Crazy Horse

Oglala Lakota leader

• Born: c. 1841–42
• Birthplace: Black Hills (now in South Dakota)
• Died: September 5, 1877
• Place of death: Fort Robinson, Nebraska

Oglala Lakota leader

Among the greatest of the Lakota leaders and remembered for his defiance and military prowess, Crazy Horse led his people in a struggle against the encroachment of the United States government during the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Area of achievement Warfare and conquest

Early Life

Crazy Horse’s Lakota(Sioux) name was Tasunke Witco. Little is known of his early life; even the date of his birth and the identity of his mother are uncertain. He was probably born in a Lakota camp along Rapid Creek in the Black Hills during the winter of 1841–1842. Most scholars believe that his mother was a Brule Lakota, the sister of Spotted Tail, a famous Brule chief. His father, also called Crazy Horse, was a highly respected Oglala Lakota holy man. Tasunke Witco was apparently a curious and solitary child. His hair and his complexion were so fair that he was often mistaken for a captive White child by soldiers and settlers. He was first known as “Light-Haired Boy” and also as “Curly.” At the age of ten, he became the protégé of Hump, a young Minneconjou Lakota warrior.

When he was about twelve years old, Crazy Horse killed his first buffalo and rode a newly captured wild horse; to honor his exploits, his people named him “His Horse Looking.” One event in Crazy Horse’s youth seems to have had a particularly powerful impact on the course of his life. When he was about fourteen, Crazy Horse witnessed the murder of Chief Conquering Bear by the troops of Second Lieutenant J. L. Gratton and the subsequent slaughter of Gratton’s command by the Lakota. Troubled by what he had seen, Crazy Horse went out alone, hobbled his horse, and laid down on a high hill to await a vision. On the third day, weakened by hunger, thirst, and exposure, he had a powerful mystical experience that revealed to him that the world in which humanity lived was only a shadow of the real world.

To enter the real world, one had to dream. When Crazy Horse was in that world, everything seemed to dance or float—his horse danced as if it were wild or crazy. In this first crucial vision, Crazy Horse had seen a warrior mounted on his (Crazy Horse’s) horse; the warrior had no scalps, wore no paint, was naked except for a breech cloth; he had a small, smooth stone behind one ear. Bullets and arrows could not touch him; the rider’s own people crowded around him, trying to stop his dancing horse, but he rode on. The people were lost in a storm; the rider became a part of the storm with a lightning bolt on his cheek and hail spots on his body. The storm faded, and a small red-tailed hawk flew close over the rider; again the people tried to hold the rider back, but still he rode on. By the time he revealed this vision a few years later, Crazy Horse had already gained a reputation for bravery. His father and Chips, another holy man, made him a medicine bundle and gave him a red-tailed hawk feather and a smooth stone to wear.

When Crazy Horse went into battle thereafter, he wore a small lightning streak on his cheek, hail spots on his body, a breech cloth, a small stone, and a single feather; he did not take scalps. He was never seriously wounded in battle. His father, in order to honor his son’s achievements, bestowed his own name, Crazy Horse, upon the young man (he then took the name Worm) and asserted to his people that the Lakota had a new Crazy Horse.

The Gratton incident had one immediate effect other than the vision: It resulted in brutal reprisals by the US Army. On September 3, 1855, shortly after Crazy Horse had experienced the vision, General W. S. Harney attacked the Brule camp in which Crazy Horse was living with Spotted Tail’s people. The soldiers killed more than one hundred Native Americans (most of them women and children), took many prisoners, and captured most of the horses. Crazy Horse escaped injury and capture but was left with an abiding hatred of White settlers. Because the major White settlement of the West did not begin until after the Civil War, Crazy Horse spent his youth living in the traditional ways: moving with the seasons, hunting, and warring with the other Native Americans of the Great Plains.

