The Journey of Crazy Horse

Joseph M. Marshall III, a Lakota historian and storyteller raised on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation, draws on oral tradition rather than Euro-American written records to construct a biography of Crazy Horse, the Oglala Lakota war leader. Marshall first heard of Crazy Horse at age six, when two elders told stories of the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn. He grounds his account in the spoken histories of Lakota people whose families lived during Crazy Horse's time and frames the book as a "hero story," a traditional narrative form in which stories of real men were told to boys to teach them the ideal of the wica, or "complete man."

The boy who would become Crazy Horse was born circa 1840 in the Black Hills, a mountain range in present-day South Dakota that the Lakota call "the heart of all things." His father, also named Crazy Horse, was a healer of the Hunkpatila band of the Oglala Lakota. His mother, Rattling Blanket Woman, belonged to the Mniconju, a separate Lakota band. The Lakota occupied vast territory from the Missouri River to the Big Horn Mountains, living as nomadic bison hunters where every boy was expected to become both hunter and warrior. The child's light-brown, wavy hair earned him the name Jiji, or "Light Hair." When his mother died while he was young, other women of the community stepped in. His father later married two sisters of Spotted Tail, a rising leader of the Sicangu, another Lakota band.

Light Hair trained as a hunter under his uncle Little Hawk and other men. A Mniconju warrior named High Back Bone asked permission to mentor the boy, beginning a lifelong bond. Around age nine, Light Hair accompanied High Back Bone to the North Platte River, where they observed white emigrant wagons heading west along what the Lakota called the Holy Road (Oregon Trail). Elders told of smallpox carried by whites that had killed over a thousand Lakota and nearly wiped out the Mandan people.

In 1851, thousands gathered near Fort Laramie for a treaty council at which white commissioners demanded peace among the tribes and safe passage for emigrants in exchange for annual payments. Lakota headmen signed, though many found the conditions bewildering. The agreement quickly unraveled. In 1854, a dispute over a stray cow escalated when Lieutenant John Grattan marched soldiers to the camp of the respected Sicangu elder Conquering Bear and opened fire, mortally wounding him. Enraged warriors killed all thirty soldiers. The troubled Light Hair rode alone to a ridge and fasted for two nights beneath the stars.

In 1855, General William Harney retaliated by attacking Little Thunder's Sicangu camp on the Blue Water River while leaders talked under a white flag. Over a hundred Lakota were killed or captured, and the dead were mutilated. Light Hair discovered the devastated camp alone and found Yellow Woman, a young Northern Cheyenne woman hiding with her dead baby, guiding her to safety. The trauma compelled him to reveal a vision he had received on the ridge: A rider emerged from a still lake on a color-shifting horse, wearing a stone behind his ear, a lightning mark on his face, and hailstones on his chest. Bullets and arrows passed the rider harmlessly, but then the rider's own people pulled him down. His father explained that the vision marked Light Hair as a Thunder Dreamer, one called to sacrifice ego and reputation for the people.

Around age sixteen, Light Hair fought his first battle wearing the vision markings. Bullets and arrows passed him harmlessly, but when he tried to take a scalp, he was shot in the leg, confirming that a Thunder Dreamer must never take trophies or boast. His father passed on his own hereditary name: The boy became Crazy Horse, and the father took the humble name Worm. Crazy Horse courted Black Buffalo Woman, the niece of the prominent Oglala leader Red Cloud, but her family arranged her marriage to the politically connected No Water. In 1864, soldiers attacked Black Kettle's peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho camp at Sand Creek in Colorado Territory, killing approximately three hundred people, mostly women and children. Yellow Woman was among the dead.

Crazy Horse was named a Shirt Wearer, one of a select group chosen to lead by example. In 1866, after the army built Fort Phil Kearny in the Powder River country in violation of agreements, Crazy Horse led ten decoy warriors who lured Captain William Fetterman's eighty soldiers across five miles of frozen terrain into an ambush. All eighty were killed in what the Lakota called the Battle of the Hundred in the Hand. His boyhood friend Lone Bear died in his arms. The soldiers eventually abandoned the Bozeman Trail forts, and Red Cloud signed the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. Years later, when Black Buffalo Woman left No Water to join Crazy Horse, No Water tracked them down and shot Crazy Horse in the face. He survived, scarred from nose to jawline, but gave her back to prevent bloodshed. His Shirt Wearer status was stripped.

Crazy Horse married Black Shawl and endured devastating losses: His younger brother Little Hawk was killed by whites, his mentor High Back Bone died in a raid after ignoring Crazy Horse's warnings, and his young daughter They Are Afraid of Her died of a coughing sickness unknown before the whites came. When gold was discovered in the Black Hills, Crazy Horse led raids against miners but could not stem the flood. He and Young Man Afraid, a fellow Oglala leader, agreed that war was likely inevitable. Sitting Bull, the powerful medicine man of the Hunkpapa, a northern Lakota band, called the Lakota to gather.

In the summer of 1876, over seven thousand Lakota assembled near the Little Bighorn River. Sitting Bull conducted a Sun Dance and fell into a trance in which he saw soldiers falling into a Lakota camp. On June 17, Crazy Horse led six hundred warriors who had ridden fifty miles through the night to fight General George Crook's force at Rosebud Creek to a standstill. Eight days later, Lieutenant Colonel George Custer attacked the encampment. Gall of the Hunkpapa routed the first assault, while Crazy Horse flanked Custer's force from the north. Their converging attacks wiped out Custer's entire command on a long ridge.

Despite these victories, the gathering dissolved. The army escalated its winter campaign. Dull Knife, a Northern Cheyenne leader whose people had been attacked by soldiers, arrived at Crazy Horse's camp with families who had no robes, food, or horses. When Crazy Horse sent a peace delegation to Colonel Nelson Miles, Crow scouts ambushed and killed five of the eight unarmed emissaries. Families continued departing for the agencies. In May 1877, Crazy Horse led nine hundred people to Camp Robinson, where soldiers confiscated their horses and weapons. The interpreter Grabber deliberately mistranslated Crazy Horse's words, telling General Crook that Crazy Horse vowed to fight until no white man was left, when he had spoken of fighting the Nez Perce.

On September 5, 1877, after taking the ailing Black Shawl to the Spotted Tail agency, Crazy Horse was brought back to Camp Robinson under armed escort. Directed toward the guardhouse, he saw iron bars and drew a knife. Little Big Man, a former ally now in a soldier's coat, seized his arms. A soldier thrust a bayonet into him. Crazy Horse whispered to Worm: "Tell the people they should not depend on me any longer." He died that night. His parents carried his body on a travois, anointing him with red paint and the lightning bolt and hailstones of his vision. They never revealed where they buried him. Marshall argues that the decision to surrender was not capitulation but a final act of service, since continuing to fight would have left women, children, and elders vulnerable. Crazy Horse's most enduring legacy is leadership by example: He rose not through birth or title but because he went first, served the people, and gave his life so that others might live.