Curly nodded, not sure he understood.
The next morning, they rejoined a band of Sioux. Curly knew the ceremony was only a prelude, but he wasn’t sure what to expect. While hunting buffalo that afternoon, Curly, Hump, and Lone Bear ran into a small band of Arapaho. The Arapaho charged, and a short, furious battle ensued, in the course of which an arrow hit Curly and embedded itself in his leg. But Hump removed
it, and the Sioux succeeded in driving off the attackers. Back in the village, Curly’s father dressed the wound. Then, wrapped in a ceremonial blanket and carrying his sacred pipe, he moved out of the lodge and circled the village. He began to sing.
The Sioux gathered around, listening to the holy man, who concluded his song and looked long and hard into the faces of the people. In the long pause, Curly hobbled to the lodge entrance and stepped outside. He watched his father curiously, uncertain what was coming.
Then the holy man began to speak. “From this day forward, I will have a new name. I will be called Worm. And my son … my son will have a great name. The name of his father, of my father, and of his father. He will be called Crazy Horse.”
C
RAZY
H
ORSE AND
W
ORM
were riding hard. The scent of buffalo was in the air. The summer had been lean, and the herds had been sparse. With the winter snows just weeks away, they needed meat and they needed it soon, while there would still be time to dry it, and pound the berries and herbs into it to make the winter supply.
The sky overhead was a deep blue, deeper even than the water of the lakes. Crazy Horse thought he heard the bellowing of a bull far in the distance. He tried to push his pony to its limit. A better rider than Worm, he was gradually pulling ahead. Every rise would let him gain a few yards on his father, until he was nearly three hundred yards ahead.
There was no doubt about it now. He could hear the lowing of the buffalo, maybe a large herd, but any herd at all would be a blessing from Wakan Tanka. He looked back at Worm and waved. The joy of the hunt was smeared on his face like war paint. Grinning from ear to ear, he teased the older man, challenging him to ride harder, to close the gap. It was almost like the horse races his people
loved so much, but if he was right, there was much more at stake than a few trinkets.
As he charged up a steep slope, his pony slowed, almost as if it sensed something, and Crazy Horse let the animal choose its own pace. As he reached the ridge, he reined in. Far below, spread out all across the floor of a broad valley, a herd of buffalo was grazing. The sound was almost unbelievable now, welling up from the valley floor in one continuous muttering. The buffalo drifted slowly along, munching the grass, switching their tails to keep away the small green flies that swarmed in clouds around them.
Here and there, birds trotted along behind the animals, pecking at the bugs dislodged by their wrenching of the grass. He shifted his weight to turn on one hip and wait for Worm, who had slowed now that he knew the quarry was in sight.
When he reached the top of the ridge, he broke into a smile. “Good,” he said. “As much as we will need. We are lucky to find them. Blessed. Maybe we are living right.”
“We should get the others,” Crazy Horse said.
But Worm shook his head. “No. There is no hurry. As long as we have found them, we will be all right. But it is too soon to hunt them.”
“But why?” Crazy Horse asked. He was still learning, and every day taught him something that he was amazed he had not realized on his own. But nature was so complicated, so vast and incomprehensible a thing. The Sioux were as the flies, a small cloud around the great beasts below. Balance was critical. Without it, they would perish. And every year there were fewer buffalo as the white
men continued to decimate their numbers. Every year they were driven farther and farther to the West, closer and closer to the land of the Crows, as the white farmers conquered more and more of the land with their plows, ripping open the earth until it bled.
If they were not careful, the Sioux would be forced to find some other source of food. They had to husband the buffalo, care for them like they did the old ones. Because the wisest among them knew, and tried to teach the others, once the buffalo were gone, they would not be back.
Worm extended an arm and pointed. “Look at the hides.”
Crazy Horse did as he was told.
“What do you see?”
“Buffalo.”
“Look at the hair. Do you see?”
Crazy Horse shook his head. “No. I see buffalo, that’s all. They look as they always look.”
“The hair is too short. If we kill them now, the hides will not make good robes. They will not be warm enough for the winter. We will have to wait, follow them, herd them, like the white men do their scrawny cows. When the hair thickens, then we will hunt them.”
