounded by his principal chiefs, who were in council.” The war chief presented the party with a pair of moccasins. Richard Dear reciprocated with a “slight present,” and the visitors returned to the agency pleased.15
On the following day, Sunday, June 10, Clark called a council to discuss the issue of Fast Bull’s camp of fugitives. Crazy Horse, the northern leaders, and all the agency chiefs were present. Clark reminded the Lakota chiefs “that it is detrimental to their interests” to let the fugitives stay out, “particularly so if they dont come in before they [the agency delegations] go on to Washington.” The leaders conferred and agreed that once the three northern scouts returned with positive news, the council would decide on a course of action. Clark continued to press the issue of proactive Lakota diplomacy and won a wary consensus around coercing the fugitives to surrender. If necessary, a united Oglala akicita would act to “bring them in[,] forcibly if they find it necessary.”16
On June 13 the scouts returned from the north. At the invitation of the northern council, Clark had ridden out to Crazy Horse’s village to discuss the latest developments on the hunt. The scouts reported that they had located Fast Bull’s deserted campsite near the forks of Powder River and followed its trail for three days to the Blue Earth Hills. There they gave up the chase but confirmed the belief that Fast Bull was bound ultimately for surrender at either Spotted Tail or Cheyenne River. The scouts emphatically stated that no other Lakotas or Cheyennes remained on the hunting grounds.17
“The application to go out hunting was renewed,” Clark reported; “they will want to start in about twenty five days.” As for participating bands, most of the northern village, the Payabya and Spleen bands, and a few Kiyuksas would want to go from Red Cloud Agency—more than three hundred lodges. The mooted departure date of July 8, just after the close of the scheduled Brule Sun Dance, demonstrated that Crazy Horse expected substantial increments from Spotted Tail Agency. To help effect that, Clark continued to be a useful ally. Several days earlier, the lieutenant had asked Crazy Horse to accompany him to Spotted Tail. Compensation money for ponies confiscated from the Wazhazha band the previous October had come through to Camp Robinson, and Clark proposed to present it personally. “I. . . will take over one or two of Crazy Horses [sic] Band—perhaps that chief himself if he wants to go over,” Clark had opined. At the council with Crazy Horse, the lieutenant announced his intention to ride to Spotted Tail the following morning. Although Clark’s sketchy reports give us no follow-up detail, Crazy Horse likely made the trip.18
Clark’s three-day visit to the Brule agency is the best context for two eyewitness statements that place Crazy Horse at Spotted Tail during the summer. The first recalls a visit paid by the war chief to the agency store of George Jewett. Twenty-year-old Susan Tackett, daughter of trader James Bordeaux, had driven to the store. Susan’s Lakota mother-in-law
pointed [Crazy Horse] out to me. He was a very handsome young man of about thirty-six years or so. He was not so dark. He had hazel eyes, nice long light brown hair; his scalp lock was ornamented with beads and hung clear to his waist; his braids were wrapped in fur. He was partly wrapped in a broadcloth blanket. His leggings were also navy blue broadcloth; his moccasins were beaded. He was above medium height and was slender. 19
The vivid word picture describes a relaxed and confident Crazy Horse, enjoying the sort of intimate socializing that appealed even to his reserved nature. The second eyewitness pictures a very different Crazy Horse, working secretly to bolster northern Lakota solidarity. The war chief’s principal purpose in visiting the Brule agency was to step up pressure on the Miniconjous and Sans Arcs to attend his Sun Dance and join the hunting expedition—over Spotted Tail’s objections. Crazy Horse soon found the leadership divided. Now he went underground, privately urging known supporters to attend his Sun Dance. It was a high-risk strategy, and poor manners: detection risked ill feeling and a strain on northern solidarity.
