CRAZY HORSE
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21. For High Backbone’s war costume, see Bad Heart Bull and Blish, Pictographic History of the Oglala Sioux, 134, 342, 350, 375.
22. He Dog, in Riley “Oglala Sources,” 10.
23. Horn Chips interview, tablet 18, Ricker Papers.
24. R.A. Clark, Killing of Chief Crazy Horse, 68.
25. On the bond between kola, see Hassrick, The Sioux, 111;Walker, Lakota Society, 40–41; DeMallie, “Teton Sioux Kinship and Social Organization,” 145.
26. K.M. Bray, “Lone Horn’s Peace,” 44. These camps were probably located along the Belle Fourche above Bear Lodge Butte (modern Devil’s Tower, Wyoming).
27. He Dog, in Riley, “Oglala Sources,” 10. For comparable details on a change in names, see Afraid of Bear, in Wissler, “Societies and Ceremonial Associations,” 61; DeMallie, “Teton Sioux Kinship and Social Organization,” 156. See also Workers, Legends of the Mighty Sioux, 111–12.
Customs of a victorious war party and the victory dance are synthesized from Hassrick, The Sioux, 88–90; Densmore, Teton Sioux Music and Culture, 359–363; Wissler, “Societies and Ceremonial Associations,” 59–61; DeMallie, “Teton Sioux Kinship and Social Organization,” 155–56; Bad Heart Bull and Blish, Pictographic History of the Oglala Sioux, 38, 168–69; Standing Bear, My People the Sioux, 57; Black Elk, in DeMallie, Sixth Grandfather, 369–70. Neihardt was able to write his own vivid synthesis in When the Tree Flowered, 100–103.
CHAPTER 7
1. Joseph Black Elk, in Kadlecek and Kadlecek, To Kill an Eagle, 80.
2. Eastman, Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains, 89; Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 122; Standing Bear, Land of the Spotted Eagle, 209.
3. Walker’s informants added,” Only those who have much power to do mysterious things are entitled to wear hawk’s feathers.” Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 222.
4. He Dog, in Riley, “Oglala Sources,” 16. On evidence for the red-tailed hawk’s aid in securing healing power for Crazy Horse, see chapter 20.
5. Fast Thunder and Struck by Crow, in Curtis, Teton Sioux, 184, 189–90.
6. Owns Horn, in Hardorff, Surrender and Death of Crazy Horse, 268–69. The statement indicates that the fight took place on the modern Wind River Reservation. For an illustration of a grass tipi, see D’Azevedo, Great Basin, 294.
7. Owns Horn, in Hardorff, Surrender and Death of Crazy Horse, 268–69.
8. For information on Crazy Horse’s Miniconjou visit, I am indebted to modern Cheyenne River elders who have requested anonymity. One woman vividly recalled her own grandparents’ recollections of the visit.
9. On scouting, see Standing Bear, Land of the Spotted Eagle, 75–78; King, in Kadlecek and Kadlecek, To Kill an Eagle, 126.
10. The deaths of Black Shield’s sons and his prompt revenge are widely attested to in the winter counts: see, e.g., Cloud Shield and White Cow Killer counts, 143, and Lone Dog Group counts, 143, Mallery Dakota and Corbusier Winter Counts, 143. See also Report of Sec. War, communicating report of Bvt. Brig. Gen. W F. Raynolds, Senate Executive Document, 40th Cong., 2nd sess., 1868, S. Doc. 77, for background details on 1859 events. Mekeel, “Field Notes,” 53, Mekeel Papers.
11. Raynolds report (Senate Executive Document, 40th Cong., 2nd sess., 1868, S. Doc. 77, 52), says eleven Crows were killed. This is probably the same event as attested in the Bad Heart Bull endpapers: Bad Heart Bull and Blish, Pictographic History of the Oglala Sioux, 503, item 8: “Along the Greasy Grass River [the Little Bighorn], ten Crow Indians were killed.” It is possibly the same attack remembered by the Crows, where eleven young men and one woman were killed: Lowie, Crow Indians, 324. The postscript of Upper Platte Vaccinating Agent J. C. R. Clark to Supt. IA, June 27, 1859, UPA, LR, OIA, supplies the date of the Lakota attack. See also K. M. Bray, “Lone Horn’s Peace,” 44.