“Hou!” Crazy Horse understood now. He was disappointed that he had not understood without having to be told. But at least now he knew.
“You stay and watch,” Worm said. “If they move, follow them, and leave a sign. I will get the others. We will catch up to you as soon as we can, maybe by night.”
Crazy Horse nodded. His father waved, turned
his horse, and started back the way they had come. Dismounting, Crazy Horse sat in the grass, his legs folded beneath him. He did not want to get too close for fear of frightening the herd. The longer they stayed where they were, the sooner they would be under the control of his people.
All day, he stayed on the ridge, watching the animals drift back and forth across the floor of the great valley. He remembered when there were so many no man could see the far side of a herd. It was a time when you did not have to ride for weeks to find the buffalo. But that time was gone now. Ice had been right. Things were changing faster than the Indian could follow. And it was the fault of the white man, who would not leave either the Indian or the buffalo alone.
He knew that the rest of his life would be spent warring with the white man. It was fine to stay away from the Holy Road, and pretend that only the Pawnee and the Crow were the enemy, but that was to pretend that the biggest enemy of them all did not exist. A wise man would open his ears and eyes, hear what the white man was telling him, see what the white man was doing. The difference between what was said and what was done would tell him all he needed to know.
The sun was low in the sky when Hump and Little Hawk appeared on the rise overlooking the valley behind him. He waved, then got to his feet and mounted his pony, heading downhill to meet them.
“The rest of the people will be here before morning,” Hump said. “It is a good thing you found them.”
“It is a good thing my father was here to tell me what to do,” Crazy Horse answered.
Hump nodded. “It is late. We should camp here for the night. The herd will not move after dark. And we can keep watch for the others from the hilltop.”
Crazy Horse was not in the mood for idle chatter, so the others left him to himself. It was well on toward morning before more of the band showed up. Black Shield was the chief, and he immediately took charge, dispatching several of the warriors to the far side of the next valley, with instructions to make a wide circle to make certain they could get around the herd without stampeding it.
As the sun rose, the village was almost completely in place, two valleys away, by the bank of a wide, shallow stream. Crazy Horse was exhausted from his long vigil, and wrapped himself in a buffalo robe in his father’s lodge to sleep. No sooner had he closed his eyes, however, than one of the warriors sent to watch the herd came riding into the village, calling for Black Shield.
Rousing himself immediately, Crazy Horse ran outside.
The warrior, Tall Eagle, was already in the middle of his story. White soldiers, but not many, had camped a few miles away. As they were moving in to take up their positions on the far side of the herd, the warriors had stumbled on the camp. An argument ensued, some of the warriors arguing that the whites had no business in the Black Hills and should be killed. But Tall Eagle had argued that that was a decision for the headmen to make, and had extracted promise that nothing would be done
until he had a chance to tell Black Shield and Worm and the others.
Black Shield agreed that the whites had no business being here, but he knew that an attack might lead to General Harney taking to the warpath again. That was something that should be avoided, if at all possible. He decided that he, Worm, Crazy Horse, and Hump, along with a few other warriors, should try to convince the soldiers to leave.
It was an hour after sunrise when the Sioux rode into the center of the camp. Tall Eagle had been right, there were not many. Their commander, a young lieutenant by the name of Gouverneur Warren, was conciliatory.
“Why are you here?” Black Shield demanded, the others crowding in around him.
“I am making a survey. Maps. That’s all.”
“Why do you need maps? This is Sioux land. No white men are supposed to be here. We agreed to leave the Holy Road alone. We said that it could stay. We said that the road from Fort Laramie to Fort Pierre could remain. But that is all. If you build more roads, more whites will come here.”
“I am not planning to build a road. The Great Father just wants to have maps of all the land, that’s all.”
“And if you have your maps, then it will be easy for other whites to come to Paha Sapa. Is that so?”
Warren couldn’t lie to the chief. He recognized the legitimacy of Black Shield’s concern. He nodded. “That is so,” he said.
“We were told there would be no more roads, and every year there are more. And every year more and more whites come on the roads. If we
cannot have the land that is supposed to be ours, there will be no place for us to hunt the buffalo. Then we will die. My people think it is better to die fighting than to waste away.”
