BLACK ELK - Oglala Sioux
(1863-1950)

Black Elk was an Oglala Sioux holy man and distant cousin of Crazy Horse. He was born near the Little Powder River in Wyoming and as a teenager he fought in the Battle of the Little Big Horn in which General George Armstrong Custer and his soldiers perished. In 1877, Black Elk was taken by his family into Canada after Crazy Horse's death. Then, he and his family were placed on a South Dakota reservation after the surrender of Sitting Bull.

He joined Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show (Sitting Bull, too, had been a member a year earlier) and with it, traveled throughout the U.S. and Europe. He returned from an overseas tour just in time to witness the tragedy at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in December 1890.

Black Elk shall always be remembered for his mysticism, healing powers and vision. He was visited in 1930 on the reservation by poet John G. Neihardt who translated Black Elk's memoirs and in 1932 published them into a book called "Black Elk Speaks". Carl Jung, the famous philosopher praised the book as an important contribution to the field of philosophy. In 1947, at the age of 84 he was one of the few surviving Sioux to have firsthand knowledge of tribal customs and its teachings. As a result, Black Elk agreed to have an anthropologist named Joseph E. Brown translate his remembrances of Sioux ceremonies and ways and this became the second Black Elk book called "The Sacred Pipe". It was published in 1953, three years after the death of Black Elk.

"Oh hear me, Grandfather, and help us, that our generation in the future will live and walk the good road with the flowering stick to success. Also, the pipe of peace, we will offer it as we walk the good road to success. Hear me and hear our plea." - Black Elk

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Cochise
Birthdate unknown - 1874

Drive south down Highway 666 through the farmlands of Arizona and watch as the Dragoon Mountains rise in a prime example of "purple mountains majesty." It was among the canyons and rises of these mountains that Cochise, leader of a band of Chiricahua Apache, and his people were able to elude the countless government forces sent to corral them. The area became known as the Cochise Stronghold, and still bears that name today and while the land once sheltered the Chiricahua it still shelters Cochise as the site of his tomb.

The Apache were known as fierce warriors, resistant to government efforts to settle their lands and place them on a reservation. The few thousand whites in the area felt threatened and routinely responded to encountering an Apache village with violence. Retaliation by the Apache always followed close behind any white act. Cochise was no exception, however he also was no fool. He realized it was fruitless to continue to resist the western movement of the whites along the Overland Trail, and actually entered into an "agreement" with the staff of the Butterfield Stage Line. It was "understood" that Cochise could raid or attack anything he chose south of the Mexican border to secure what he needed but would leave the stage line alone.

This situation fell apart in 1860, when a band of Pinal Indians raided the area and abducted an 11-year-old white girl. Despite the arguments of the stage line personnel, a young army officer sent to retrieve the child was convinced it was Cochise and the Apache behind the attack. Hearing this, Cochise came forward under a flag of truce when summoned by the army to declare his innocence. The army chose not to believe him and tried to place him under arrest. Cochise pulled is knife, slashed the wall of the tent in which the meeting was being held and escaped into the brush. The six men who had accompanied him, including three relatives, were held and then hanged.

This act erased any sense of fairness in Cochise's mind and negated the arrangement he had made with the stage line. Reports list 150 white travelers along the Overland Trail killed within the 60 days following the attempted arrest of Cochise and murder of the six Chiricahua men. For more than 10 years Cochise and his small band staved off the army waging war throughout southern Arizona, an area that became the most dangerous corner of the entire country. Tucson, the largest white settlement in the area, was virtually cut off during portions of this was, as Cochise let nothing go through Apache Pass.

After a decade of struggle, both sides were weary. In 1872 Tom Jeffords, owner of a small stage line through the area, a trusted friend of Cochise and the only white man with access to him arranged for Cochise to surrender to General O.O. Howard. Jeffords knew Cochise would respect Howard, as he had been head of the Freedman's Bureau, the agency responsible for assisting freed black slaves. (Howard University is named for the general.) Cochise was literally able to dictate his own terms of surrender, one of which was that Jeffords be named Indian agent.

