Crazy Horse

Crazy Horse (Lakota: Thasuka Witko, literally "his-is-crazy") (ca. 1840 -
September 5, 1877) was a respected war leader of the Oglala Lakota, who fought
against the U.S. federal government in an effort to preserve the traditions and
values of the Lakota way of life.


Crazy Horse and his band of Indians on their way from Camp Sheridan to
surrender to General Crook at Red Cloud Agency, Sunday, May 6, 1877

Early life
The available evidence suggests that Crazy Horse was born in the fall of 1840.
According to He Dog, a close friend, he and Crazy Horse "were both born in the
same year and at the same season of the year", which census records and other
interviews place at about 1840. Chips, an Oglala medicine man and spiritual
adviser to the Oglala war leader, reported that Crazy Horse was born in the fall
"in the year in which the band to which he belonged, the Oglala, stole One
Hundred Horses, and in the fall of the year", a reference to the annual Lakota
calendar or winter count. Among the Oglala wintercounts, the stealing of one hundred
horses is noted by Cloud Shield, and possibly by American Horse and Red Horse
owner, equivalent to the year 1840-41. Oral history accounts from relatives on
the Cheyenne River Reservation place his birth in the spring of 1840. Probably
the most credible source, however, is Crazy Horse's own father. On the evening
of his son's death, the elderly man told Lieutenant H. R. Lemly that his son
"would soon have been thirty-seven, having been born on the South Cheyenne river
in the fall of 1840."

Crazy Horse was born with the name 'In The Wilderness' or 'Among the Trees' (in
Lakota the name is phonetically pronounced as Cha-O-Ha) meaning he was one
with nature. His nickname was Curly. He had the same light curly hair of his
mother.

Family
Crazy Horse's father, a Lakota who was also named Crazy Horse (born 1810),
passed the name to his son, taking the new name of Worm for himself thereafter. The
mother of the younger Crazy Horse was Rattling  Blanket Woman (born 1814), a
Lakota as well. Rattling Blanket Woman was the daughter of Black Buffalo and
White Cow (also known as Iron Cane). Black Buffalo is the one who stopped Lewis
and Clark on the Bad River. She was the younger sister of One Horn (born 1794)
and Lone Horn (born between 1790 and 1795, and died in 1875). She also had an
older sister named Good Looking Woman (born 1810) and a younger sister named Looks
At It (born 1815), later given the name They Are Afraid of Her.

Looks At It had a much bigger build than her two older sisters. She got her
second name because she had married a man named Stands Up For Him. They had a
child and when the child died of a disease, he tried to take her south away from
her family. A fight ensued. She defeated him and thus the name They Are Afraid Of
Her was bestowed on her. Rattling Blanket Woman also had another older
half-brother named Hump who was born in 1811. Hump's mother was Good Voice Woman and
Black Buffalo's second wife. Hump and Waglula became best friends. When Waglula
began to court Hump's half sister, he presented three horses to the family head
Lone Horn (the older sibling One Horn had died earlier after being gored by a
buffalo, making Lone Horn the oldest male and head man of the family. Their
father, Black Buffalo, had died in about 1820 near Devil's Tower (Lakota called it
Grey Horn Butte) of sickness. In return for the three horses he hoped he could
take Rattling Blanket Woman as his wife as was the custom. But the family's
women wanted eight horses, and so Hump volunteered to go on a raiding party with
Waglula to obtain more horses; they brought back 16 horses, four loaded with
meat they had captured from a Crow hunting party and presented it to the family.

