In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse

by Joseph Marshall

  They hurried through the groups of people while avoiding the barking dogs. Light Hair took his little brother by the hand. He had never seen so many people in one place. Men stood in groups together talking. Older boys rode by on horses. Women called out for their children. Others tended to kettles hanging over cooking fires. Smaller children played by the lodges. And everywhere he looked, it seemed there were more horses than people.

  He suddenly felt very small.

  “That was the Council on Horse Creek,” said Grandpa Nyles. “East of here. History calls it the Fort Laramie Treaty Council of 1851. The people came because they were curious about what the white peace talkers wanted. They were told all the Indians were not to bother the people in the wagons on the Oregon Trail. Also because the whites offered gifts. Being asked not to bother those people seemed kind of silly, because it was the wagon people who always started the trouble. Some of them would shoot at Indians. The tribes signed the treaty. But after Light Hair became Crazy Horse, he was here again. Other than that, he stayed away. He didn’t like this place.”

  “Well, why did he come back?” Jimmy wondered.

  “Horses,” replied Grandpa Nyles. “He led a raid. Crazy Horse and several other Lakota warriors swept through here like a sudden wind. They took the Long Knives’ horses. The Long Knives chased them, but they couldn’t catch them.”

  Grandpa Nyles turned and pointed west, beyond a two-story building. “They came from that direction.” Then he pointed toward the other side of the large open space. “Most of the Long Knives’ horses were picketed there. Pawnee scout horses, too.”

  “Pawnee?” Jimmy asked.

  “The Long Knives used them a lot as scouts, against other Indians.”

  “Did they take all the horses from here?”

  “No, I don’t think so. A lot of them, though.”

  Jimmy looked around, imagining Lakota warriors on horseback. He could see them racing across the open area. He could hear the drumlike pounding of hooves.

  “Why did they do that?” he asked his grandfather.

  Grandpa Nyles smiled. “Well, because they could. And because Crazy Horse wanted to annoy the Long Knives.”

  Jimmy smiled broadly. “I think he did that.”

  Grandpa Nyles was smiling as well. “Yeah, he did, for sure. But there was an incident that happened near here, when he was still Light Hair—something that caused the Long Knives to attack Little Thunder’s village.”

  “You mean when Light Hair helped Yellow Woman? What happened?”

  Grandpa Nyles took on his storytelling face again. “Yeah, that was it. Let me tell you what happened.”

  The way it was—1854

  Light Hair and his friend Slow were among the first to see the soldiers coming. The Long Knives were riding in wagons, sitting shoulder to shoulder. Behind the wagons a team of horses pulled a strange-looking object. It looked like a thick, short log, but it was black. A warrior who also saw the Long Knives shouted a warning.

  Light Hair and Slow ran and hid in a chokecherry thicket. They knew the Long Knives were coming because of that skinny cow.

  Several days earlier, a cow had wandered into the village. A cow from those whites called Mormons. The cow had knocked over meat racks and bumped into an old woman. A Mniconju had killed it. He had been visiting in the Sicangu village. The cow had been butchered and the meat given away to old people.

  Then the white man had come, and he wanted his cow back. He had gone to the one in charge of the Long Knives at Fort Laramie and complained. A messenger came from the Long Knives’ fort to the Sicangu village’s headman, Conquering Bear. The old man offered payment—several mules—for the cow. Foolishly, the Mormon wanted his cow, not the mules. One mule was worth more than that skinny cow.

  Conquering Bear had done his best to avoid trouble. Next the Long Knife headman insisted that the man who had killed the cow be put in jail. Conquering Bear refused. So the Long Knives had now come to take the Mniconju.

  The soldiers jumped down from the wagons and formed a line, pointing their rifles toward the village. Conquering Bear and two other men bravely walked toward them. The old man spoke with the soldier in charge. The soldier spoke loudly, angrily.

  Meanwhile, Light Hair and Slow saw warriors gathering in the village. Long Knives—the soldiers—were not to be trusted.

  Conquering Bear offered more mules for the cow. The soldier leader’s name was Lieutenant John Grattan, and he was angry. He demanded that the man who had killed the cow be brought to him. Conquering Bear again refused. When the old man saw there was no use talking, he and his two men turned and walked away.