12. Victor Douville, conversation with the author, Sept. 26, 2001.
13. Eastman, Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains, 91–92.
14. Black Elk, in J. E. Brown, Sacred Pipe, 45. For basic concepts of Lakota religion, consult especially Walker, “Sun Dance” and Lakota Belief and Ritual, passim.
15. For kicamnayan applied to the flight of swallows, see Lone Man’s Thunder vision song “Before the Gathering of the Clouds,” Densmore, Teton Sioux Music and Culture, 162.
16. Chicago Tribune, May 3, 1877.
17. Black Elk, in DeMallie, Sixth Grandfather, 203.
18. Flying Hawk, in McCreight, Firewater and Forked Tongues, 138–39. Garnett interview, tablet 1, Ricker Papers. Few events in Crazy Horse’s life have been so willfully misunderstood as the vision of the man from the lake. By far the most influential reading of the vision is that of Mari Sandoz, Crazy Horse, 41–43,103–106. For dramatic impact, Sandoz treated this as Crazy Horse’s only significant vision, and for added effect ascribed a dating immediately after the Grattan fight in 1854, locating it in the Nebraska Sandhills. This date and location, followed by key secondary accounts (e.g., Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer, 67–69; Josephy, Patriot Chiefs, 271–73) is incorrect. Garnett himself heard Crazy Horse locate the vision near a lake in the Rosebud Creek district of southern Montana. In the heart of the Powder River country, Rosebud Creek lay emphatically in the Crow domain until after 1859: the vision therefore took place soon after 1860.
19. Garnett interview, tablet 2, Ricker Papers. Although embroidered by historians as Crazy Horse’s most famous vision, it was dismissed out of hand by Horn Chips: “There is no truth in the story of the horseman coming out of the pond and telling Crazy Horse what to do” (Horn Chips interview, tablet 18, Ricker Papers). Horn Chips is almost certainly overstating, perhaps because he was not called upon to interpret this vision, which fell outside the constellation of Thunder dreams that had so far dominated Crazy Horse’s life.
20. Flying Hawk, in McCreight, Firewater and Forked Tongues, 139; Garnett interview, tablet 2, Ricker Papers; Iron Horse, in Standing Bear, Land of the Spotted Eagle, 180; Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 94,108,118 (quotation), 122–23,169–70; Dorsey, Study of Siouan Cults, 496.
21. Horn Chips interview, tablet 18, Ricker Papers.
22. The stone charm Horn Chips gave Crazy Horse is well attested. Besides Horn Chips’ own statements (interview, tablet 18, Ricker Papers; interview, ca. July 11, 1910, Camp Papers, BYU),see He Dog, in Riley,” Oglala Sources,” 13; Red Feather, in ibid., 31; Eagle Elk, November 1944, Neihardt Papers. Mari Sandoz conducted a second interview with He Dog to clear up a few points (June 30, 1931, part 2, folder 16, box 31, Sandoz Papers). This interview is the source for the quotation about the stone’s size. He Dog claimed that the stone was black, but Red Feather, whose son Stanley owned the stone in 1930, said it was white. A number of traditional statements about the stone are collected in Kadlecek and Kadlecek, To Kill an Eagle. They state that Crazy Horse rubbed his body with the stone before going into battle. The best ethnographical account of the religious significance of Rock, with Lakota accounts and song texts, is provided by Densmore, Teton Sioux Music and Culture, 204–38.
23. Horn Chips interview, tablet 18, Ricker Papers.
24. Horn Chips interview, ca. July 11, 1910, Camp Papers, BYU.
25. The account of the Battle Defending the Tents is derived from Bad Heart Bull and Blish, Pictographic History of the Oglala Sioux, 126–33. Besides vivid depictions of action, Bad Heart Bull’s topographic plan yields significant details of strategy and tactics. Throughout, I have also referred to Crow traditions of the battle, vividly rendered in Medicine Crow, From the Heart of the Crow Country, 64–78. For Crazy Horse’s part in the battle, I have depended on Thunder Tail’s statement on Crazy Horse, to Ivan Stars, 1915, printed in Lakota and in translation, in Buechel and Manhart, Lakota Tales and Texts, 2:623–33. I have occasionally amended Manhart’s translation.
