CRAZY HORSE THE WARRIOR

The Warrior's Road

In the year 1857, Curly Hair embarked on the path that would immortalize him as one of the greatest of Indian leaders. His first significant battle occurred in May 1857, when he participated in an attack on a Pawnee village in eastern Nebraska. Curly Hair outpaced the rest of his companions and rode into the village, causing panic among the Pawnees. Seeing a woman near him, he struck her, counting his first coup. The incident has elicited various accounts over the years. Sandoz wrote that Curly Hair killed an individual who he thought was a man, later deeply regretting his action when he discovered not only the individual’s gender but also her young age. In a more recent biography, Kingsley M. Bray argues that Crazy Horse knew his victim was a woman but at first only counted coup on her. According to Bray, Curly Hair later killed her deliberately, perhaps to carry out a pledge to kill a woman made the previous year

When he became a heyoka dedicated to honoring the Thunderbird, practicing humility, and raising people’s spirits. He Dog had referred to Crazy Horse’s killing of a woman, and Bray suggests that Sandoz fictionalized the incident so as not to present her subject in a bad light. Nonetheless, Bray’s own narrative of the event is based heavily on conjecture.2

Curly Hair engaged in another battle on July 29, this one against the U. S. military. Influenced by Ice and Dark, two young men who were convinced that their power would protect their companions from the soldiers, Curly Hair rode with a group of Lakotas and Cheyennes against Colonel Edwin V. Summer into Kansas. The war party was resting their horses when suddenly about 300 soldiers appeared and charged. After releasing a barrage of arrows, the Cheyennes fled south and the Oglalas north. The encounter must have been a great disappointment to the young warrior, but he surely learned an important lesson that would serve him well later—that confronting the U. S. military in a direct head-to-head battle was a recipe for disaster.

War with the Crows

A large council of Lakota bands occurred in August 1857 near Bear Butte, South Dakota, to consider future directions involving both traditional, Indian adversaries, and the newer Euro-American enemies. Among the conclusions arrived at was a reaffirmation of the importance of the Black Hills, sacred site of so many Lakota vision quests and home to game, water, and timber essential to Lakota life. Also on the agenda was the desire by U. S. officials that Indian nations make peace with one another, a common provision embedded in government treaties to prevent intertribal warfare from spilling over and endangering settlers traveling across and settling in the territories west of the Missouri River.

Warfare with the Crows, however, was far too deeply rooted in Lakota culture to be abandoned at the stroke of a pen. War was the avenue by which a young Lakota could earn his status as a respected member of his people. It also was a way to gain horses, which were vital to a wide range of functions, including hunting and the constant moving of villages to find game and fresh grass. Also, excursions by settlers squeezed ever tighter the old hunting grounds, meaning that military action was necessary to push aside other tribes to gain their hunting grounds—and the Crows were essentially next-door neighbors to the Lakotas, making their traditional lands the most accessible and enticing. In addition, old enmities die hard, and the Lakotas were not about to try to make peace with the Crows or with other traditional enemies.

According to both Sandoz and Bray, it was at this gathering that Crazy Horse first encountered Sitting Bull, already a revered Hunkpapa leader. As described in Chapter 6, at Little Bighorn in 1876, Crazy Horse would help Sitting Bull achieve the greatest victory ever by American Indians over the U. S. military.3

Renaming

Among other enemies of the Lakota were the Gros Ventres (also known as Atsinas or Hidatsas). As a sedentary people living in earthen lodges, this group was especially susceptible to Euro-American diseases and had been severely weakened as a rival of the Lakotas by the ravages of smallpox. Nonetheless, when a raiding party that included Curly Hair encountered a group of Gros Ventres in 1857, fighting broke out. When Curly Hair’s friend High Backbone had his horse shot out from under him, Curly Hair came to his rescue. He helped High Backbone onto his own horse behind him and rode to safety. Later in the battle, Curly Hair scored a number of successes, counting several first coups and taking two scalps while suffering a minor wound to an arm.

Each coup earned him an eagle feather, with the wound meriting a red one. The battle also brought Curly Hair something else—a new name. After the war party returned to camp, Crazy Horse transferred his name to his son, adopting Worm as his new name. Curly Hair was now Tasunke Witko, Crazy Horse.

