Turn the Stars Upside Down: The Last Days and Tragic Death of Crazy Horse

by Terry C. Johnston

  The interpreter’s eyes widened as he blinked in disbelief. Garnett stammered as he attempted to explain what the Sioux was saying. “This one, He Dog, he says Crazy Horse never owned a war bonnet. Never wore one in a fight. So he never had a bonnet in his life. But his good friend and … the one who fought beside him always, He Dog … he will now give you his war bonnet.”

  “This is yours, He Dog?” Clark asked breathlessly, staring down at the mass of golden eagle feathers arrayed across the Indian’s hands.

  The Sioux leader nodded. Beside him, Crazy Horse’s face did not betray any emotion.

  “I thank you,” Clark replied as he took the bonnet from the hard-boned, dark-skinned warrior, running his fingers down the length of a glossy feather, all of them tipped with a white fluff and draped with several long strands of what appeared to be the coarse hair from a horse’s tail. “And I thank Crazy Horse too.” He looked the war chief in the eye, holding the man’s gaze as he said, “If He Dog presents me this gift on behalf of his friend, I thank you both.”

  As Garnett interpreted those words into Sioux, He Dog took the mass of feathers from the white man’s hands, shook the bonnet gently to loosen each one into its fullest glory, then spread open the skullcap and raised it, holding the bonnet beside Clark’s head.

  “Your hat, Lieutenant,” the interpreter whispered impatiently. “Your hat!”

  “Oh—yes,” Clark said self-consciously, his heart leaping to his throat. Wide-eyed, he tore off the wide-brimmed hat and watched as He Dog carefully set the magnificent bonnet down on his closely cropped hair. He was sure his chest was thumping loud enough that all these chiefs were sure to hear.

  He Dog said something to Crazy Horse. The war chief nodded, murmuring a few quiet words, almost shyly, as he looked away.

  “What did he say?” the lieutenant asked.

  Garnett gaped, his eyes twinkling as he pointed to the hat suspended in Clark’s hand. “He Dog suggested they call you the White Hat, and Crazy Horse thought it was a good name for you.”

  “White Hat?” Clark responded.

  “It’s a good thing,” Garnett observed. “They give you a name like this, means you’re a person to ’em.”

  When He Dog turned to the young warriors behind them again, Clark brushed the feathers on the bonnet nestled upon his head. Without ceremony or warning, He Dog raised the tail of his war shirt and tugged it over his head, yanking one arm free at a time. Shaking it a moment so the long fringes and scalplocks hung just so as he held it out between them, He Dog uttered a few words.

  Garnett interpreted, “‘Soldier chief, I give you my own shirt. My friend, Crazy Horse, he gave his over to Red Cloud a few days ago, so he doesn’t have a war shirt of his own to give you. Take mine as a token for our surrender.’”

  “Surrender?” Clark asked, taking the shirt into his trembling hands.

  The half-breed’s head bobbed. “The bonnet, and this shirt. These things are given to you in surrender.”

  Clark whispered from the corner of his mouth, “So when Crazy Horse gave his shirt to Red Cloud, he surrendered to him and his agency?”

  Garnett nodded. “That’s their custom.”

  Just then another young warrior approached the headmen, carrying a long, narrow case made of soft leather brightly decorated with a profusion of beadwork and quill-wrapped fringes that ran its entire length. He Dog promptly unknotted the thongs at one end and pulled out the carved stem of a pipe. To this he quickly attached a redstone bowl; then he held it out to Clark across both outstretched hands.

  “Says he makes their surrender to you, White Hat,” Garnett croaked, as if his throat had suddenly gone dry. “F-for Crazy Horse.”

  “This is He Dog’s too?” the lieutenant prodded.

  He Dog nodded.

  Quickly pulling the shirt over his blue tunic, then replacing the bonnet on his head, Clark swallowed hard and took careful hold of the long pipe in both hands. “It will be a good thing for your people,” he said, then waited while Garnett caught up with his translation. “This surrender you are making here to me. For your women, and your children. Good that the soldiers will no longer have to chase your villages. Good that you can come here to live in peace where the Grandfather in Washington makes a home for his Sioux children.”