Sure enough, a break came. One night, Touch the Clouds’ family was disturbed by the chief’s sister, wife of the Oyuhpe war leader Black Fox: “Crazy Horse had come to their tent and was trying to induce Black Fox to go North and. . . she objected and came to tell” her brother. Touch the Clouds was hosting a feast for some of the scouts. He led them to Black Fox’s tipi nearby and rebuked the Oglala war chief for interfering with the smooth running of his village. Crazy Horse was forced to return home with his mission a failure.20
When Clark and Crazy Horse returned home on June 17, the village was undergoing the final preliminaries to the ceremony. Augmented by new arrivals from the agency bands, about 185 lodges formed the Sun Dance camp when it formally raised its hoop on June 22. Located on Spring Creek, the village was surrounded by clusters of satellite tiyospaye preparing to join the northern hoop.21
As a public pageant, the Sun Dance did not appeal to the war chief’s heyoka introversion, but this year’s ceremony was essential to his plans, and he surely sat with Foolish Heart and the ceremonial Deciders as the four holy days began on Tuesday, June 26. Early that morning, the village made a short move, pitching the formal ceremonial circle amid whirling dust storms and ninety-degree heat. Foolish Heart ordered a scouting party to locate the tree that would become the Sun Dance pole, the axis linking earth and sky. In the evening, the scouts returned to report a suitable tree had been found, and on the following morning, the whole village turned out to see the tree felled and brought home as a captive enemy. Accompanied by White Hat Clark, the people rode out in all their finery. It was a holiday atmosphere, and people paused to cut boughs and foliage with which to enclose the dance arbor, weaving garlands of clematis for themselves and their ponies, or leaf shields of green shrubbery—the vegetation that declared earth’s renewal. Two miles out, the procession approached the cottonwood marked by the scouts. A cluster of old women gathered at the tree, dancing and singing as Foolish Heart ordered four of the bravest warriors and two virgins, resplendent in dresses bright with beading and elk-teeth ornamentation, to fell the tree.
As the first warrior advanced, he picked up an axe and recounted a coup, one of the great deeds of the Sioux War. He struck the tree a light blow and presented two sticks to the old women, vouchers for a pony apiece promised to the poor. His comrades did likewise, before the virgins stepped forward and struck the final blows to fell the cottonwood, as a great cheer went up from the hundreds of spectators lining the ravine. After the virgins had trimmed the fallen tree, a team of headmen, including the four Deciders and the head akicita, carried the pole on sticks to the first rest point. After the holy men had offered the pipe to the sun, the headmen tied the pole to a wagon. This innovation, doubtless proposed by one of the Little Big Man faction, attracted some grumbling.
Meanwhile, the effigy of an enemy man had been erected at the center of the campground. After the final rest a half mile out, all the warriors in the procession remounted and drew up in a line. At a signal, they raced wildly for the village, each man determined to be the first to strike the effigy, winning luck to strike the first coup of the following season. Clark climbed a hill to watch the pageant and the sham battle that was to follow. This year the battle had been planned to commemorate the Custer fight, with the northern village warriors reenacting their own roles. In a distinctly ill-considered move, the agency visitors were cast as Custer’s force. As Clark watched the giddy race and the wild charges across the campground, he saw that the sham battle was threatening to become a real one.22
Down in the noisy, dusty circle, Billy Garnett was riding with the agency visitors. “When the fight was on,” Billy recalled, “instead of striking the Custer party lightly as was usual[,] some of the others struck their opponents with clubs[,]and war clubs [give] hard blows.” The agency
men became “enraged [and] they opened fire with their revolvers on the other side and drove them out of the dancing camp.” At that moment, Clark galloped up. Shouting orders, he “stopped the firing and prevented what might have been a serious affair.”23
Although no overt act would disturb the rest of the ceremony, the sham battle revealed the growing bad blood between agency and northern Lakotas. As the ceremony climaxed on June 29, Lieutenant Colonel Bradley was a privileged guest. He took his seat with two thousand Lakotas to see the final stages of the ritual. At 2:00 P.M. all the dancers underwent the ordeal of “being cut on the upper arm in half a dozen places so that it would bleed freely, and afterwards [were] painted all over in the most fantastic style.” The dancers were then “decorated with chaplets of leaves with feathers on the sides.” Only three men had actually pledged to undergo the full self-torture, but late in the proceedings, four more volunteered. These men were “adorned with the most elegant war-bonnets.”24
