Crazy Horse: Lakota Loner, Leader and Enigmatic Introvert

Like Red Cloud, Crazy Horse was born to parents from different Sioux subtribes. His mother was Miniconjou and his father was Oglala. Unlike Red Cloud, though, he was raised within his father’s tribe. Born in or around 1840, he would become a leader and chief. He would figure in several notable battles. They would include the Fetterman fight, the Rosebud and the Little Bighorn.

Boyhood

Crazy Horse is described as being light-skinned and having light-colored hair that was wavy. Some accounts say he was known by several different boyhood names. The most prevalent, though, was Curly. It described his light, wavy hair.

As a boy of 12 Crazy Horse witnessed the Grattan affair, which ended in at least one Oglala chief (Brave Bear) being killed. Grattan and all 29 of his soldiers were killed. Crazy Horse would participate in later battles and raids, quickly rising to leadership as a war chief.

Sioux historian Joseph Marshall III states that when General William Harney made a punitive strike a year later on Little Thunder’s peaceful village of Brule Sioux, Crazy Horse would have been present. However, he was out with a hunting party at the time of the attack. Marshall records that on his return Crazy Horse paused to aid a young Cheyenne woman. He soon learned she was a survivor of a treacherous attack on non-hostile villagers.

Maturing Toward Manhood

Experiences like the Grattan affair and Harney’s attack seem to have forged the young man’s mindset regarding white men.

Curley is reported to have killed his first buffalo at the age of 12. It was a milestone for young Sioux men. Sources state that at the age of 14, during a battle between Sioux and Arapaho hunting parties Curley unwittingly killed a woman hiding in nearby brush. He felt ashamed. However, he soon proved himself against warriors, however.

“Counting coup,” or striking a live enemy in battle was a high honor for warriors and for those aspiring to be. It is said Curley soon counted several in a fight against Pawnees. He also killed multiple enemy warriors and claimed their scalps.

Curly’s father was a medicine man, not a warrior. His name was Crazy Horse. However, proud of his son’s feats in battle, he gave his own name to his son and took the name “Worm” for himself. Soon he and young Crazy Horse would share a “vision quest.”

The Vision Quest

In Sioux culture and religion men would seek visions brought on by depriving themselves of food, water and physical comfort. They often went alone in their quests, sometimes as a rite of passage, apparently. At times these visions were brought on through other forms of suffering or deprivation as well.

In June of 1876, Sioux spiritual leader Sitting Bull would pursue a similar experience (he was a medicine man and leader but not an actual chief) despite his being more than 40 years old. Participating in the grueling and self-torturous sun dance ritual, Sitting Bull would experience a vision. It would prove ominous. (More on that in a future post.)

Young Crazy Horse left his father and sought a vision. After extended deprivation he experienced a vision of a warrior riding through a storm, apparently with his hair unbraided and hanging loose about his shoulder. Besides various items secured in his hair or behind his ears, the warrior was painted in a particular way.

After that vision Crazy Horse painted lightning streaks on his face or chest, as well as hail stones before battle. In a particular battle, however, he killed multiple enemy warriors and began taking their scalps. He was struck in the back of one calf by an enemy arrow. Perplexed, he realized that in his vision the warrior had not collected scalps. Crazy Horse took no scalps after that time.

Adulthood and Leadership

Crazy Horse is described as quiet, introverted and sometimes aloof. At times he would go off on his own, not telling anyone where he went or when he planned to return. He apparently liked solitude. He is described as liking children, however, and would notice children when he seemed to notice no one else in the camps. He was also described as being generous and concerned for his tribe’s elderly.

Most Plains tribes had “warrior societies” serving various functions, similar in some ways to lodges and service clubs in white society. One Oglala society was known as the “shirt wearers.” They wore distinctive shirts, possibly to be more visible as leaders in battle. As a quiet leader by example, Crazy Horse soon rose to leadership and membership as a shirt wearer.

Besides his presence at the Grattan Affair and Harney’s attack, Crazy Horse was a leader in Oglala chief Red Cloud’s War. He was a decoy in at least one of the ambushes outside Fort Phil Kearny. He is known to have decoyed Fetterman’s 80 men to their annihilation.

The same tactic was attempted against Custer along the Yellowstone River on August 4 and August 11,1873. Many believe Crazy Horse was led one or both attempts. Custer was not fooled, though. He did not follow the decoys, and his detachment repelled the Sioux attacks. He and Crazy Horse would meet again, however, a final time at the Little Bighorn.

Before 1876, though, Crazy Horse made his disdain for white men and their ways well known. Besides the Fetterman fight, he had led smaller raids along the Bozeman Trail. He refused to “touch the pen,” or sign, the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. In fact, he would not even appear at the negotiations.

In 1874 and 75 gold brought hordes of prospectors and the 7^th Cavalry to the tribes’ sacred Black Hills. The cavalry’s supposed purpose was to keep white settlers out. That didn’t happen, though. A number of miners were found murdered but not scalped in the Black Hills. Because Crazy Horse refused to take scalps, he is suspected as the killer.

Eight days before the Little Bighorn battle, General George Crook’s Wyoming Column was attacked on Rosebud Creek. Over a wide and scattered field of battle, Crazy Horse led hundreds of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors. If Crook’s Crow and Shoshone scouts had not alerted him to the approach and then joined the fight themselves, Crook might have suffered the same fate as Custer or Fetterman.

The Rosebud battle is considered a tactical draw. However, Crook headed back south and was out of action for more than a month. Crazy Horse had negated that threat.

The Little Bighorn and Beyond

Custer’s attack on the Sioux and Cheyenne village on the Little Bighorn, was a surprise to many there. Some sources say Crazy Horse did not spring into the fray immediately. Instead he took time to paint himself and possibly his horse. After “making medicine” according to his usual ritual, he then led a large contingent of warriors on a route that cut off any advance or retreat by Custer’s troops.

After the United States regrouped following the Little Bighorn, it pursued the scattered tribes relentlessly. Crazy Horse came to aid at least one camp under attack, and at Wolf Mountain he attacked his pursuer, Colonel Nelson A. Miles. He was among the last Lakota leaders to surrender and move to a reservation.

Crazy Horse’s death will be written about in future posts. The account is tragic and enshrouded in mystery. In his life, Crazy Horse was a quiet, sometimes solitary introvert. It is fitting that his final resting place is enigmatic too.