  The soldier leader shouted, and the soldier guns fired. The big black thing that looked like a log turned out to be a big gun. It was fired at the village. It boomed like thunder. Conquering Bear was one of the first to fall, severely wounded.

  The waiting warriors attacked, charging the Long Knives. Light Hair and Slow watched, too young to join. Warrior guns cracked and boomed; the men swung clubs and thrust lances. The soldiers seemed helpless because the warrior attack was swift. Many soldiers fell, and some ran away. Those fleeing were chased and cut down, except for one. He was sent back to the Long Knives’ fort. The soldier leader, Grattan, had been one of the first to fall.

  Light Hair and Slow watched some of the warriors ride toward the Long Knives’ fort. They heard later that the Long Knives would not come out to fight.

  The badly wounded Conquering Bear was taken to his lodge. There Light Hair’s father and other medicine men treated his wounds. But their efforts could not save the well-liked old man.

  When Conquering Bear died, a man walked through the village shouting the terrible news. Light Hair was very sad when he heard. Without thinking, he found his horse, mounted, and galloped away across the prairie.

  He was angry. He understood now why many Lakota did not trust the white people. They were loud and quick to anger, and eager to shoot their weapons at the Lakota.

  Light Hair rode aimlessly, his thoughts full of the sounds and images he and Slow had witnessed. Sounds of the Long Knife rifles, and the big gun; images of the brief and furious battle, and of soldiers falling.

  He found himself at the base of a hill. Tying his horse to a plum tree, he climbed the hill and took shelter in the shade. Later he took his horse to drink from a small creek nearby. Then he went back up the hill. He could not take his mind off the battle or off the old man who had died. When night came, he fell asleep.

  Light Hair had no food. The next morning he awoke hungry, his stomach growling. So he drank water. Very slowly the day passed. He sat in the shade and walked around the hill. He took his horse to water again. Evening gave way to night once more, and he slept. Sometime in the night, the dream came.

  It was a strange dream. A warrior on a horse rode across a lake. Mountains and storm clouds rose to the west. There was the sound of thunder, and a red-tailed hawk flew above the man and horse. As the horse galloped, it changed color, from black to blue to white and then red. Bullets and arrows flew at the man but did not hit him. Then the horse and rider reached the dry ground, and other men, who looked like the rider, rose out of the earth. They surrounded the horse and pulled the rider down.

  Light Hair could almost feel their hands pulling. Then he awoke. His father and another man were shaking him.

  “Wake up!” they said. “What are you doing here alone?”

  “What happened then?” Jimmy asked, after his grandfather had paused for several long moments.

  “They went home, back to the village,” Grandpa Nyles said. “Light Hair’s dad scolded him for wandering off without telling anyone.”

  “Who was the other man?”

  “High Back Bone, but he was called Hump,” his grandfather replied. “He was Light Hair’s teacher. He taught him how to be a hunter and a warrior. The two of them were friends for life, until Hump was killed in a fight against some Shoshone. He was a strong man and a very good teacher.�
�

  “What about the dream?” Jimmy asked.

  “We all dream when we sleep. Sometimes the dreams don’t mean anything. But Light Hair’s dream had a very strong meaning. He didn’t tell his father until months later. Then his dad and another medicine man told him what it meant.”

  Jimmy was very curious. “What did it mean?”

  Grandpa Nyles smiled and ruffled his grandson’s hair. “That I will tell you later,” he said.

  4

  The Bozeman Trail

  INTERSTATE 25 CUT FROM SOUTH TO NORTH ACROSS Wyoming. From the city of Casper it traced the route of an old road.

  “This interstate pretty much follows an ancient trail,” Grandpa Nyles told Jimmy. “It was marked out by a white man named John Bozeman. So it was called the Bozeman Trail. He marked it out back in 1860 to show the way to gold fields in Montana. Soon other whites came along and used it. Problem was, it went right through Lakota territory.”

  “Our people didn’t like that?” Jimmy ventured.

  “No, they sure didn’t. And there were even older trails here before Bozeman. One was called the Powder River Road. It was used by our people.”