The seven pledgers, already weak from fasting, were visibly daunted by their ordeal. Foolish Heart and other holy men encouraged them with whispered exhortations as they applied paint or rubbed their hands with sacred sage. By this time, the arbor was filled with spectators, and the dance area itself was busy with processions of women bearing kettles of steaming food or piles of blankets and cloth to give away in the name of honored children. A line of female relatives, filled out by selfless sweethearts, formed to allow the holy men to cut their arms as a gesture of solidarity with their loved ones. At length, the leading dancer was led forward and laid on his back, where he waited as Foolish Heart knelt and pierced his breast with a knife, running skewers through each cut and, as the dancer stood, securing them by thongs to one of the ropes hanging from the pole. Drummers beat out a faster tempo as the other six dancers followed, blowing shrill notes from their whistles and holding looking glasses to the sun as they began the steps of the dance.25
With all their strength, the dancers “commence[d] their effort to tear themselves loose, dancing and surging back on the ropes with the whole might of their bodies.” One dancer freed himself within fifteen minutes; for the rest, the ordeal lasted another hour. Clark “saw one Indian throw himself back with all his force and might, but he could not tear himself loose; he had to wait for a slight decay of the muscles. One or two were very weak-kneed, heart-sick with fear and fasting; and if I ever saw regret, it was on their painted faces.”26 Another dancer “fainted dead away at the pole, and the rope was torn out by his friends to save his reputation.”27 As each man broke free, he was led to a seat at the back of the arbor. The exhausted were carried on blankets to the sacred tipi, where the holy men “kindly and carefully cared for” them.28
The drama of captivity, transcendence, and liberation was ended. As the sun sank on June 29, Crazy Horse may well have reflected on the spiritual metaphors he had seen enacted. After the unpropitious opening, the ceremony had united northern and agency Lakotas. But the unity looked dangerously thin. The climactic day saw two thousand people gather in the dance arbor—an impressive gathering, but less than half the total Lakota population at Red Cloud. With a projected departure for the hunting grounds only nine days away, Crazy Horse could not afford to let up in his drive to unite the Lakota people behind the northern reservation scheme. Early the following morning, he departed for Spotted Tail Agency, to lend his presence to the two Sun Dances being organized there.
The new agencies had already been located by bureaucrats unconcerned with Lakota wishes. The imperatives of Sheridan and Sherman and of Indian Office cost-cutting on transportation neatly dovetailed with Dakota Territory boosters determined to win lucrative reservation contracts. Members of the Board of Indian Commissioners had ascended the Missouri River to scout locations early in June. They advised that a site for Spotted Tail’s people had been fixed at the mouth of Whetstone Creek—the hugely unpopular location abandoned only six years earlier. Meanwhile, the “agency for Red Cloud’s band of Indians has been selected at the mouth of Yellow Medicine River on the banks of the Missouri River.” A collision course had been set.29
23
BUYS A BAD WOMAN
Midsummer was the peak of the Lakota ceremonial year, and three other Sun Dances were scheduled on White River. Despite the best efforts of agency leaders, each dance highlighted the supreme charisma of Crazy Horse. At Spotted Tail Agency, the Miniconjou and Sans Arc leadership had conceded Spotted Tail’s rejection of the Crazy Horse Sun Dance, but when they organized their own ceremony, the central drama was co-opted by kinsmen of the Oglala war chief. The brothers Kicking Bear, Black Fox, and Flying Hawk, all wartime comrades of Crazy Horse, underwent the self-torture to offer prayers for him. Another cousin, Fast Thunder, was selected to make the piercings. As the dance climaxed on June 30, Crazy Horse appeared to mingle with the crowd and to sit with the holy men as his cousins fulfilled their pledges.1
Crazy Horse’s departure from Red Cloud spelled collapse for a third ceremony, sponsored by the agency Oglala bands. Few people appeared at the dance ground, and the ceremony had to be abandoned. After the spectacular pageant at Crazy Horse’s village, this was a serious embarrassment to the agency chiefs.2