26. He Dog, in Riley, “Oglala Sources,” 14.
27. Ibid., 16.
28. Eagle Elk, November 1944, Neihardt Papers.
29. Thunder Tail, in Buechel and Manhart, Lakota Tales an
d Texts, 2:623–33.
30. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 415.
31. Friends and acquaintances described Crazy Horse in fairly consistent terms: besides statements already cited by He Dog, Red Feather, Horn Chips, and Eagle Elk, see especially Short Bull, in Riley, “Oglala Sources,” 40–41; and Joseph White Bull to Stanley Vestal, Vestal to Hinman, Oct. 13, 1932.
32. Short Bull, in Riley, “Oglala Sources,” 40–41; Bettelyoun and Waggoner, With My Own Eyes, 108–109; Irwin to CoIA, Sept. 6, 1877, RCA Letterbook, NACPR.
33. On “court[ing] the girls together,” see He Dog, in Riley, “Oglala Sources,” 9.
34. Quotations in this order: Black Elk, DeMallie, Sixth Grandfather, 203; He Dog, Riley, “Oglala Sources,” 14; John Colhoff to Joseph Balmer, Nov. 17, 1951 (transcript in author’s collection).
35. Garnett interview, tablet 2, Ricker Papers. On Crazy Horse and High Backbone’s excellence in all fields, see King, in Kadlecek and Kadlecek, To Kill an Eagle, 126.
36. Billy Garnett quoted in R. A. Clark, Killing of Chief Crazy Horse, 100.
CHAPTER 8
1. For the parley with Bozeman, see M. H. Brown, Plainsmen of the Yellowstone, 136–38 (quotations on 137); Gray, “Blazing the Bridger and Bozeman Trails.”
2. For the attack on Fort Union, see B. S. Schoonover to Supt. A.M. Robinson, Aug. 23, 1860, UMA, UMA, LR, OIA; and Sunder, Fur Trade on the Upper Missouri, 215. For northern Lakota raiding along the North Platte, see Thomas S. Twiss to Robinson, Oct. 10, 11, Nov. 1, 1860, UPA, LR, OIA; and Schmutterer, Tomahawk and Cross, chap. 6. These sources strongly suggest that missionary Moritz Braeuninger, while establishing a mission station on upper Powder River, was killed by Hunkpapa and/or Oglala warriors about July 23, 1860. Hunkpapas were probably recruiting Oglala support for the impending attack on Fort Union.
3. For background on the Colorado gold rush and the Plains Indians, see Coel, Chief Left Hand Twiss to CoIA, Feb. 2, Oct. 2, 1859, and John Pisall [sic] to CoIA, Apr. 12, 1860, UPA, LR, OIA, reveal something of the Arapaho predicament.
4. Wissler, “Societies and Ceremonial Associations,” 28.
5. For background on the central plains crisis, see Berthrong, Southern Cheyennes, chap. 7; Grinnell, Fighting Cheyennes, chap. 11; Hyde, Life of George Bent, chap. 5.
6. A. Cody to CoIA, Dec. 18, 1861, UPA, LR, OIA.
7. Wissler, “Societies and Ceremonial Associations,” 9.
8. For background on the Santee war in Minnesota, see Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, chap. 13, and Carley Sioux Uprising of 1862.A groundbreaking analysis is G C. Anderson, Kinsmen of Another Kind, chap. 12. An impeccably edited collection of firsthand Dakota accounts is G C Anderson and Woolworth, Through Dakota Eyes.
9. Twiss to CoIA, Jan. 23, 1865, UPA, LR, OIA, stresses the role of Santees in the events of 1864. A report from Fort Benton confirmed the presence of a small contingent of Little Crow’s band of Mdewakanton Santees in the northern Lakota winter assemblage at the mouth of Powder River.
10. “Sword’s Acts Related,” 86f
11. Garnett interview, tablet 2, Ricker Papers. Little Big Man was reportedly a “cousin” to Crazy Horse. His father is said to have been Yellow Thunder, an akicita leader in 1841 and a chief (Shirt Wearer?) by 1846; his mother (a Cheyenne) was named Her Holy Breath.