Warren shook his head. “Nobody wants that,” he said. “The Great Father does not want that.”
“But it will happen, if the Great Father has his maps.”
Warren was badly outnumbered, and knew the Sioux were getting edgy. A quick survey of the foreboding faces arrayed behind Black Shield told him that the ice he was skating on was very thin, and beginning to melt.
“Suppose,” he said, “we just finish making our maps and …”
“No maps,” Black Shield insisted. “No maps. Just go.”
“All right, Chief. We’ll go back to Fort Laramie.”
“You cannot go west,” the chief said.
“But that is where we came from. That’s the way to Fort Laramie.”
“No. There is a herd of buffalo that way.” Black Shield pointed in the general direction of the herd. “If you go that way, you will frighten them off. We can’t hunt them yet, but we have to keep them where they are. Your wagons will stampede them.”
“What do you want us to do?”
Black Shield held up a hand, then stepped aside a few paces to confer with Worm, Hump, and Crazy Horse. Warren watched apprehensively, not entirely convinced that the Sioux were not discussing how to get the jump on the small detachment. He had some cavalry, and they were well armed, but they were no match in numbers for the warriors,
and he guessed there had to be more nearby, perhaps lying in wait for a signal to swarm down on them and wipe them out.
Finally, Black Shield had forged some sort of consensus, and he came back toward Warren. “You can go north to Bear Butte, then turn east. That way you can circle behind the Paha Sapa. You will not bother the buffalo, and we will not bother you.”
“All right. We’ll leave tomorrow morning.”
“Today,” Black Shield said. “My people are angry that you are here. It is not just the buffalo, it is Paha Sapa. This land is sacred to my people. No whites are supposed to be here. That is the law. That is the treaty that was signed at Fort Laramie.”
“You’re right, Chief. I know that. I’m sorry.”
“I will believe that if I never see another bluecoat in Paha Sapa.”
“I hope you never do, Chief. I honestly do.”
Black Shield shook his head sadly. “But you know and I know that there will be more bluecoats. Even if I do not live to be a very old man, there will be more.”
F
OR NEARLY THREE YEARS
after the encounter with Lieutenant Warren’s survey party, the Oglala worked at forcing their lives back into the patterns they had always known. The white soldiers were staying at their forts. No whites were coming to Paha Sapa, and the warriors were free to concentrate their energies on what mattered most to them, hunting and warfare with the Crows and Shoshoni.
Crazy Horse was happier than most to see this development. Always solitary, now he spent much of his time hunting. Nothing gave him more joy than bringing in an elk or a deer to feed the hungry, or a string of ducks or geese to lighten the steady diet of buffalo meat for an old woman.
For weeks at a time, he was away from the village, more often than not by himself. On these long trips, he had nothing but time, time to think about the Sioux way of life and his place in it. But it wasn’t all solitude. There were war parties, too, raids to steal horses from the Crows, opportunities to count coup without riding under the muzzle of a wagon gun, or darting from rock to rock to avoid the lone ranee rifles of the bluecoats.
There was danger and, occasionally, the death of a close friend, but nothing like the carnage that warfare with the white soldiers brought with it. It was the kind of combat a warrior could relish, one man against another, fighting for pride and horses, fighting as it had always been done, before the guns of the white man had found their way into Chippewa hands.
Already, his name was being celebrated in the lodges, not by himself, which was the custom, but by those who received the fruit of his labor. An old man with two new horses thanks to Crazy Horse would sing his praises around the campfire. An old woman, with no one to care for her, would tell of his gift of a deer to help her through the long winter ahead of her. Among the Oglala, he was regarded as the best and most generous hunter and the bravest warrior, with more coups than men twice his age.
Still, he preferred to spend his time alone by the fire, fashioning more arrows, fitting the heads to the shafts or working on a new bow. He talked some, but only as much as he had to. His younger brother, Little Hawk, was a free spirit, and teased him, sometimes even making him laugh, but the less attention he received, the happier he seemed to be.
When it came to a war party, though, Crazy Horse was always among the first to sign on. When word that he was going spread among the lodges, dozens of warriors were eager to go along. For three years, left alone by the whites, the Sioux had been exerting a steady pressure on the tribes to the west, particularly in the valley of the Powder River,
where the largest buffalo herds and the best hunting were.