In 1844 Waglula (Worm) went on a buffalo hunt. He came across a Lakota village
under attack by Crow warriors. He led his small contingent in and rescued the
village. Corn who was the head man of the village (the famed painter, George
Catlin painted his picture while visiting the tribe in 1832 entitled "Corn,
Miniconjou Warrior") had lost his wife in the raid. In gratitude he gave Waglula his
two eldest daughters Iron Between Horns (age 18) and Kills Enemy (age 17) as
wives. Corn's youngest daughter, Red Leggins, who was 15 at the time requested to
go with her sisters and all would become Waglula's wives. When he got back to
his village and his wife, Rattling Blanket Woman, found out about his new wives
she became distraught. She and Waglula had been attempting to conceive another
child, but had failed. The arrival of the new wives made her think she had
lost favor with Waglula because she could not get pregnant. At the time they were
camped along the White River. Without discussing it with Waglula she went out
and hung herself from a cottonwood tree. Waglula mourned her death for four
years and was celibate during that time. Upon hearing what had happened to her
sister, Good Looking Woman, who also found she could not conceive, left her husband
and came to Waglula to offer herself as a replacement wife for her sister.
Waglula turned her down as a wife, but relented in allowing her to raise her
sister's son, Crazy Horse. Later, Crazy Horse's other aunt They Are Afraid of Her
helped in the raising of Crazy Horse. She helped teach him to hunt and take care
of himself.




Model Tepee
Beautiful, miniature hide tepee, probably Blackfoot, with painted buffalo,
beaded trim and tin cones. 28" X 16-1/2"
Circa 1900



Visions
Crazy Horse lived in the Lakota camp with his younger brother, High Horse (son
of Iron Between Horns and Waglula) and his cousin who he grew up with, Little
Hawk (Little Hawk was actually the nephew of his maternal step grandfather,
Corn), when it was attacked by Lt. Grattan and 28 other troopers during the Grattan
massacre. After witnessing the death of Lakota leader Conquering Bear, Crazy
Horse began to get trance visions. His father Waglula (Worm) took him to what
today is Sylvan Lake where they both sat to hemblecha (vision quest). A
red-tailed hawk led them to their respective spots in the hills as the trees are tall in
the  and they could not always see where they were going. Crazy Horse sat in
between two humps Black Hills that were at the top of a hill just a bit north
and to the east of the lake. Waglula sat just a little south of Harney Peak but
north of his son.

Crazy Horse's vision first took him to the South where in Lakota spirituality
you go when you die. He was brought back and was taken to the west in the
direction of the wakiyans or thunder beings and was given a medicine bundle which
contained medicines that would protect him for life. One of his animal protectors
would be the white owl, which according to Lakota spirituality would give
extended life. He was also shown his face paint, which consisted of a yellow
lightning strike down the left side of his face and white powder he would wet and with
three fingers put marks over his vulnerable areas that when they dried
resembled hail stones. His face paint was similar to his father's except his father
used a red lightning strike down the right side of his face and three red
hailstones on his forehead. Crazy Horse wore a yellow lightning strike down the left
side of his face but put no make up on his forehead and did not wear a war
bonnet. He was also given a sacred song that is still sung today and told he would
be a protector of his people.

Crazy Horse also received a black stone from a medicine man named Horn Chips to
protect his horse, a black and white paint he had named 'Inyan' meaning rock
or stone. He placed the stone behind the horse's ear so that the medicine he
received from his visionquest and the medicine that Horn Chips had given him would
combine to make his horse and himself to be as one in battle.


Title of Shirt Wearer
Through the late 1850s and early 1860s, Crazy Horse's reputation as a warrior
grew, as did his fame among the Lakota. Little written record exists because the
Lakota were oral historians and had no written language. His first kill was an
enemy of the Lakota, a Shoshone raider who had killed a Lakota woman washing
buffalo meat along the Powder River. He was in many battles between the Lakota
and their enemies, the Crow, Shoshone, Pawnee, Blackfeet, and Arikari among
others. In 1864 after the Sand Creek Massacre of the Cheyenne in Colorado, the
Lakota joined forces with the Cheyenne against the military. Crazy Horse was
present at the Battle of Red Buttes and the Platte River Bridge Station Battle  in
1865. Because of his fighting ability, Crazy Horse was installed as an Ogle Tanka
Un (Shirt Wearer or war leader) in 1865.

