In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse

by Joseph Marshall

They were in what is now western Nebraska. Hunting had been their task for the day. They were going back to the village, having shot one antelope and one deer with their bows and arrows. That would feed several families. At the top of a hill they stopped. They did not want to exhaust their horses.

  Light Hair patted his horse’s neck. He was slender, with two long braids that were dark brown, not black like coal, like the hair of the other Lakota boys. His skin was not deep brown, either, like his companions’. He was not pale, just noticeably less brown, though everyone was a shade browner from being constantly in the sun.

  He looked east toward where the village was. Little Thunder was the headman there. Light Hair was here on a visit with his two Sicangu mothers’ relatives. It had been a good summer. When autumn was over, he would go back to his own village. That was to the west, north of the Shell River and east of the Medicine Bow Mountains.

  Something caught his eye. At first it looked like a flock of birds. Then Light Hair realized it was smoke, blowing in the breeze. It was near the village. He pointed, and everyone saw the long, dark wisps.

  “It’s a grass fire!” White Bear said. He was fourteen and tall for his age. “Come on! We have to warn everyone!”

  The riders took off at a gallop. Up one slope and down another, they raced for the village. Light Hair and his fast bay horse pulled far ahead. Grass fires were dangerous, especially in the autumn. Grass and shrubs were dry and burned fast.

  Just west of the village he pulled back on the single rein to stop his horse. From a low hill he saw the village. It was a sight he would never forget.

  The village itself was burning! Lodges, lodgepoles, and meat racks—everything seemed to be on fire. Several horses were running away from the billowing smoke and yellow-orange flames. For a moment, Light Hair did not know what to do. Then he leaned forward and kicked his horse into yet another gallop. Exhausted or not, the horse responded willingly. Light Hair was glad. There was trouble ahead, and perhaps people were hurt.

  At the distance of a long bowshot from the village, the scene was terrifying. The ground was scorched black where the flames had passed. Every buffalo-hide lodge was burning or had already been turned into a pile of ashes. Horses and dogs were running about in fright and confusion.

  As he approached the village, Light Hair saw bundles on the ground. His companions caught up to him. They all stopped and stared. It was all they could do. None of them had ever seen a village burning. They were shocked into not moving.

  “The wind isn’t strong enough to move a fire that fast through the entire village,” someone said.

  “What shall we do?” asked one of the boys.

  “Help anyone we can find!” shouted Light Hair, and he kicked his horse into a gallop once again. The other boys hesitated a moment before they followed him.

  Light Hair and his bay horse soon reached the edge of the village. The horse was afraid of the flames. Or perhaps it was the stench of burned and burning things. It was then that Light Hair saw that the bundles on the ground were people. He was sick to his stomach. At the sight of a burning pile of clothing, the horse jumped sideways. Light Hair was caught by surprise and fell off. Clinging to the rein, he jumped to his feet. The smoke and stench were too much for the horse. He pulled away from Light Hair and galloped off.

  White Bear arrived, a frightened, horrified look on his face. “There are people on the ground, not moving!” he called out.

  Yellow Eyes joined them, his horse skittish as well. “I saw people walking,” he said, pointing to the north. “Some women, and men on horses, on that hill.”

  Looking through the swirling haze of smoke, they all saw dark shapes in the distance.

  “Long Knives!” hissed White Bear. “Long Knives with guns!”

  The boys looked at one another. Fear and confusion were on all their faces. The Long Knives were the soldiers of the white people. Last year they had attacked a Sicangu village near Fort Laramie. Long Knives everywhere were known to shoot at any Lakota, alone or in a village. Here they had probably started the fire.

  “Go see,” said Light Hair. “If they are Long Knives, see what is happening. Don’t let them spot you! I’ll see if there are any of our people still here.”

  White Bear and the other boys rode hesitantly down into the valley. There they could stay out of sight. Light Hair watched them forlornly for a moment. Long Knives were known to attack any Lakota—man, woman, or child. They were mean people—if they were people at all.