12. Collins to Loree, July 3, 1864; Loree to Supt. William M. Albin, July 13, 1864;Albin to CoIA, Oct. 12, 1864(with enclosures); and Twiss to CoIA, Jan. 23, 1865, all UPA, LR, OIA.
13. Unrau, Tending the Talking Wire, 136.
14. Marquis, Memoirs of a White Crow Indian, 8–9; Gray, “Blazing the Bridger and Bozeman Trails,” 48ff.
15. Collins, circular to “all Mountainneers [sic], and other Citizens and settlers,” July 14, 1864; Loree to Wood, Aug. 18, 1864, both in UPA, LR, OIA; Ware, Indian War of 1864, chaps. 20–21; Collins to CoIA, May 12, 1865, in Spring, Caspar Collins, 164–68.
16. The deteriorating situation on the central plains is traced in see Berthrong, Southern Cheyennes, chap. 7; Grinnell, Fighting Cheyennes, chap. 11; Hyde, Life of George Bent, chap. 5. See also Hoig, Sand Creek Massacre, and, for a synthesis of Cheyenne oral accounts, Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 1:278–310.
17. On the northward flight, see Berthrong, Southern Cheyennes, chap. 7; Grinnell, Fighting Cheyennes, chap. 11; Hyde, Life of George Bent, chaps. 5 and 8; and Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 1:311ff. Collins’s report to the CoIA, May 12, 1865 is an invaluable breakdown of Indian numbers and attitudes.
18. Oglala chiefs: see anonymous statement (June 12, 1867?), Fetterman Investigation. The recollections of George Bent are fundamental to all reconstructions of events in the Powder River country in 1865. See Hyde, Life of George Bent, chap. 8; and Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 1:311ff.
19. Bvt. Maj. Gen. Alfred H. Sully to AAG, Dept. of the Northwest, June 6, 1865, printed in “Official Correspondence Pertaining to the War of the Outbreak,” 506.
20. Unrau, Tending the Talking Wire, 251–52; Hyde, Life of George Bent, 207–208; Bettelyoun and Waggoner, With My Own Eyes, chap. 10.
21. Bettelyoun and Waggoner, With My Own Eyes, 66.
22. A number of newspaper accounts of the 1877 surrenders mention the 1865 murder of Crazy Horse’s brother at Fort Laramie and maintain that this was his last peacetime visit to a post or agency: See, e.g., New York Tribune, May 7, 1877: “[Crazy Horse] has been at war for 12 years, having left Fort Laramie in 1865 upon the occasion of the murder of his brother.” Though vague, the report accurately reflects the conditions of 1865.
CHAPTER 9
1. Holy Blacktail Deer, in DeMallie, Sixth Grandfather, 106.
2. Utley Lance and the Shield, 87.
3. Garnett interview, tablet 2, Ricker Papers.
4. The Horse Creek breakout remains a neglected action. Reports are collected in War of Rebellion, series 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, 322–28, 1303. For vivid oral reminiscence, see Bettelyoun and Waggoner, With My Own Eyes, chap. 10. Three accounts by George E. Hyde demonstrate his mastery of synthesizing official reports and Indian recollection: Life of George Bent, 210–12; Red Cloud’s Folk, 120–22; Spotted Tail’s Folk, 118–122.
5. The Battle of Platte Bridge, one of the great set-piece clashes of the Plains Indian wars, was vividly recalled by George Bent and other Cheyenne participants. Their accounts form the basis of my reconstruction: Hyde, Life of George Bent, 212–22; Grinnell, Fighting Cheyennes, chap. 17; Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 1:327ff. A book-length study is Vaughn, Battle of Platte Bridge. See also Spring, Caspar Collins, chap. 12; Berthrong, Southern Cheyennes, 247–49; Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 122–26; Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, 319–22; Unrau, Tending the Talking Wire, 271–75; Nadeau, Fort Laramie and the Sioux, chap. 11.
6. For a strategic overview of the 1865 campaigns, start as always with Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, 322ff. Official reports, journals, and diaries of the 1865 campaigns are collected in Hafen and Hafen, Powder River Campaigns.