The Crows and Shoshoni were pushed steadily backward, and by 1861, the Sioux were preeminent in the region. Although they didn’t realize it, the Sioux were simply reenacting a pattern that had begun when the first permanent white settlement had been established on the Atlantic coast. The coastal tribes, pushed inland by the settlers, had pushed western peoples ahead of them. It was this constant pressure that had driven the Sioux themselves from their former lands in Minnesota. But now, with their horses, they had become the most fearsome presence on the plains, and they were able to go where they wanted and when. Already, the Crows and Shoshoni had been driven to the far side of the Bighorn Mountains. But the pressure from the whites was no less constant.
In late June, after the Sun Dance, Sioux scouts found a large Shoshoni hunting party camped on the Sweetwater River. It was several days’ march, but Crazy Horse was anxious for the first war party of the year. The winter was no time to fight, and hunting to replenish the food stocks more than filled the spring, so it had been a long wait, and he was looking forward to the raid. The scouts said the Shoshoni were led by Washakie, a chief as famous on the plains as Red Cloud or Conquering Bear.
Dozens of men were ready to go, and the scouts led the way. After five days, the scouts called a halt and crept ahead to make certain the Shoshoni were still there. After the long winter, the
akicitas
had their hands full, maintaining discipline among the younger warriors.
When the scouts returned, the Sioux arrayed themselves just below the last ridge before the Shoshoni camp. The enemy pony herd was on the far side of the village, but the plan, which Crazy Horse suggested, was to drive downhill at first light, charge straight through the village, and drive off as many as possible of the war-horses tethered beside their owners’ lodges. On the plains, it had become a widespread practice to keep a favorite pony close at hand for just such emergencies, and Crazy Horse sought to neutralize the advantage by striking first at the defense of the Shoshoni.
When the sky began to turn gray, the Sioux were already on their ponies. When Crazy Horse raised a hand, the warriors watched tensely, waiting for the hand to drop. They twisted the bridle ropes in their hands, drawing them taut, and poised their knees to dig them into the ponies’ flanks. Finally, the hand fell, and they were off, war whoops rippling along the line like cresting waves of earsplitting thunder.
The downhill plunge was detected almost immediately by the old women of the camp, who were already up and about, preparing for the morning meal. The Shoshoni dogs, too, joined the uproar, but the Sioux thundered on downhill and reached the first lodges as the defenders scurried from their sleep, scrambling for lances and bows. Most of the war-horses were driven off in a single charge through the village.
Many coup were counted on staggering Shoshoni warriors, who seemed disoriented as they tried to organize resistance. Plunging on across the open space in the center of the camp and on out the far side of the circle, the Sioux reached the
Shoshoni pony herd, nearly a thousand animals milling around under only token guard.
There was little fire from the few young men watching the herd, and Crazy Horse and his followers plunged on into its heart, cutting it in half and driving off more than four hundred animals. The Shoshoni, Washakie himself at their head, were racing toward the herd, most of them on foot, bows and lances waving angrily as the Sioux pushed their booty up the far hill, then curled to the left and back past the village, nearly a mile upstream.
Some of the defenders ran down frightened mounts still milling in the remainder of the herd. It took them some time to get the horses under control and more time still to organize a pursuit.
Crazy Horse, Little Hawk, and a handful of Sioux warriors formed a rear guard to slow Washakie’s pursuit. The sheer numbers of stolen ponies made driving them a problem. The escape was going slowly, and as the Shoshoni gathered their senses, they were determined to get back the horses and punish the invaders.
Crazy Horse and the others would find cover and fire as many arrows as they could to scatter the defenders and keep them off balance. At one point Crazy Horse became separated from the others because of his habit of dismounting before shooting. This made his aim more accurate, but it slowed him down and exposed him to the charging Shoshoni. Little Hawk, seeing that the Shoshoni were closing in on Crazy Horse, charged back, dismounted, and stood beside his brother.