  Light Hair reluctantly looked around at the burned village. The only people he saw were on the ground. None of them were moving. He went from one to another, a sick feeling in his stomach. Some of the bodies were small children. All the while, acrid smoke swirled around him. Suddenly he heard a faint cry. He stopped and listened, and it came again. He followed the faint whimper, and it led him down the long slope. Finally he came to a bank. Beneath an overhang he saw someone under a covering of grass and twigs. It was a young woman. He recognized her. She was a Cheyenne woman who was married to a Lakota man. She was weeping softly.

  Her name was Yellow Woman. Light Hair touched her on the shoulder. She looked at him with a tear-streaked face.

  “I know you,” she whispered to Light Hair.

  “What happened?” he asked softly.

  “Long Knives came,” she sobbed. “They shot people. My husband is . . . He’s gone.” She wept again. “So is my baby.” She pointed to a small mound of dirt under the bank.

  Light Hair helped Yellow Woman finish covering her baby.

  She sat staring at the small mound. “I hid in a cave along the river with some others. We waited until the Long Knives left and then came out. Some of our people fled that way,” she said, pointing northeast. “Maybe they got away—I don’t know. I stayed to find my husband and bury my baby.”

  Soft hoofbeats startled them.

  It was White Bear. “Long Knives are taking women and children north,” he told them somberly. “We will follow them.”

  Light Hair nodded and pointed at Yellow Woman. “I will help her,” he said.

  “Good,” replied White Bear. “Then we will see you later. Watch out. There may be more Long Knives.”

  “You, too,” warned Light Hair.

  Then White Bear was gone. It did not take long for the sound of hoofbeats to fade away.

  “What shall we do?” Yellow Woman asked, her voice like that of a small girl.

  “Maybe we should follow those people who went northeast,” he suggested. “We can find their trail.”

  After catching his horse, Light Hair tied drag poles to the bay. On the frame he put Yellow Woman, who was again sobbing softly. Leading the horse and keeping a sharp eye out, he took them northeast. It was not hard to find foot- and hoofprints in the grass and soil, as well as the imprints of many drag poles.

  Light Hair looked back at the burned-down village. He wanted to cry because there was nothing he could do for those who were left behind. There were many bodies scattered over the scorched ground.

  At sundown Light Hair made a cold camp with no fire to show their presence in the dark. He shared what little food he had with Yellow Woman. At dawn they began traveling again and did not stop until they came to a small creek, where they drank and watered the horse.

  They kept traveling through the day. Soon they came into a very hilly area of the prairies, with tall grass and sandy soil. Yellow Woman had stopped weeping, but she was silent most of the time. Light Hair managed to shoot a rabbit with his bow and arrow. He risked a fire to cook it and was glad. The fresh food strengthened them both. They continued on, and at sundown he smelled smoke from a distant fire. The next day they were spotted by lookouts from a camp hidden among the sandy hills.

  It was a sad and somber camp. Most of the people were glad to see Light Hair and Yellow Woman. Some didn’t react at all. There were wounded and injured people among those who had fled. Light Hair was glad to find Spotted Tail, his uncle, among them. He was the
overall Sicangu leader. One of the men told Light Hair how fiercely Spotted Tail had fought. He had knocked down at least ten Long Knives before he was shot and seriously wounded. But he would get well. Spotted Tail was a strong and tall man, a powerful warrior. Light Hair’s mothers were Spotted Tail’s sisters.

  Light Hair stayed in the camp for two days. When Yellow Woman no longer cried herself to sleep, he decided to leave. He wanted to go home, to his own family. He was sure they would have heard of the attack by now. Light Hair wanted his father and mothers to know he was not hurt. He was told the camp would move farther east in two days. Two more days would give the wounded time to rest and heal.

  Yellow Woman did not want him to leave, yet she understood that he must.

  “I will never forget you and what you did for me,” she said with tears in her eyes.

  “Light Hair was only a few years older than you when this happened,” Grandpa Nyles said to Jimmy.

  “So did he go home?” Jimmy wanted to know. “And what happened to the women and children who had been taken captive?”