Life’s Work

The solitary boy grew into a strange man who, according to Black Elk,

would go about the village without noticing people or saying anything.… All the Lakotas (Sioux) liked to dance and sing; but he never joined a dance, and they say nobody heard him sing.… He was a small man among the Lakotas and he was slender and had a thin face and his eyes looked through things and he always seemed to be thinking hard about something. He never wanted many things for himself, and did not have many ponies like a chief. They say that when game was scarce and the people were hungry, he would not eat at all. He was a queer man. Maybe he was always part way into that world of his vision.

Crazy Horse and the Oglala north of the Platte River lived in relative freedom from White settler interference until 1864. From the early 1860’s, however, there was ever-increasing pressure from White settlers and traders on the US government to guarantee the safety of people moving along the Oregon Trail and Santa Fe trail and to open the Bozeman Road that ran through the Lakota country.

The military began preparations early in 1865 to invade the Powder River; General Patrick E. Connor announced that the Native Americans north of the Platte “must be hunted like wolves.” Thus began what came to be known as Red Cloud’s War, named for the Lakota leader who commanded the Lakota and Cheyenne warriors. General Connor’s punitive expedition in 1865 was a failure, as were subsequent efforts to force the free Native Americans to sign a treaty. In 1866, General Henry B. Carrington fortified and opened the Bozeman Road through Lakota territory. By 1868, having been outsmarted, frustrated, and beaten again and again by Red Cloud’s warriors, the United States forces conceded defeat, abandoned the forts, closed the Bozeman Road, and released their claim on the Black Hills and the Powder River areas.

Crazy Horse rose to prominence as a daring and astute leader during the years of Red Cloud’s War. He was chosen by the Oglala leaders to be a “shirt-wearer,” or protector of the people. All the other young men chosen were the sons of chiefs; he alone was selected solely on the basis of his accomplishments. Crazy Horse played a central role in the most famous encounter of this war. On December 21, 1866, exposing himself repeatedly to great danger, he decoyed a troop of eighty-one of Colonel Carrington’s men, commanded by Captain William J. Fetterman, into a trap outside Fort Phil Kearny. All the soldiers were killed.

Red Cloud’s War ended in November 1868, when the chief signed a treaty that acknowledged that the Powder River and Big Horn country were Native American land into which White settlers could not enter without permission. The treaty also indicated that the Native Americans were to live on a reservation on the west side of the Missouri River. Red Cloud and his followers moved onto a reservation, but Crazy Horse and many others refused to sign or to leave their lands for a reservation; Crazy Horse never signed a treaty.

As early as 1870, many White settlers who were driven by reports of gold in the Black Hills began to venture illegally into Native American territory. Surveyors for the Northern Pacific Railroad protected by United States troops also invaded the Black Hills in order to chart the course of a railway. Crazy Horse, who became the war chief of the Oglala after Red Cloud moved onto the reservation, led numerous successful raids against the survey parties and finally drove them from the area. The surveyors returned in 1873; this time they were protected by a formidable body of troops commanded by Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer.

In spite of a series of sharp attacks, Crazy Horse was unable to defeat Custer, and the surveyors finished their task. In 1874, Custer was back in Native American territory; he led an expedition of twelve hundred men purportedly to gather military and scientific information. When he reported that the hills were filled with gold “from the roots on down,” the fate of the Native Americans in the area was sealed.

During the years between the signing of the 1868 treaty and the full-scale invasion of 1876, Crazy Horse apparently fell in love with a Lakota woman named Black Buffalo Woman, but she eventually married another man named No Water. Crazy Horse and Black Buffalo Woman maintained their attachment to each other over a period of years, causing some divisiveness among the Lakota and resulting in the near-fatal shooting of Crazy Horse by No Water. Crazy Horse eventually married an Oglala named Tasina Sapewin (Black Shawl) and they had a daughter together. He named the child They Are Afraid of Her, and when she died a few years later, he was stricken with grief.