The remote White Mountains had been chose as the Apache reservation because they were distant from white settlements and transportation routes but still held decent grazing lands for Apache herders. Cochise refused to settle there however, remaining at Camp Bowie. By the time he surrendered he was in his 50s and had been at war constantly for 12 years. He became ill and died just two years later, in 1874. His body remained in the Stronghold. Chiricahua warriors rode their horses back and forth across the burial site until no evidence of its location would remain. It was always believed that Jeffords knew, but he never told, perhaps eliminating the belief Jeffords was a friend of Cochise because he supplied the Apache with weapons and fortifying the belief that their friendship existed because Cochise considered Jeffords an honorable man.

Crazy Horse / Tashunca-uitco
Oglala Lakota (Sioux)
1849-1877

While there have been many renowned leaders among the Lakota (Sioux), perhaps the most high-profile of them all is Crazy Horse. A fierce and fearless warrior, and considered a visionary by his people, Crazy Horse also wielded great power and influence in many social and political affairs that faced the Lakota. While his role in battle is often recounted, more important perhaps was his dedication to tradition and the Lakota way of life.

As a child, Crazy Horse looked little like the rest of his people. In fact, his hair was so light and wavy he was called "Curly" as a childhood name. Many a white settler who saw him playing along side the trail they traveled thought he was actually a white captive living among the Indians. An enigma then, Crazy Horse remained so. While other Lakota and their leaders sat for portraits, Crazy Horse never allowed a rendering of himself in any medium, especially photographs, saying: "Why would you wish to shorten my life by taking my shadow from me?"

While still a very young man, Crazy Horse began his journey toward becoming a legendary warrior. At 13 he stole horses from the Crow and led his first war party before the age of 20. Early on he decided he would fight to protect the Lakota way of life and encroachment of white armies and settlers, fighting against the new arrivals in Wyoming with Red Cloud in the 1865-68 war, playing a key role in destroying William J. Fetterman's brigade at Fort Phil Kearny in 1867. That victory did not stop the influx, however, and the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 opened the door of Lakota land to all that Crazy Horse fought to prevent. Undaunted, Crazy Horse led an attack on a surveying party sent into the Black Hills by General George Armstrong Custer in 1873.

When the U.S. War Department ordered all Lakota bands onto reservations in 1876, Crazy Horse took it upon himself to lead the resistance. Crazy Horse had taken a Cheyenne woman as his first wife, which allowed a close alliance between the Lakota and Cheyenne. Crazy Horse called upon his Cheyenne relatives to join forces with his Oglala warriors in an attempt to keep General George Crook from following the Rosebud Creek to Sitting Bull's camp on the Little Big Horn River. Crazy Horse and his band of 1,200 warriors turned Crook and his men back on June 17, 1876. This victory paved the way for hope. A week later Crazy Horse joined forces with Sitting Bull and Hunkpapa Lakota leader Gall in an attack that destroyed Custer's Seventh Cavalry.

Despite the Indian victory at the Little Bighorn, things changed. Though all three leaders chose not to submit to government orders to report to the reservation, Sitting Bull and Gall decided to lead their people to Canada. Crazy Horse chose to remain in the sacred lands of the Lakota. General Nelson Miles pursued Crazy Horse, the Lakota and their allies relentlessly throughout the winter of 1876-77, bringing Crazy Horse into battle several times. Eventually, the intense focus of the military on his position and intent, coupled with the decline of the buffalo population, led Crazy Horse to surrender on May 6, 1877.

Even in defeat, Crazy Horse remained a free spirit. On September 5, 1877, he left the reservation without authorization to take his sick wife to her parents. General George Crook, whom Crazy Horse had defeated a year earlier, ordered 43 men to go and arrest him, fearing that he was plotting an outbreak and return to battle. Crazy Horse did not resist arrest at first, but when he realized that he was being led to a guardhouse, he began to struggle. For the entirety of his life, Crazy Horse had abhorred gunfire and believed he could not be killed by bullets, and this belief held firm in the end for once he began to struggle, his arms were held by one of the arresting officers and a soldier ran him through with a bayonet.

He was secretly buried by his parents somewhere in the hills in the vicinity of where he was camped when he was arrested. The location has been known to very few over the years and remains a secret today