  He lifted a finger and pointed without taking his hands from the steering wheel. “See those mountains over there to the left?” he said. “Those are called the Bighorn Mountains now. Our people called them the Shining Mountains.”

  It was hard not to notice those mountains. They filled the entire western skyline.

  “Why?” Jimmy asked.

  “Because the snow on the peaks shines in the sunlight,” explained his grandfather.

  They turned off Interstate 25 at a sign that said KAYCEE, drove past a convenience store, and eventually turned onto a dirt road. Kaycee was a small town, even smaller than Cold River. They drove through it in less than five minutes. A few miles farther on they came to gullies and low spots.

  Jimmy noticed that the grass was sparse here and the land looked like a desert, no longer like the grass prairies to the east. His grandpa pulled to a stop, and they stepped out of the truck. Everything felt different as well. Perhaps it was the jagged mountains to the west.

  “There was an army post here,” his grandpa said, waving his arm in an arc. “It was called Fort Reno.”

  “Was Crazy Horse here, too?”

  “He sure was. But there was another fort to the north. That’s where the interesting things happened,” said the old man.

  “Then why did we stop here?” Jimmy asked.

  “So you can see what he saw. Smell the sagebrush and feel the same sand under your feet.”

  They walked a ways into the desert. In the distance a small whirlwind swirled behind a rise, raising dust. Jimmy imagined it was a group of Lakota warriors on horseback galloping their horses.

  After a few minutes they walked back to the pickup. Shortly after that they were back on Interstate 25, going north. Just over an hour later they saw a large brown-and-white sign: FORT PHIL KEARNY STATE HISTORIC SITE. They exited, then drove through an underpass and onto a narrow two-lane road. It took them to a turn-off to a gravel road.

  As they approached the historic site, Jimmy saw a wall made of upright logs. It was not that high. Off to the right was the Interpretive Center, according to a sign.

  “What happened here?” Jimmy asked. He already suspected that Crazy Horse had been here. Otherwise they would not be stopping.

  “This is where young Crazy Horse became a war leader,” Grandpa replied as he parked the truck. “He was only in his twenties, unusual for a war leader. It’s one of the reasons Crazy Horse is considered so exceptional.”

  Inside the building were dioramas—three-dimensional displays of the fort’s history. They showed soldiers and Lakota and Northern Cheyenne. A man in a tan uniform approached them.

  “Welcome to Fort Phil Kearny,” he said. “I can try to answer any questions you might have.”

  “Thank you,” said Grandpa Nyles. “We’re Lakota from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. I’m taking my grandson on a tour of Crazy Horse sites.”

  “Ah, I see,” the man replied. “Then you probably know more about Crazy Horse than I do. But let me know if I can help in any way.”

  A half hour later they drove away from the Interpretive Center. On the access highway they turned north and parked at the top of a hill. There the highway ended. Nearby was a tall, upright monument made of stones.

  “That’s about where the battle came to an end,” said Grandpa Nyles.

  “A battle? What battle?”

  “We call it the Battle of the Hundred in the Hands. The whites call it the Fetterman Battle. Some even call it the Fetterman Massacre.”

  “Why?”

  Grandpa Nyles pointed at the monument. “Come on. Let’s look at that plaque.”

  ON THIS FIELD ON THE 21ST DAY OF

  DECEMBER, 1866,

  THREE COMMISSIONED OFFICERS AND

  SEVENTY SIX PRIVATES

  OF THE 18TH U.S. INFANTRY, AND

  OF THE 2ND U.S. CAVALRY, AND

  FOUR CIVILIANS,

  UNDER THE COMMAND OF CAPTAIN BREVET–

  LIEUTENANT COLONEL WILLIAM J. FETTERMAN

  WERE KILLED BY AN OVERWHELMING FORCE OF SIOUX,

  UNDER THE COMMAND OF RED CLOUD.

  THERE WERE NO SURVIVORS.

  “They got it wrong,” Grandpa Nyles said. “There were survivors of this battle: hundreds of Lakota and Northern Cheyenne. And Red Cloud wasn’t involved in it.”

  “But it says Red Cloud was the leader,” Jimmy said, pointing to the plaque.

