Crazy Horse Read Free

of Crazy Horse is about evenly divided between that produced by “writers” and that produced by “historians.” Neither, so far, have convinced many readers—and certainly not this reader—that they have an accurate grip on the deeds, much less on the soul, of the Sioux warrior we call Crazy Horse.

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    T HE S IOUX PEOPLES in the time of Crazy Horse were spread across the northern and central plains in many loosely related tribes of bands, each governed, for the most part, not by one leader but by councils composed of tribal elders, men of skill, experience, and wisdom.
    I am going to do my best, in this narrative, to avoid blanketing my pages under a blizzard of nomenclature in an attempt to precisely delineate the many bands, groups, villages that then flowed back and forth across the Great Plains. The Sioux were a mobile people who saw little advantage in rigidly fixed arrangements. Crazy Horse was an Oglala who spent a lot of time with the Brulés (his mother’s people), some time with the Cheyennes, and, later in his life, at least a little time with the Hunkpapas. One of the glories of being a Plains Indian in his time was that one didn’t have to stay put. An Oglala might want to move in with the Minniconjou band for a while, and was free to do so. The people were of necessity on the move anyway—the necessity being the dictates of thehunt. Crazy Horse as a teenager was on more than one occasion lectured for foolishly endangering himself by going off alone; but, like many teenagers, he continued to go where he pleased, and he frequently endangered himself.
    He was born around 1840, by the Belle Fourche River, near Bear Butte, in what is now South Dakota. Chips, or Encouraging Bear, a Sioux medicine man, thought he had been born in the year when the Sioux had captured many horses from the Shoshones; this big raid occurred in 1841. Bear Butte was a favorite gathering place for several bands of the Sioux.
    One aspect of Sioux nomenclature that is apt to confuse the reader (it is particularly confusing in Mari Sandoz’s biography) is that a warrior didn’t ordinarily acquire his permanent name until he had grown up and done something to earn it. Crazy Horse’s father was also called Crazy Horse; the father didn’t transfer this name to his son until he had proven himself valorous in battle, after which the father was known as Worm. So it was, too, with Sitting Bull, the Hunkpapa, whose childhood nickname was Slow and whose formal name was Jumping Badger; once the boy had counted coup, his father allowed him to become Sitting Bull.
    He Dog, Short Buffalo, and several others mentioned that Crazy Horse was unusually light-complexioned, so much so that he was sometimes referred to as the Light-Skinned Boy. The same friends, and several whites aswell, mentioned that he was not tall, and that he had sharp features. From an early age he was said to have a touch with horses, good at stealing them from other tribes and good, also, at capturing and breaking wild horses. Thanks to this skill he was for a time given the name His Horses Looking, but that name never caught on.
    Worm, his father, was not a warrior. He was a healer, a shaman, a holy man, and an accomplished interpreter of dreams. Little is known about Crazy Horse’s mother—she was thought to be the sister of Spotted Tail, the Brulé leader who sat in many councils and was one of the first Sioux to conclude that it was futile to fight the whites. It was to Spotted Tail’s agency that Crazy Horse fled just before he was killed; but Spotted Tail, wanting no trouble, was stern with his nephew and was part of the escort that took him back to Fort Robinson.
    It is worth noting that Crazy Horse was not born into one of the great families of the Sioux, families that had become great through much raiding and the capture of many horses. Worm’s lodge was humble. Stephen Ambrose argues correctly that the Sioux