Crazy Horse's Growing Reputation

Like other great Indian leaders before him, Crazy Horse earned his reputation as a great warrior not by fighting Euro-Americans but by demonstrating his courage and skill against traditional Indian enemies. In May 1858, when the newly renamed Crazy Horse participated in a raid west across the Bighorn Mountains, the Lakota party clashed with a group of Shoshones, Bannocks, and Crows. Crazy Horse suffered a wound to his left leg and later had his horse shot. Nonetheless, he persevered, and when an enemy rode toward him, Crazy Horse knocked the rider to the ground and killed him. He then mounted his victim’s horse and rode to safety.

Two sons of the Miniconjou chief Black Shield were killed by Crows in the spring of 1859. Crazy Horse had been visiting his mother’s people renewing old friendships, and along with other Oglalas he joined Black Shield on a retaliatory expedition. The Lakotas attacked a Crow party on June 12 along the Yellowstone River, killing about a dozen of the Crows.4

Among Crazy Horse’s early military encounters, the engagement known as the Battle Defending the Tents achieved special attention. During the summer of 1863, a large party of Oglalas, Miniconjous, Arapahos, and Cheyennes approached a major Crow village in south-central Montana. As the attackers pressed a line of Crow warriors back against their village, Crazy Horse’s horse was shot. On foot, he caught up with a Crow who was trying to reach the tipis and killed him before rejoining his own comrades, who exulted in his accomplishment. Ultimately, neither side could score a decisive victory. When the attackers learned that Crow reinforcements might be coming, they withdrew.

Not long afterward, Crows caught up with Crazy Horse’s party. Once again, Crazy Horse lost a horse in battle. Even so, when he saw that his younger brother, Young Little Hawk, was in danger, he leaped onto another horse

And rushed to his brother’s rescue. Crazy Horse killed one of the Crows endangering his brother, and the others fled.

The Dancing Horseman

Biographers have devoted much attention to Crazy Horse’s vision of a dancing horseman, but the earlier reporting of that vision has recently come into question. The account usually goes something like this: Crazy Horse went off alone to seek a vision but without following the customary ritual of purification in a sweat lodge. Nonetheless, after fasting, he saw a horseman who arose from a pond and seemed to be floating or dancing in the air. The horseman gave Crazy Horse certain directives, later interpreted for Crazy Horse by his father after the two, following the prescribed purification rituals, had gone off together to seek a renewed vision. Crazy Horse was to dress simply, wearing perhaps a feather but not a war bonnet. Before a battle, he must toss dust over his horse and himself and wear a small stone behind an ear. He was not to accumulate personal possessions. Bullets and arrows would not harm him, but the vision also included a battle in which some of Crazy Horse’s companions attempted to hold his arms.5

The vision is typically interpreted by modern commentators (1) as helping to explain Crazy Horse’s extreme generosity and simplicity of dress and (2) as foreshadowing his manner of death. Such interpretations have certain problems with them. In the latter matter of holding his arms, his companions in the vision seem to be trying to keep him from battle, and perhaps from endangering himself. The former implies a cause-to-effect sequence, with the vision fostering certain behavioral patterns. The vision was often located in the immediate aftermath of the so-called Grattan Massacre of 1854, when the adolescent Curly Hair was young enough still to be forming a self-image of what he should be regarding such matters as service, self-sacrifice, and modesty.

Bray argues that the vision actually occurred several years later, in 1860 or 1861, and that the vision has been misinterpreted over the years. Throwing of dust from a gopher burrow, for example, would cause sores, indicating that only a wakan (holy) person could do so without suffering the skin ailments such an action would usually cause. If Bray’s hypothesis about the date is correct, the vision may have reinforced tendencies already strong within Crazy Horse rather than engendered any new patterns. Bray also contends that Sandoz incorrectly considered this experience to be Crazy Horse’s only significant vision, whereas he actually experienced several. The true meaning of the horseman, for Bray, was that as a water spirit from the Underground, he succeeded, through his promise of invulnerability, in neutralizing the power of the Thunder Powers that resided in the Upper World and that were responsible for giving humans the gift of guns.6

Whatever the precise meaning of the vision and its causal impact on Crazy Horse, the great Oglala leader was remembered by contemporaries for living out several elements of the vision. He dressed quite simply, did not wear a

War bonnet, and painted only hailstones and lightning streaks on his body. In addition, his generosity was extraordinary, as he gave freely to others what he captured in battle or shot during buffalo hunts. He also took great care to watch over his younger relatives and friends, including Young Little Hawk, and made concerted efforts to allow young men to count coups that he could readily have gained instead.