  Then Clark was overwhelmed with the urge to offer a prayer of his very own. Closing his eyes, he raised the pipe and his face to the sky, saying, “Almighty God, have mercy on these people who surrender themselves to me today. Have mercy on us all. This day we are forging a peace that will last forever. All our wars and bloodshed has come to an end. We are digging a hole where we can bury all that has happened between our peoples. From this day forward, we will live in a peaceful way. I pray this in the name of God.”

  When the lieutenant had finished, He Dog responded, “If you are truly earnest in what you say, I want you to smoke this pipe with us now.”

  From a small beaded pouch the Sioux leader quickly loaded tobacco into the redstone bowl, and lit it from a smoldering ember one of the young men brought forward, held in a horn container. After Crazy Horse and his headmen had smoked, He Dog returned the pipe to the young officer. “Do as I did. Rub the smoke over your limbs to show that you mean what you prayed.”

  As he exhaled each mouthful of the strong tobacco, Clark captured the smoke in his hand and rubbed a little here, a little there, over his body.

  “You keep the pipe,” He Dog reminded when the lieutenant was done. “And this bag of tobacco too. Hold them tight. For they are a symbol of the peace we made here today.”

  “I am very pleased,” Clark said, taking a step back so that he stood beside his interpreter once more.

  “They are ready to follow you now,” Garnett said quietly after He Dog spoke the words.

  “Very well,” Clark said, his heart buoyant. “We have pledged between the two of us that there will be no more bloodshed, and that we will cover up all the bad blood that has been between us.”

  Agreeing, He Dog spoke for Crazy Horse, saying through Garnett, “We will return to you all the soldier rifles we have. They belong to you. The Grandfather made them for us to fight each other. But we will fight no more.”

  “This is good,” Clark replied. “For us to be at peace.”

  “And we will give you all our horses,” He Dog continued. “Red Cloud told us we must give you our guns and our horses. Just as they have always done, our old people and our children can take care of our animals if you want them too.”

  “My soldiers will see to the horses you will turn over to me,” the lieutenant explained. “Some of those horses I will give back to you, but I will keep the guns so there will never be any fighting again.”

  What he had worked so hard to attain over the last few months appeared to be dropping into his lap.

  For so long it had appeared Spotted Tail would get the glory of bringing in the famous Crazy Horse, instead of that honor going to Red Cloud, the chief in whom Lieutenant William Philo Clark had placed all his support. Red Cloud had to win, had to be the one to bring about the surrender. Now Clark could persuade Crook to place Red Cloud as chief over all the Sioux. Even over Spotted Tail. Highest among the chiefs. That meant immense prestige, not to mention immense power. Rations were distributed through the chiefs. The man who controlled those would be in an unequaled position of authority. On behalf of General George Crook, Spotted Tail had convinced Crazy Horse he should not go north to surrender to Colonel Nelson A. Miles. And in the last few days Clark and Red Cloud had whisked Crazy Horse out from under the noses of Spotted Tail and General Crook.

  The lieutenant and the old chief both were men who understood how ambition and the hunger for power motivated the other. Clark sensed that their alliance had only begun to realize all that they might accomplish together.

  “Follow me,” Clark said as he beckoned toward his horse, staring down at the war shirt he wore, and that pipe across his left arm. He looked up, into the eyes of Crazy Hor
se. “Follow me to the agency … and your new life.”

  * * *

  Ta’sunke Witko!

  He immediately turned at the whisper, every bit as quickly realizing he hadn’t been summoned by any tongue. Instead, he had heard his name spoken inside his head.

  “I am listening,” he whispered as his old friends He Dog and Little Big Man rode up on either side of him, their ponies prancing sideways as they were restrained, commanded to move more slowly than the animals would have liked, what with all the excitement heavy in the air.

  Look at that old chief now—how he stands so haughty, staring at you so. Do you remember how he came to you not so long ago, almost as a beggar?

  “Red Cloud?”

  Yes—how he came with his gifts of the white man’s agency food, a few thin soldier blankets too.