On December 21, 1866, Crazy Horse and six other warriors, both Lakota and
Cheyenne, decoyed Lt. William Fetterman's infantry men and 27 cavalry troopers under
Lt Grummond from the safe confines of Fort Phil Kearny on the Bozeman Trail
into an ambush. Crazy Horse personally led Fetterman's infantry up what Wyoming
locals call Massacre Hill while Grummond's cavalry followed the other six decoys
along Peno Head Ridge and down towards Peno Creek where some Cheyenne women
were taunting the soldiers. At that moment, the Cheyenne leader Little Wolf's and
his warriors closed the return route to the fort. They had been hiding on the
opposite side of Peno Head Ridge. Meanwhile, the Lakota warriors came over
Massacre Hill and attacked the infantry. There were additional Cheyenne and Lakota
hiding in the buckbrush along Peno Creek behind the taunting women, effectively
surrounding the soldiers. Seeing they were surrounded, Grummond headed back to
Fetterman to try to repel them in numbers --they were wiped out. The warrior
contingent was comprised of nearly 1,000 warriors. In present day history books
it is known as Red Cloud's War however Red Cloud was not present that day. The
ambush was the worst Army defeat on the Great Plains at the time.

On August 2, 1867 Crazy Horse participated in the Wagon Box Fight near Fort
Phil Kearny. He captured one of the army's new Second Allin breech-loading rifles
from one of the soldiers on the wood cutting crew. However, most of the
soldiers made it to a circle of wagon boxes that had no wheels and used them for cover
as they fired at the Lakota. The Lakota took horrific losses in the fight as
the new rifles could fire ten times a minute compared to the old muskets in
prior battles at a rate of only three times a minute. The Lakota would charge after
the soldiers fired, expecting them to still be using the muskets that took
about 20 seconds to reload. But instead it took only about six seconds to reload
the new rifles. The Lakota casualties numbered around 200 that day. Many are
still buried in the hills that surround Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming.


First wife
In the fall of 1867, Crazy Horse invited Black Buffalo Woman to accompany him
on a buffalo hunt in the Slim Buttes area in what is now the northwestern corner
of South Dakota. She was the wife of No Water. No Water had a reputation among
the tribe at the time as someone who spent a lot of time near military
installations drinking alcohol. It was Lakota custom to allow a woman to divorce her
husband at any time. She did so by moving in with relatives or with another man,
or by placing the husband's belongings outside their lodge. Although some
compensation might be required to smooth over hurt feelings, the rejected husband
was expected to accept his wife's decision for the good of the tribe. No Water
was away from camp when Crazy Horse and Black Buffalo Woman took off on their
trip. No Water tracked down Crazy Horse and Black Buffalo Woman in the Slim
Buttes area. When he found them in a tipi, he called Crazy Horse's name from outside
the tipi. When Crazy Horse answered, No Water stuck a pistol into the tipi and
aimed for Crazy Horse's heart. Touch the Cloud, Crazy Horse's first cousin and
son of Lone Horn, was sitting in the tipi nearest to the entry and knocked the
pistol upward as it fired, causing the bullet to hit Crazy Horse in the upper
jaw. No Water took off with Crazy Horse's relatives in hot pursuit. No Water
ran his horse until it died and continued on foot until he reached the safety of
his own village.

Several elders convinced Crazy Horse and No Water that no more blood should be
shed and as compensation for the shooting, No Water gave Crazy Horse three
horses. The elders also sent Black Shawl, a relative of Spotted Tail, to help heal
Crazy Horse. When he saw that she cared for him he decided to make her his
wife. She bore him a daughter, named They Are Afraid of Her, after his maternal
aunt, in late summer of 1872. His daughter later died at the age of two in 1874.
Because of the incident, Crazy Horse was stripped of his title as Shirt Wearer
(leader). At about the same time, Little Hawk was killed by a group of miners in
the Black Hills while escorting some women to the new agency created by the
Treaty of 1868.

On August 14, 1872, Crazy Horse, along with Sitting Bull took part in the first
attack by the Lakota on troops escorting a Northern Pavific Railroad survey
crew. The Battle of Arrow Creek ended with minimal casualties on either side.