  “He did go home, and he told his family what had happened,” Grandpa Nyles said. “It wasn’t the last time he stayed with his mothers’ relatives, though. As for the captives, well, the Long Knives kept them for a while, then let them go.”

  Jimmy was sad and angry. “Why did they attack our people?”

  “To punish them for something they didn’t do,” said Grandpa Nyles.

  “What?” Jimmy was confused.

  “That is another story about Light Hair,” promised the old man. “That will come later in our journey. Now it’s time to put out the fire and turn in.”

  The next morning Jimmy and his grandpa drove south and got on Interstate 80 going west. After a few hours they crossed into Wyoming and arrived in Cheyenne. They stopped for a bite to eat and to put gas in the truck, and then they went north on Interstate 25. At the exit for a town called Guernsey, they turned east.

  3

  The Oregon Trail

  IT WAS WINDY AND CLOUDY. THEY DROVE THROUGH THE small town of Guernsey, and late in the afternoon they stopped along the highway. Crossing the fence, Jimmy followed his grandpa to the top of a hill. They sat down among some bristly green soap plants. Grandpa Nyles pointed at the river in the valley below them. “That is called the North Platte River,” he said. “Our people called it the Shell River. Now, if you look carefully, you can see some deep ruts just this side of the river.”

  “Yeah,” said Jimmy. “I see them. Looks like some big trucks got stuck in the mud.”

  Grandpa Nyles chuckled. “Well, guess what? Those ruts, those tracks, are over a hundred and fifty years old.”

  Jimmy was astonished. “For reals?”

  “For reals.”

  “Wow! Who made them?”

  “Wagons. Thousands of them.”

  Jimmy let out a whistle. “Thousands?”

  “Ever heard of the Oregon Trail?”

  “Yeah, we studied it in school.”

  “Before it was called the Oregon Trail,” Grandpa Nyles explained, “it was known by the Lakota and other tribes as the Shell River Road. And before that, it was a trail used by animals, like buffalo. It’s an old, old trail.”

  He paused for a moment. “So do you know why we’re here?”

  “Crazy Horse was here?”

  “You got it. He was still Light Hair when he first saw wagons on this trail. Hundreds . . . thousands of them.”

  Jimmy stared at the deep ruts. He knew about trails. Lots of animals or people or cars traveling made trails. They wore out the grass and made marks on the ground. How many wagons made those deep marks? he wondered. He could not imagine what hundreds and thousands of wagons looked like.

  “Imagine,” said Grandpa Nyles, “if one day you suddenly saw hundreds of flying saucers in the sky. What would you think? How would you feel?”

  “I’d be scared,” admitted Jimmy. “And . . . and I’d wonder who was in them. The flying saucers, I mean.”

  Grandpa Nyles smiled. “You know, I’d bet that’s exactly what Light Hair thought, back in about, oh, 1852.”

  The way it was—summer 1852

  A slow, lazy breeze floated through the grasses. It was a hot summer afternoon. From the top of a hill, young Light Hair looked to the west. The front of the line of covered wagons went out of sight over a far hill. He looked to the east. Wagons at the back of the line were just coming over the horizon.

  A few riders were on either side of the wagons. Some people walked, but no one seemed to be in a hurry.

  Light Hair was careful to stay down behind the grasses. Beside him was Little Hawk, his uncle, who was just as astonished at the sight of the endless line of wagons. One after another, pulled by oxen. Since warriors always carried their weapons, Uncle Little Hawk had his black powder percussion rifle with him. His bow and arrows were tied on his horse.

  “Are they people?” Light Hair whispered.

  “I think so,” Uncle Little Hawk replied. “But not like us. Their skin is pale, and many of the men have beards. Their clothing is different.”

  “Where are they going?” the boy wondered.

  “Somewhere to the west. They have been doing this for four or five summers now. But I don’t remember seeing this many.”