  Crazy Horse sighed deeply, almost as if these were the last minutes he might use to fill his lungs, now that they had just come in sight of the agency buildings. “Before he came out to meet us on the prairie, I hadn’t seen him for … many, many winters.”

  Not since he turned himself over to the white man, the way a bride gives herself to her husband on their wedding night.

  For some time Crazy Horse rode on at the head of that slow procession, watching the scramble of numberless dark figures far, far ahead among the buildings, or those out among those crowded circles of smoke-blackened cones clustered both east and south of the white man’s wooden lodges. Deep in his marrow, he knew Red Cloud’s Bad Faces were screaming his name as they scurried to make ready this grand entrance to the old chief’s agency.

  “We were once the best of friends,” he said to his spirit guardian.

  Do you know what happened, Ta’sunke Witko?

  For a moment he pondered that as the crowds gathered, swelling there in the distance—become a wildly cheering throng. Eventually he admitted there was but one answer to his sicun’s question.

  “Red Cloud … he gave up. Maybe he got tired—”

  NO! He was seduced by the white man’s shiny objects. By the white man’s promise of power, prestige, and wealth. Better it was to be a big chief over a captive people, over those loafers held prisoner on this small island in the middle of a white ocean … than to keep his heart free.

  “Yes, I see. After we drove the soldiers out of our old hunting grounds, Red Cloud was no longer a fighter, as he had been in the old days. While his feet carried him south, toward the white man and this reservation … mine stayed on to protect the northern country.”

  I want you to recall what Red Cloud asked you that night he and his agency scouts found your village already making your way south. Do you remember what question he asked you that made you angry enough that you no longer wanted to speak to your old friend?

  “He sat there so smug, asking me why I was so selfish—why I had brought down so much sadness and tribulation upon the heads of my people.”

  Do you think he meant you had brought trouble down upon all the Oglala?

  “Yes. Red Cloud made it plain he and his kind blamed me for staying out so long, for fighting the white man and his soldiers so hard, for making things so tough on his agency loafers.”

  And now?

  “Now … Red Cloud warns, we who stayed out so long, we who tried to remain free, will ultimately suffer the most,” Crazy Horse whispered under his breath, so that those two close friends could not hear his darkest, saddest admission. “But you alone see what lies within my heart, Sicun. So you know what worries me more than everything else: to think that what I did for so long to protect my people … will in the end make this surrender even harder on them.”

  Crazy Horse could not begin to count them all, as their numbers swelled there along the road angling around the end of those pale bluffs dotted with tufts of a bright, spring green. The aromatic air was strong in his face, powerful in his nostrils. Perhaps the winds would blow every bit as wild and free here as they had up north on the Shifting Sands River,6 in the valley of the Buffalo Tongue,7 and Red Flower Creek,8 or high among the bluffs above the Greasy Grass.9

  With a sudden squirt of excitement flushing through him, Crazy Horse turned and looked back over all those hundreds following him—wondering if he should feel ashamed for what he had done to bring them here. Once more he looked ahead at those who were crowding along the road, their numbers swelling in a liquid flow washing toward him as Red Cloud’s people clambered to have themselves a look at these Northern People. It was for his women and children he was coming in. Not for his fighting men, and not for him. There was no glory in surrender. No matter how much Red Cloud had tried to justify it days ago. No matter how the White Hat had talked slick and oily at their meeting on the prairie that morning. No matter … how Crazy Horse had tried to make himself believe it.

  But he was man enough to do what was best for his people. Even though he would no longer be a leader here at Red Cloud’s agency, Crazy Horse would see himself through this one last act of a righteous man.

  “Brave hearts and fighters to the front!” had been his call so many, many times before as he led the hundreds into battle against the soldiers. “Cowards and those with knees of water to the rear! Hoka-hey! This is a good day to die!”

  Brave hearts to the front, he thought again now, realizing a little of him was indeed dying at this very moment.

  “Ta’sunke Witko!” the shouts washed over him in growing, towering waves of ear-numbing adulation. “Ta’sunke Witko!”

  Feeling a hand on his bare arm, Crazy Horse looked down, finding that He Dog had reached out to touch him as they rode toward the cheering, chanting, trilling thousands.