Because of the reports concerning the great mineral wealth of the Black Hills, the US government began to try to force all the Native Americans that resided there onto reservations. On February 7, 1876, the War Department ordered General Philip Sheridan to commence operations against the Lakota living off of reservations. The first conflict in this deadly campaign occurred March 17, when General George Crook’s advance column under Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds attacked a camp of Northern Cheyennes and Oglala Lakota who were on their way from the Red Cloud Agency to their hunting grounds. The survivors fled to Crazy Horse’s camp.

Crazy Horse took them in, gave them food and shelter, and promised them that “we are going to fight the white man again.” Crazy Horse’s chance came in June, when a Cheyenne hunting party sighted a column of Bluecoats camped in the valley of the Rosebud River. Crazy Horse had studied the soldiers’ ways of fighting for years, and he was prepared for this battle. General Crook and his pony soldiers were no match for the Lakota and Cheyenne guided by Crazy Horse. Crook retreated under cover of darkness to his base camp on Goose Creek.

After the Battle of Rosebud (June 17), the Native Americans moved west to the valley of the Greasy Grass (Little Bighorn) River. Blackfoot, Hunkpapa, Sans Arc, Minneconjous, Brule, and Oglala Lakota were there, as well as the Cheyenne—perhaps as many as fifteen thousand Native Americans, including five thousand warriors. The soldiers had originally planned a three-pronged campaign to ensnare and destroy the Native Americans. Crook’s withdrawal, however, forced General Alfred Terry to revise the plan. On June 22, he ordered Colonel John Gibbon to go back to the Bighorn River and to march south along it to the Little Bighorn River. Custer and the Seventh Cavalry were to go along the Rosebud parallel to Gibbon and catch the Native Americans in between. General Terry, with the remaining forces, would trail them and provide whatever support was necessary. General Terry expected that Gibbon and Custer would converge and engage the enemy on June 26.

General Custer and his troops arrived on June 25, and Custer elected to attack the Native American encampment without waiting for Gibbon’s column. His rash decision was fatal to him and to the Seventh Cavalry. The Lakota and Cheyenne, led by Crazy Horse and Gall, Sitting Bull’s lieutenant, decisively defeated Custer; more than 250 soldiers were killed.

The Battle of the Little Bighorn is recognized as a great moment in the history of the Lakota, but it also proved to be a pivotal one, for it confirmed the US government’s conviction that in spite of the Treaty of 1868, Native Americans must be either confined to a reservation or annihilated. In the brutal days that were to follow, Crazy Horse emerged as the single most important spiritual and military leader of the Lakota.

The federal government’s response was swift: On August 15, Congress enacted a new law that required the Native Americans to give up all rights to the Powder River country and the Black Hills. Red Cloud and Spotted Tail succumbed to what they took to be inevitable and signed documents acknowledging that they accepted the new law. Sitting Bull and Gall fought against the forces of General Crook and Colonel Nelson Miles during the remainder of 1876 but decided to take their people to Canada in the spring of 1877. However, Crazy Horse resolved to stay on the lands in the sacred Black Hills.

General Crook led an enormous army of infantry, cavalry, and artillery from the south through the Powder River country in pursuit of Crazy Horse, and Colonel Miles led his army from the north, looking for the Oglala war chief. Crazy Horse was forced to move his village from one place to another in order to avoid the Bluecoats. He had little ammunition or food, the winter was bitterly cold, and his people were weary. In December, he approached Colonel Miles’s outpost and sent a small party of chiefs and warriors with a flag of truce to find out what the colonel’s intentions were. The party was attacked as it approached the outpost; only three Lakota survived. Miles’s brutal intentions were made quite clear, and Crazy Horse was forced to flee again.

Colonel Miles caught up with the Lakota on January 8, 1877, at Battle Butte; in spite of his lack of ammunition and the weakened condition of his warriors, Crazy Horse was able to defeat Miles. Crazy Horse and his band escaped through the Wolf Mountains to the familiar country of the Little Powder River. The soldiers decided to cease their military operations until spring, but they redoubled their efforts to persuade the Native Americans to surrender. Numerous emissaries were sent with pack trains of food and gifts to tempt the beleaguered Lakota and Cheyenne into coming in to the security of the agencies.