  Light Hair and his uncle watched in silence. They had seen wagons before. The Long Knives at Fort Laramie used them. Wagons hauled soldiers and other people. They also carried food, flat wood, guns and powder, tools, clothing, and even water. All the things the white people needed and used. But never had the Lakota seen so many at once. Wagons were end to end, from one horizon to the other. And even more people with them.

  Light Hair did not know what to think. In a way, he was scared, and he wondered if his uncle was or if his father, Crazy Horse, was.

  “As long as they keep going,” Little Hawk said, “that will be good. We don’t want those people staying here, on our lands. They leave their trash behind and scare away the buffalo. The wagon wheels leave marks—they scar the land.”

  Jimmy looked at the empty land along the river. Some cattle grazed on the other side. A few antelope could be seen.

  “How many wagons went through here?” he asked his grandpa.

  “Hard to know, but history says that three hundred and fifty thousand people traveled on the Oregon Trail.”

  Jimmy was astonished. “Three hundred and fifty thousand? Wow! That’s . . . that’s a lot of counting.”

  “For sure. They started from the state of Missouri, went by here, and ended up in California or Oregon. They did that for twenty years.”

  “That’s older than me,” Jimmy declared. “What happened to them all?”

  “Well, that’s the problem,” Grandpa Nyles said with a sigh. “Some of them decided to stay. Later, more came to stay. They farmed and raised cattle and sheep. They forced our people off their own lands.”

  “Did our people try to stop them?”

  “Yes, they did. There were battles. When Light Hair became Crazy Horse, he fought in many of them.”

  Fort Laramie

  Fort Laramie National Historic Site was a group of old buildings. They stood around a yard that seemed very large to Jimmy. People were walking around and looking into the buildings.

  Grandpa Nyles drove into the parking lot and stopped. “Remember the ruts back there, along the river?”

  “Yeah,” Jimmy replied.

  “Well, that trail came to this place, and then went on farther to the west. This place is Fort Laramie. It’s been here a long time.”

  Jimmy looked around. There was a wagon beside one of the buildings. Near another wagon stood a group of men in blue uniforms.

  “Are those Long Knives?” Jimmy wanted to know.

  “In a way,” Grandpa Nyles answered. “They are reenactors. They come here and play the part of soldiers. They talk to the tourists.”

  “Where are the Indians?” Jimmy asked.

  “Good questio
n. Come on, let’s look around.”

  “Okay. So Crazy Horse was here?”

  “Yeah, he sure was. He was here, as Light Hair and as Crazy Horse.”

  The way it was—September 1851

  Light Hair could not believe the number of people. He could stand in one place, turn in a circle, and there were people, lodges, and horses everywhere he looked. All were camped along Horse Creek, a day’s ride east of Fort Laramie, the Long Knives’ outpost.

  “Where did they come from?” he asked They Are Afraid of Her, one of his mothers.

  “All over,” she replied as she sliced wild turnips into an iron kettle. “From the south, west, north, and east.”

  “Why are we here?” he asked.

  “Because the white peace talkers invited all of them and us to come,” she replied.

  “I heard some people talking, but I couldn’t understand them,” Light Hair told her.

  “Yes. Many different people means different languages,” she said. “There are our friends the Arapaho and the Cheyenne. Our enemies, too, the Crow. Then the Assiniboine, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara. Our relatives the Dakota and the Nakota are here, too.”

  “Why?”

  They Are Afraid of Her chuckled. “Because of the white people in the wagons on the Shell River Road. They’re afraid we might attack them. So the peace talkers want us to promise to leave them alone.”

  “Then maybe they should just stay away,” said Light Hair.

  His mother laughed. “That’s what most of the people here think. Now, go find your brother and the two of you stay close to our lodge. I don’t want you wandering away. It’s easy to get lost.”

  Light Hair found his little brother, Whirlwind. He was called that because he was always on the move, first going in one direction, then another. “Come here,” he said to the younger boy. “Mother wants us to stay close.”

  “Let’s go look at those horses!” begged Whirlwind. “See, over there? They have little black spots all over them.”

  “All right—but just for a little while,” Light Hair said, giving in.