  “These agency people—how they call out your name!” He Dog cried loud as he could over the deafening din of voices.

  Of a sudden, those headmen and warrior society leaders riding behind them began to sing, some raising their strong-heart songs, others the Oglala flag song, and the rest their own powerful medicine songs as they neared the waiting throng that lined each side of the agency road like a long, throbbing gauntlet. Children darted in and out through the legs of the adults. Dogs chased back and forth, raising their shrill throats in the tumult. Women ulued their tongues in the triumph call, and the cheeks of the old men grew moist with tears as they saw him come in sight.

  “He Dog is right!” Little Big Man agreed at his side. “These are your people, Crazy Horse!”

  “No,” he answered with a shake of his head, a little afraid of what Red Cloud and his friends were thinking now as they watched their people making such a triumphant fuss over him. “Those are not my people. No, my people,” and he turned to glance behind him at the neat military rows of warriors arrayed behind the headmen, at the long scattered clutter of half-starved women and children, old ones, and their weary, gaunt travois horses, an immense, snaking procession that covered more than two miles of prairie behind him, “… those are my people. The ones who stayed out with me to wait for the ponies to grow fat on the spring grass, stayed out with me to watch their ponies grow lean beneath the wolfish winds of winter. My people stayed out and fought … until we could fight no more.”

  Then Crazy Horse looked hard at Little Big Man, and gestured at the immense, surging throng that pressed in around them on all sides, throwing themselves at Crazy Horse’s feet, slowing their entrance to the agency grounds. “These people … they are Red Cloud’s—and they are the white man’s people too. These Indians may be Lakota, may even be Oglala … but they will never be mine.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  May 6, 1877

  INDIAN AFFAIRS.

  We have good reason to state that the “backbone” of the Indian War is broken and that the operations of Generals Crook and Miles have resulted in an unconditional surrender of the Sioux, and they will be removed to a reservation early in the summer. The details of the surrender of

  CRAZY HORSE’S BAND,

  which took place May 6, at Camp Robinson, are given by the Herald telegram as follows: Lieut.
Clark, of General Crook’s staff, met the party about seven miles north of the agency and was presented to Crazy Horse by Red Cloud … the village resumed its march for the agency, arriving at two o’clock in the afternoon … The lodges were soon put up, and the work of counting the Indians and taking away their guns commenced … The animals surrendered number between 2,300 and 2,500 and are all in very good order … The lodges are not in good condition; many are badly worn and some quite useless. Crazy Horse is very taciturn, and has the reputation of never saying anything. His face is very dogged and resolute, bearing out the impression that he is a stranger to fear … Many of Crazy Horse’s band have never been on an agency until the present movement. The guns turned in include the latest patterns of breech-loading arms of precision, but the Winchester was apparently the favorite. Of these Crazy Horse himself turned in three and Little Hawk two.

  —ARMY AND NAVY JOURNAL

  12 May 1877

  “This isn’t a surrender!” growled Captain James Kennington, as he stared through his binoculars at the approaching procession. “It’s turned into a goddamned triumphant march!”

  At his elbow that Sunday stood Lieutenant William P. Clark, who had already grumbled much the same sentiment as the Camp Robinson officer corps watched how every man, woman, and child from the nearby agency were turning out for Crazy Horse’s entrance to the agency, which, together with the nearby post, sat in a stunning natural amphitheater, the Red Cloud bluffs behind them. He supposed it was too much for him to have hoped that it would have been a quiet arrival of the Northern bands, but Clark figured this had to frost Red Cloud right down to his toes to witness the adulation being heaped on his one-time protégé, a war leader who had only recently seen the writing on the wall.

  “I’ll wager everything will turn out fine,” suggested Lieutenant Henry L. Lemley of the Third Cavalry. “Now that he’s here and securely under our thumbs.”

  Kennington sighed with relief, “At least Crook got the job done without another bone-grinding campaign, gentlemen. Last winter Congress mandated we drop the strength of our frontier army by twenty-five hundred men come the first of July. But we got Crazy Horse to surrender before the deadline.”