Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (20 page)

Crazy Horse had lived near the whites and knew something of their ways. Custer knew next to nothing about Indians. Crazy Horse had seen combat at first hand, both against the whites and against other Indians. He had killed enemies. Custer had never seen combat and of course had never killed.

Both boys lived in a society that exalted individualism, but in Custer’s culture only the elite males could really practice it, while in Crazy Horse’s village everyone expressed themselves in his or her own way. Custer’s society was so complex that there was a wide scope available for self-expression in work, at least for the men, who had a variety of occupations to choose from. Within that scope,
however, there were rather narrow restrictions on how a man could act, be he a lawyer, doctor, warrior, common laborer, or whatever, and there was societal pressure pushing men toward certain jobs. Crazy Horse’s society offered only a limited number of occupational options, but within those narrow confines a man was free to make his own choices and act as he pleased. Custer’s society was strictly ordered in terms of functions—nearly every man had someone telling him what to do. Although there was some freedom of movement within the hierarchy—enough to allow a blacksmith’s son like Custer to become a cadet at the elite Military Academy—the fact that there were bosses and those who were bossed never changed. Crazy Horse’s society was, essentially, bossless—no man could tell another what to do.

Custer was disciplined. Crazy Horse was not. On innumerable occasions Custer forced himself to do something he did not want to do, but which his society required him to perform. He accepted orders. When he was told he had to study, he studied; when he was told to march, he marched; when he was required to keep his uniform and his room neat and tidy, he kept them neat and tidy. He never liked it, but he knew that if he did not do as he was told he would be a failure. Crazy Horse did as he wished. When he felt like seeking a vision, he sought one, ignoring tribal tradition. When he wanted to live with the Cheyennes, he did, even if his services were required by the Oglalas. He ate when it pleased him to do so, not according to a clock, and he slept when he was tired. He neither took nor gave orders.

Because it was disciplined, Custer’s culture was infinitely more productive than Crazy Horse’s, better able to get things done. Custer’s people could act in concert for a common objective, while Crazy Horse’s could not.

Custer’s society was specialized. Thus, despite his range of choices, once Custer settled into an occupation, he knew relatively little about what other men in his society did for their daily bread. After becoming a soldier, Custer knew almost nothing about medicine or law or manufacturing. He never really understood how his society worked. Crazy Horse knew how to do everything required to make his society function. He could put up a tipi, kill buffalo, skin animals, cook, make war, treat injuries or illness, and so on. Put Crazy Horse down naked and alone on the Great Plains and within a month he would have a full set of weapons, shelter, stocks of food, and be in good shape to face the future.

Custer’s culture was inventive and progressive. Never satisfied with
the present, it lived for the future, embracing whatever was new. It had an almost manic desire to reach out and overwhelm nature, to force it to submit, to exploit it. When Custer looked on a virgin forest, he generalized or abstracted. He envisioned sawmills, planks rolling out of them, houses being built all across the country, and on the land itself small farms, cleared of trees, carefully cultivated by a happy yeoman. Crazy Horse saw the trees as they were at that moment, perhaps noting an immediate use for the saplings as lodge or travois poles, but otherwise casting a practiced eye over the scene to calculate what animals lived where in that particular forest.

Living for the future almost had the effect of making Custer’s society live
in
the future, while Crazy Horse, caring only for the present, lived in it. Custer believed in progress, in the doctrine that things were always getting better, most notably gadgets, such as new rifles, or trains, or the telegraph. Crazy Horse’s world view was circular, while Custer’s was linear. Custer saw history sequentially—that is, events marched forward in a recognizable order, with cause and effect being known and understood, the whole leading ever onward and upward.

Crazy Horse, on the other hand, saw history as an integral part of the present, unknown as cause and effect or in any sequential way, but nevertheless incorporated into his daily life. Much of what Crazy Horse did he did because that was the way “it has always been done.” Crazy Horse’s myths had no time sequence to them, except obviously for the genesis stories; rather, the myths explained to him
why
things were done a certain way, rather than
when
a certain event happened. For all Crazy Horse knew, it could have happened ten or a thousand years before his birth. That did not matter; what mattered was that the myth lived in the present.