Many small bands yielded to these entreaties, but Crazy Horse only listened politely and sent the messengers home. His fame and his symbolic value grew daily; the longer he resisted, the more important he became to the thousands of Native Americans now on reservations. When Spotted Tail himself came to entice them to give up, Crazy Horse went off alone into the deep snows of the mountains in order to give his people the freedom to decide their own fate. Most chose to stay with their leader, but Spotted Tail did persuade Big Foot to bring his Minneconjous in when spring came.

In April, General Crook sent Red Cloud to plead with Crazy Horse and to promise him that if he surrendered, the Lakota would be given a reservation in the Powder River country, where they could live and hunt in peace. At last, Crazy Horse gave in; the suffering of his people was so great, the prospects of renewed conflict with Crook and Miles so grim, and the promise of a Powder River reservation so tempting that he led his band to the Red Cloud Agency, arriving in an almost triumphal procession witnessed by thousands on May 5, 1877.

However, Crazy Horse did not like living at the agency, and General Crook did not make good on his promise of a Powder River reservation. Black Shawl died, and Crazy Horse married Nellie Larrabee, the daughter of a trader. The more restive Crazy Horse became, the more concerned the government became, and the more vulnerable the chief was to the plots of his enemies. Wild rumors that Crazy Horse planned to escape or to murder General Crook circulated.

The government officials decided that it would be best to arrest and confine Crazy Horse. On September 4, 1877, eight companies of cavalry and four hundred Native Americans, led by Red Cloud, left Fort Robinson to arrest Crazy Horse and deliver him to the fort. Crazy Horse attempted to flee but was overtaken and agreed to go and talk with Crook. When it became clear to him that he was not being taken to a conference but to prison, Crazy Horse drew his knife and tried to escape. He was restrained by Little Big Man and other followers of Red Cloud, and a US soldier bayoneted him. He died during the early hours of September 5; his father, Worm, was at his side. Crazy Horse’s parents were allowed to take the body; they rode into the hills and buried their son in a place known only to them.

Memorial

Crazy Horse remained a popular figure in American history and as such the construction of a memorial for Crazy Horse, conceived by Oglala Lakota leader Henry Standing Bear and located in the Black Hills of South Dakota, began in 1948. More than 640 feet long and 560 feet high, the memorial features the likeness of Crazy Horse on horseback and pointing to land considered sacred by the Oglala Lakota. The site of the monument was located on private land not far from Mount Rushmore. Funded by private donations, the carving of Crazy Horse's face was completed in 1998, while work on the remainder of the monument continued into the next century.

Further Reading

Ambrose, Stephen E. Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors. New York: Anchor Books, 1996.

Andrist, Ralph K. The Long Death: The Last Days of the Plains Indians. New York: Macmillan, 1964.

Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971.

Connell, Evan S. Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984.

Hinman, Eleanor. “Oglala Sources on the Life of Crazy Horse.” Nebraska History 57, no. 1 (1976).

Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. The Patriot Chiefs: A Chronicle of American Indian Resistance. New York: Viking Press, 1958.

Margaritoff, Marco. “The Long History of the Crazy Horse Memorial, the Unfinished Monument to the Sioux War Hero.” Edited by Erik Hawkins. All That's Interesting, 6 Aug. 2021, allthatsinteresting.com/crazy-horse-memorial. Accessed 28 Apr. 2023.

Marshall, Joseph, III. The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History. New York: Viking Press, 2004.

Neihardt, John G. Black Elk Speaks. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961.

Olson, James C. Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965.

Sajna, Mike. Crazy Horse: The Life Behind the Legend. New York: John Wiley & Sons 2000.

Sandoz, Mari. Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941.

Vaughn, Jesse W. Indian Fights: New Facts on Seven Encounters. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966.