The Brule leadership had scheduled their own Sun Dance to open about July 1, inviting bands to attend from both agencies. Brule invitations to cohost their ceremony offered a face-saving alternative to the Oglala leadership, and a great gathering assembled at the crossing of Chadron Creek. Crazy Horse and his retinue were again in evidence. Renewing his efforts of two weeks earlier, Crazy Horse prevailed on key headmen to accompany him to the Oglala agency in time for the projected hunt departure on July 8. None of the northern Deciders would agree to leave the Brule agency, but Black Shield, fretting at his loss of influence on the reservation, agreed to join Crazy Horse. Two other Miniconjou headmen, Wounded Hand and High Lodge, agreed to the move. Black Fox, still recovering from the scars of his own Sun Dance vow, also accepted the war chief’s tobacco. Most significant of all, in this hoop that proclaimed the strength and unity of the Lakota people, Crazy Horse won over Elk Head. The Sans Arc holy man was the Keeper of the Sacred Calf Pipe, most revered of Lakota sacred bundles, and a living embodiment of Lakota sacral values. Although only twenty-three lodges of Miniconjous, Oglalas, and Sans Arcs followed him, in moving the Calf Pipe to the northern Oglalas, Elk Head transferred supreme religious sanction to the Oglala war chief and the hunting expedition in the north.3
At Red Cloud Agency a new civilian agent had assumed control on July 1. Dr. James S. Irwin would oversee Oglala affairs for the next eighteen troubled months. Irwin was unimpressed at his first meeting with the war chief. Crazy Horse assumed his gauche manner, and Irwin concluded, “[H]e is but a bashful girlish looking boy.” Faced with the defections from Spotted Tail, Irwin saw no threat. He approved the transfer on July 7, over the initial objections of the Spotted Tail agent.4 The transfer raised Crazy Horse’s strength again, to about 250 lodges. Of these, some 140 were Oglala; their guests approximated 45 lodges of Miniconjous, 40 of Brules, and 25 of Sans Arcs. Crazy Horse’s village was now the strongest band at Red Cloud Agency.5
Reorganization of the Indian scouts also secured Crazy Horse’s status. All scout enlistments expired on June 30, but Lieutenant Clark had prepared to strengthen and streamline the system. Beginning July 1, Clark oversaw new enlistments. The scouts were reorganized into five companies, three serving at Camp Robinson, two at Camp Sheridan. Each company was commanded by nine noncommissioned officers—one first sergeant, four sergeants, and four corporals—drawn from the recognized chiefs and headmen. Company A, chiefly comprising Arapahos, was commanded by Sharp Nose and the ranking Arapaho chiefs and men’s society leaders. Agency Oglalas formed the majority of Company B, to whose leadership Clark promoted Little Wound as first sergeant. Major chiefs Red Cloud, Young Man Afraid of His Horse, Yellow Bear, and American Horse served as his sergeants.
At Spotted Tail, Brule chief Swift Bear assumed command of
Company D, while Company E was formed around the leadership of the northern village at Spotted Tail. Touch the Clouds was named as first sergeant, with the two Sans Arc Deciders, Red Bear and High Bear, as sergeants. However, the process of integrating agency and northern Lakotas was reinforced in the command hierarchy at Spotted Tail. Brule leaders Two Strike and Whirlwind Soldier completed the complement of sergeants in Company E.6
The Spotted Tail Agency enlistments underlined the relatively smooth integration that characterized political life there. Spotted Tail had made no secret of his opposition to Crazy Horse throughout the summer, as the Oglala war chief poached disaffected Miniconjous and Sans Arcs from the Brule agency. After the Sun Dance, officers recognized that a “little rivalry” existed between Crazy Horse and Spotted Tail, about “who shall have the largest following of the northern Indians.”7
The organization of the third scout company at Red Cloud gave the greatest concern to agency Lakotas unhappy with the preferment of Crazy Horse. The thirty-seven privates of Company C were fairly evenly divided between northern and agency warriors, including such Clark trusties as the brothers Charging Bear, Bear’s Foot, Woman Dress, and No Neck—all sons of old chief Smoke and identified with the Red Cloud interest. The command structure of the company, however, was organized around the leadership of the northern village. On July 4, upon his return from Spotted Tail’s Sun Dance, Crazy Horse was reenlisted as first sergeant, while the village Deciders Little Hawk, Little Big Man, Big Road, and Iron Crow were all enlisted as sergeants. Herald Iron Hawk and akicita leaders He Dog, Four Crows, and No Water served as corporals.8
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