  “Well, Crazy Horse was the biggest reason the Lakota and Cheyenne won the battle. December twenty-first, 1866, was the start of winter. The temperature that day was thirty degrees below zero.”

  “That’s really cold, Grandpa.”

  “Yeah. When it’s that cold, it’s hard to take a deep breath. Imagine what it’s like to ride a galloping horse.”

  The way it was—December 1866

  Smoke rose into the frigid air from eighteen conical lodges, thin undulating columns rising upward. Footsteps crunched on the snow. One by one a few young Lakota men wearing elk-hide robes ducked into a lodge.

  The lodge was on the west side of the village. The village was one of twenty-three along the Tongue River. This particular lodge was the home of a Lakota medicine man named Worm and his two wives, their daughter, and their two sons. One of the sons was Crazy Horse.

  Worm had been called Crazy Horse. He was given the name by his father, the first Crazy Horse. So when he passed it on to his son Light Hair, he himself took the name Worm.

  For the entire day and into the evening, dozens of young warriors came to talk with Crazy Horse. The elders, the old men leaders, had chosen him for a special task. This was part of a plan to defeat the Long Knives stationed in Fort Kearny on Buffalo Creek. Every warrior wanted to be chosen to help him with that task. But he would choose only a few.

  For several years those Long Knives had been living in Lakota territory. That was against Lakota wishes. Furthermore, the Long Knives were there in violation of their own promises. They had built their fort even though they had promised they would not. All in all, the Long Knives were part of a bad problem for the Lakota.

  That bad problem was because of gold. A long way to the northwest were the goldfields. Hundreds, if not thousands, of whites used the Bozeman Trail to get to the gold. They traveled by foot, on horseback, and in wagons. And the trail ran straight through Lakota territory.

  Two other forts stood along the Bozeman Trail: Fort Reno, to the south, and Fort C. F. Smith, to the north. That made three in all, built to protect the gold seekers from the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne—to protect the invaders against those whose home it was. That made the Lakota and Cheyenne angry.

  What was more, the Long Knives were reluctant to leave their forts. When they did, they did not stay out long. That made it difficult for the Lakota and Cheyenne to engage them in battle. Therefore, they could
not fight them and send them away.

  After many failed attempts to fight the Long Knives, a new plan was made. First, lure them out of the fort. Second, lure them into an ambush. Young Crazy Horse was given the second task. It was a dangerous assignment. If successful, it could mean the defeat of the Long Knives. And, once defeated, they might leave Lakota territory. So every young warrior wanted to be selected to help him.

  Crazy Horse’s part of the overall plan was simple. There was a ridge several miles from the fort. He and his warriors would act like a mother grouse leading a coyote away from her nest. She pretended to be injured. When the coyote came close, she flew away but landed close by. Each time the coyote approached, she flew away again. Doing this, she led the coyote far away from her chicks. Crazy Horse’s task was to decoy the Long Knives. To lead them to the ridge—and to the ambush.

  The chances of success were small, though the plan was good. For that reason, Crazy Horse had been selected to lead. In order to ensure success, the warriors he selected had to be very skilled and very brave. By the time he went to sleep, he knew the warriors he wanted.

  A bitterly cold dawn revealed the landscape. There was already activity in the villages along the Tongue River. Hundreds of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors were on horses and riding north. It was the first day of winter and very, very cold. Every man was bundled in a thick buffalo-hide robe. Many had elk-hide coats beneath that. They also wore elk- or bear-hide mittens on their hands. Just as important, they carried weapons. After all, a battle could occur today.

  No one really wanted a battle. But it was a necessary way to defeat the Long Knives. Every man was afraid. Most would not admit that to anyone but themselves. But part of being a warrior was facing their fears. That was called courage.

  The cold was very intense. Mist billowed from the mouths of men and horses. Warm breath turned into vapor. It took a lot of courage just to be outside in such intense cold. Horses’ hooves crunched sharply on the snow. On dry ground they were a loud clop, clop, clop, clop.

  After they had ridden twenty miles, the plan for the day was put into action. Some five hundred warriors hid on either side of the high, narrow ridge—about half of them in the gullies on the east side and the others on the west. These warriors were the main body of fighters; they would wait in ambush.