Crazy

 

   It's amazing how easily we get things wrong. Look at the Indian we call Crazy Horse who was killed on this day in Nebraska. His name actually translates as "his horse is crazy, or spirited" or Thasunke Witko in Lakota. His mother called him Curly because he had curly hair like hers.

   What is known for sure is that he was a great warrior. The Lakota were constantly at war with several neighboring tribes, the Crow, Shoshone, Pawnee, Blackfeet, and Arikara among the Plains Indians. Crazy horse was never a chief, but was made a war leader because of his exploits and his generosity to his own tribe.

   All Indian warriors went on spirit quests to learn how they should conduct themselves. In Crazy Horse's vision he went to the world of spirits, the real world behind this one. He was told to dress modestly for battle. He was told is war paint should be a lightening bolt on his cheek, and hailstones on his chest. No war bonnet. If he thought about the spirit world in battle, he could never be harmed by an enemy.

   We know about Crazy Horse's visions thanks to his cousin Black Elk who reported them in a book. Crazy Horse had part of his vision near the base of Black Elk Peak, the high point in South Dakota. Black Elk Peak is in the Black Hills, an area considered sacred by the Lakota, even to this day. It was white incursions here that led to war with the United States, culminating in the Battle of the Little Big Horn on June 22, 1876

   After this Week debacle, the army was relentless in its pursuit of the Lakota and their allies, the Cheyenne. Faced with starvation during the following winter, Crazy Horse and his people turned themselves in at an Indian agency at Fort Robinson in northwest Nebraska.

   Relations between whites and Indians were mostly based on misunderstandings. When General Crook, a man Crazy Horse and his warriors had defeated in a battle the year before, was passing through Fort Robinson, he heard a rumor that Crazy Horse was planning to kill him. He ordered that Crazy horse be locked up. Crazy Horse did not like that idea. There was a struggle outside the guardhouse. Crazy Horse was bayonetted, by a soldier whose name we don't know. He received medical treatment but died of his wound later that night.

   There is only one photograph of Crazy Horse, but scholars agree it's of another Indian. But any photograph will satisfy our curiosity. We don't believe much in visions anymore. We need to see the great man right here in black and white.

 

Reconstructed guardhouse. He wasn't a chief. Oglala only has two ells. Let's learn from our mistakes.