Together they halted the pursuit, but they were now far from the herd, and almost as far from the
rest of the rear guard. And they were running out of arrows. As the Shoshoni rained volley after volley toward them, the brothers gathered undamaged shafts, plucking them from the ground like women harvesting stalks of grain, fitted them to their bowstrings and sent them back toward their owners.
But Washakie led a flanking movement, and suddenly they were surrounded by eight or nine Shoshoni. Both their ponies were wounded and unable to carry them. Circling for the kill at some distance, the Shoshoni taunted them, but neither man broke and ran. One of the braver defenders charged headlong toward Crazy Horse, who shouted to Little Hawk, “You watch the others, I’ll take care of the fancy stuff.” The Shoshoni carried a lance along the right side of his horse.
The brave was almost on him, his eyes betraying his confusion. He’d expected Crazy Horse to try to dodge out of the way, probably to the opposite side of the pony to avoid the lance, but Crazy Horse stood his ground. With the gap down to a few yards, Crazy Horse feinted to the left, causing the advancing horseman to shift his lance to that side, but Crazy Horse ducked back the other way. The lance was now out of line, high over the pony’s head, and Crazy Horse darted in, catching the Shoshoni by the leg and jerking him from his horse. The Shoshoni’s head cracked on the ground and he rolled over once and lay still.
Swinging onto the Shoshoni horse, he turned to see Little Hawk loose an arrow at a second defender. The arrow struck the warrior in the chest with a wet thwack, knocked him from the horse, and Little Hawk vaulted up to take his place.
Confused by their lack of success, and enraged by the apparent success of the raiders, the Shoshoni started to string out in a long line as they chased after Crazy Horse and Little Hawk. The men with the faster horses were getting out in front, anxious to get their revenge. This made it easier for the rear guard, who could take their pursuers on one at a time instead of having to withstand an organized assault.
One man, leaving his comrades in his dust, charged toward the main body of the Sioux rear guard. He carried a pistol in each hand and barreled ahead, whooping nonstop. The small knot of Sioux stood their ground, amazed at the Shoshoni’s courage, even admiring him a little, as he drew close enough to fire both pistols. The bullets went wide, but he charged on, tucking the guns in his belt and shifting to his bow.
One of the Sioux braced himself, legs wide apart, his lance extended, and jabbed suddenly as the Shoshoni thundered by. The impact knocked the Sioux to the ground, and left the lance, its shaft shattered, embedded in the defender’s chest. He lay on the ground, clutching at the bloody wood for a moment, then closed his eyes and lay still.
The lance bearer scrambled to his feet and snatched a knife from his hip to take the warrior’s scalp. Not until later did they learn it was Washakie’s oldest son. To honor his son’s great courage, they returned the scalp to Washakie.
Far across the valley, Washakie himself had led a small band of his warriors at an angle, enabling him to catch up to the stolen ponies. Charging into
the herd and whooping, they lashed at the ponies with their lances and bows, managing to split it in half and then wheel the recovered stock back toward the village.
Content with their captured ponies, the Sioux, able to drive the smaller number more swiftly, headed for home. The Shoshoni gave up the pursuit.
Four days later, back at the village, Crazy Horse was sitting in his lodge when someone called to him. Crazy Horse told the man to enter. He looked up in surprise to see his friend Chips, a medicine man.
“I heard about your raid on the Shoshonis,” Chips said. “You take many risks.”
“It is what I do,” Crazy Horse answered with a shrug.
“I know. That’s why I made you this.” Chips reached into his shirt and pulled out a small charm, a small white stone, holed in its middle, and attached to a buckskin thong. He thrust it toward his friend. “Here, wear this when you go into battle.”
“What is it?” Crazy Horse asked.
“Two or three times, you have been wounded. But if you wear this, you will not be wounded in battle again. Loop it over your shoulder, and keep the stone under your arm.”
Chips dropped the stone dangling from its thong into his friend’s hand, then curled Crazy Horse’s fingers around it. “We have been friends for a long time, Crazy Horse,” he said. “I want us to be old men together, and let the young men bring us our meat.”
Crazy Horse looked at his hand silently, hefted the charm, then put it on. He hadn’t said a word. Only when the charm was in place did he say, “I want that, too, Chips. But I don’t think it will happen.”