7. Hyde, Life of George Bent, 223–33; Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 1:375–78; Grinnell, Fighting Cheyennes, 204–209; Bent, “Forty Years with the Cheyennes.”
8. On the activities of Young Little Hawk, see two White Bull statements, in Howard, Warrior Who Killed Custer, 34–35; and Vestal, Warpath, 44–45 (which names Crazy Horse’s younger brother as Cloud Man). For Red Hawk, see his own recollection, Curtis, Teton Sioux, 188.
9. The appalling march of Cole and Walker is documented in Hafen and Hafen, Powder River Campaigns. For background on the first Lakota clashes with Cole and Walker, see Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, 328–29, and Lance and the Shield, 68–69. George Bent’s accounts establish the Sun Dance dating, as presented in Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 1:383, 656, and the appearance of northern Lakota messengers. High Backbone was with the Miniconjous through midsummer 1865 but living in the Oglala village through the fall; suggesting he may have been one of the messengers.
10. Eagle Elk, Nov. 27, 1944, 12–13, Neihardt
Papers. Eagle Elk’s context is unsatisfactory, leading straight into an account of No Water’s shooting of Crazy Horse in 1870; however, the only action that fits his attack on “some soldiers located near Powder River” is the 1865 assaults on Cole and Walker. Interpretation is probably at fault. Like most Oglalas, and Pine Ridge interpreters, Eagle Elk refers to High Backbone as Hump. Some Miniconjou informants today believe that the younger Hump was probably a nephew (sister’s son?) of High Backbone.
11. Eagle Elk, Nov. 27, 1944, 12–13, Neihardt Papers. Background on the battle is from Hyde, Life of George Bent, 236–40; Powell, People of the Sacred Mountain, 1:383ff; Hafen and Hafen, Powder River Campaigns; Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, 329.
12. Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, 329–30, documents the windup of the Connor offensive.
13. Singing Bear, “Red Cloud,” Sept. 1915, in Buechel and Manhart, Lakota Tales and Texts, 2:604–14 (quotation at 610). The Buechel and Manhart texts represent one of the greatest of future resources for Lakota studies, but they pose significant difficulties. Buechel’s purpose in assembling texts was linguistic, not historic, and his interviewers showed little interest in obtaining dates and historic contexts. Singing Bear’s account of the life of Red Cloud is typical in this regard. Nevertheless, its first section seems to be a detailed if partial account of the events of 1865 through spring 1866, yielding valuable clues to Red Cloud’s rise to primacy in the Oglala tribe.
The account has significance for the career of Crazy Horse also. It places him as a ranking councilor in the fall of 1865, debating the issue of a proposed Crow truce. In all likelihood, this reflects the Lakota practice of nominating a blotahunka war council after a successful defense of the village (see Wissler, “Societies and Ceremonial Associations,” 61). Red Cloud, recognized as pipe owner or leader, was probably seated at the honor place, flanked by Crazy Horse and the other blotahunka named by Singing Bear. Since such leaders were entitled to wear shirts fringed with human hair, this may explain the confusion about the date Crazy Horse was made Shirt Wearer, which is definitively dated to summer 1868, after the end of the Bozeman Trail War (see chapter 11). Mari Sandoz, probably unhappy with the implications for Crazy Horse’s “hostile” credentials, chose to redate it to September 1865, at the very start of the war (Crazy Horse, 174–78). The only rationale for such a redating was He Dog’s and Little Shield’s uncertainty over the term Crazy Horse served as Shirt Wearer: [He Dog:] “It was about five years that [Crazy Horse] was a chief, maybe longer” ; [Little Shield:] “It was about the fourth year that the trouble started” (Riley, “Oglala Sources,” 19). Since Sandoz knew Crazy Horse was divested of his Shirt Wearer status in 1870, she used this vague statement to ignore three others that unequivocally dated the investiture. In light of Singing Bear’s account, it now seems possible to hypothesize that He Dog and Little Shield were confusing the Shirt Wearer ceremony of 1868 with the blotahunka investiture of three years earlier, both involving the presentation of hair-fringed shirts. Coincidentally the date reconstructible from Singing Bear fits with Sandoz’s misdating.