Bill Dugan (24 page)

Crazy Horse explained that he only wanted to get away from the mischief at Red Cloud Agency, and agreed that he would return the following morning, September 6. He left in the morning for the forty-five mile ride, accompanied by Touch the
Clouds. All the Sioux at the agency had assembled in the twilight, and the newcomers had to wait for a path to be made though the throng.

He Dog approached Crazy Horse and whispered, “Watch out. You are heading into a dangerous place.” But Crazy Horse pushed ahead.

As he neared the guardhouse, Little Big Man slipped up on his right hand. Little Big Man was now determined to be a leader at the agency, and he was jealous of the influence Crazy Horse had among the warriors.

Early snow covered the parade ground, crunching under their feet as they moved forward. Little Big Man escorted Crazy Horse through a door, and when he realized it was a prison cell, Crazy Horse turned and drew a knife he had hidden in his clothing. He tried to back out, but Little Big Man grabbed hold of him. Crazy Horse tore loose and rushed out into the cold where a sliver of moon cast its pale light on the snow.

Once more, Little Big Man grabbed him trom behind, and one of the soldiers shouted “Stab him! Stab the son of a bitch. Kill him!”

One soldier stepped forward, a bayonet fixed to his rifle, and thrust it toward the great Sioux war leader. Struggling to free himself from Little Big Man’s grasp, Crazy Horse was unable to ward off the bayonet, and it sliced into his side. Another thrust pierced his kidney.

He fell to the ground, and Little Big Man and a couple of troopers reached for him, but Crazy Horse waved them away. “Let me go, my friends. You have got me hurt enough,” he said.

The soldiers wanted to put him in the prison
cell, but Touch the Clouds forbade it. “No!” he thundered. “He was a great chief and cannot be put into a prison.” Instead, the seven-foot warrior bent over and picked up his friend’s body and carried him to a bed in the office of the post adjutant. McGillicuddy came running, and Worm rushed out of the crowd and into the office, where he knelt by his son’s side.

“Son, I am here,” he said, leaning over the gravely wounded man.

Crazy Horse whispered, “Father, it is no use to depend on me. I am going to die.”

An hour later, with only Worm and Touch the Clouds in attendance, Crazy Horse breathed his last. He had said not another word.

Sighing heavily, Touch the Clouds got to his feet and stepped out into the cold, where the moonlight sparkled on the snow, and the collective breath of the silent throng hung like a cloud in the air over its head.

“It is well,” he said. “He has looked for death and it has come.”

The assembly melted away into the night, confused, hurt, angry and, most of all, certain that the way of life they had known and treasured had come to an end at last.

C
RAZY
H
ORSE WAS AN EXCEPTIONAL MAN
, and his life is, in many ways, emblematic of the entire history of conflict between white civilization and the broad gamut of other cultures with which it came into contact. That each and every one of those cultures was beaten into submission, its people brutalized and compelled to accept a way of life it had no interest in adopting is one of the more deplorable aspects of American history. More deplorable still is the unremitting highhandedness with which those cultures were dealt by a succession of greedy, insensitive, and often corrupt politicians, agents, and military officers.

It is one of the paradoxes of the “Indian Wars” that the most evenhanded treatment experienced by the conquered peoples was often (though not always, as the case of Crazy Horse clearly demonstrates) that at the hands of the soldiers themselves. George Crook, for example, while he was dishonest and calculating in his treatment of Crazy Horse, seemed to have learned something of value from his experiences of the Sioux Wars. When he later went West to fight Geronimo in the Apache Wars, his conduct was honorable and even progressive.

Nelson Miles, barely a participant in the preceding
story, also seemed to have learned something and although he was the man who accepted the surrender of the great Nez Percé Chief Joseph, he was also the man who fought for more than twenty years to win for Joseph and his people the right to return to their homeland in the Wallowa Valley of northeastern Oregon. It is unfortunate that Crazy Horse had no such honorable adversary, for he surely deserved as much.

In some ways, certainly in the best sense of the word, Crazy Horse was a conservative, a man devoted to a way of life and willing to do whatever it took in order to protect it from unwelcome change. That he failed does not make his effort less noble or less admirable. Almost classical in its tragic contours, the life of Crazy Horse is even today instructive and edifying, as are his courage and generosity.

The Sioux are, perhaps, more written about than any other Native American people, in part because their fight was the most effective and of the longest duration with the single exception of that of the Apache. But terrain was on the side of the Apache the way it was not on the side of the Sioux. The inhospitable territory of the southwestern mountains and deserts welcomed the white invaders even less than its residents did, and that is the only significant difference. Even so, Geronimo and his people were able to hold out for only ten more years, and with their surrender in 1886 the “Indian Wars” were over.

Among the more useful books on the subject of Crazy Horse and his people are the biographies by Mari Sandoz and Stephen Ambrose, the latter a
joint study of Crazy Horse and his most famous adversary, George Armstrong Custer. Stanley Vestal’s biography of Sitting Bull is also fascinating. George Hyde’s studies of Spotted Tail and Red Cloud fill in many gaps, and are as good as we have on those two Sioux chiefs.

The Sioux War of 1876 has been much studied, and there are several volumes available on thatcampaign. Some of the more significant battles of the entire epic struggle of the Sioux and Cheyenne against white domination, such as the Fetterman fight, Sand Creek, and the Washita battle are explored in individual books by Dee Brown on the first and Stan Hoig on each of the latter two.

Custer, of course, comes in for his share of scrutiny. Edgar Stewart’s
Custer’s Luck
and Jay Monaghan’s
Custer
are both excellent places to begin for those who want to know more about Long-Hair. The battle for the Black Hills is not over, and Edward Lazarus’s
Black Hills, White Justice
explores the ongoing legal fight.

The man said nothing. He was dressed in plain clothing—unadorned leggings, fringed but otherwise unremarkable, a plain buckskin shirt, unpainted and without even beadwork to relieve the ordinariness of its color. His face was unpainted, and he wore a solitary eagle feather in his hair, which hung long and straight. The man turned away for a moment, and Curly noticed a small stone tied behind his ear.

Curly tried to get up, but his body wouldn’t work. Gasping for air, he tried to speak, but the man raised a hand to silence him.

“Don’t wear a warbonnet,” he said. “When you go into battle, leave your horse’s tail untied, free to balance him as he leaps across the stones. Before you ride into battle, sprinkle him with dust, let streams of it glide from your curled fingers in streaks and straight lines. Don’t paint your war pony.”

“Who …” Curly croaked.

But again the man raised a hand, cutting him off. “Rub dirt on your skin and hair. Do these things before every battle, and you will never be killed by an enemy or a bullet. Your people must come first. Take nothing for yourself. Your people will know your worth. Know it yourself. Let them celebrate you. It is not necessary for you to boast or sing of your courage.”

B
OOKS BY
B
ILL
D
UGAN

WAR CHIEFS

Chief Joseph

Crazy Horse

Geronimo

Quanah Parker

Sitting Bull

Published by HarperPaperbacks

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This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1992 by Bill Dugan.

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EPub Edition © OCTOBER 2011 ISBN: 978-0-062-13021-1

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Cover illustration by Jim Carson

Revised HarperPaperbacks printing: October 1999

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