Custer was taught countless details about the past. He had dead heroes, while Crazy Horse had only live ones. Custer knew of innumerable battles and of the individuals involved in them, from the time of the Mexican War back to the Peloponnesian Wars. Crazy Horse knew nothing about any individuals from the Sioux past, not even their names, and he was hardly aware of what life had been like when his people lived without horses on the Minnesota meadows —which was less than seventy years before his birth. For Custer, what had happened was known and past. For Crazy Horse, what had happened was unknown in detail but present in spirit.

Custer’s fantasy life was terribly constricted, while Crazy Horse’s was boundless. Custer could imagine only what he felt, saw, touched, understood. Crazy Horse could imagine almost anything. Custer’s
culture taught him to be practical; Crazy Horse’s culture encouraged him to dream. Custer spent his teen-age years trying to do something, to be somebody; Crazy Horse spent his teen-age years seeking a vision. Custer thought of animals only in terms of their usefulness, as objects; Crazy Horse thought of animals as a different, not distinct, form of life, to whom he was closely connected and with whom he could get in touch via the vision. Custer could not imagine talking to animals or plants; Crazy Horse could not imagine
not
communicating with all forms of life. Custer dismissed the non-Christian supernatural, while Crazy Horse embraced it.

Crazy Horse believed that he was connected to all that there was, the earth, the sky, the sun and moon, the plants and animals, even the insects—everything was part of
Wakan Tanka,
the Great Spirit. Custer saw himself as distinct from, and superior to, everything— most of all, the animals and even some of his fellow human beings, such as blacks or Indians (Crazy Horse also saw himself as distinct from, and even superior to, human beings who were not Sioux; his society was as willing as Custer’s to kill or exploit outsiders).

Burial practices illustrated the two men’s different outlooks. Custer believed a body should be buried in a long-lasting metal casket, thus removing the body from the ecological system by preventing bacteria from breaking it down and feeding it back into the soil. Crazy Horse believed in wrapping a body inside a buffalo robe and placing it on a scaffold on an open hillside, where the elements could break it down in a year or two. It would then come up again as buffalo grass, to be eaten by the buffalo, which would then be eaten by the Sioux, completing the circle.

Custer’s religion was constricting. Everything was sharply defined, from God to the smallest sin, and all action, belief, and thoughts were described as good or evil. Like other Christians, Custer was expected to adhere to a strict code of behavior and belief, with the emphasis on work, faith, discipline, and morality. At West Point, he wrote extensive lists of what was good and what was bad, what was required and what was forbidden. As a bearer of the truth, it was his duty to carry that truth to others. Custer was always being measured, and was measuring himself, against a fixed and impersonal standard. He believed he had to do what was required of him or he would be punished. He embraced the concept of a stern male God and of God’s authority. He believed that his soul was immortal and that it belonged to God. If he lived up to the standard, God would reward him in an afterlife. His religion required him to be other than, and better than, his instincts.

Crazy Horse’s religion was all-embracing.
Wakan Tanka
was the All, the One, the Great Mystery, but not in any recognizable form, for
Wakan Tanka
was
in
everything,
of
everything. The Sioux believed in gods and goddesses, but they were vague, shadowy figures, never sharply defined as to appearance or authority. The gods laid no requirement as to action or belief on the Sioux beyond such ritual observances as the Sun Dance. All that existed was precious in Crazy Horse’s religion—whatever a man did or thought was good, was
wakan,
so long as he obeyed his own inner voice, for that too was
wakan.
The concept of an afterlife was absent; instead, the Sioux emphasized the cycle of life on this earth.

Custer had to account for his actions and beliefs to his mortal superiors and to God. Crazy Horse did not have to answer to anyone for his actions or beliefs, not to other Sioux nor to
Wakan Tanka.
He did have to answer to himself.

The ultimate difference between the two men was their mood. Custer was never satisfied with where he was. He always aimed to go on to the next higher station in his society. He was always in a state of
becoming.
Crazy Horse accepted the situations he found himself in and aimed only to be a brave and respected Sioux warrior, which by the time he was a young adult he had been, was then, and would be. He was in a state of
being.
Custer believed that things could be better than they were. Crazy Horse did not.

Part Two

CHAPTER EIGHT

War and Love Among the Oglalas

“He wanted to be sure he hit what he aimed at.”

He Dog, on Crazy Horse

The years following 1858 were good to the Oglalas. They were relatively free of the white soldiers, who from 1861 to 1865 were busy fighting their own war east of the Mississippi River. The Oglalas, meanwhile, along with other Sioux bands, drove the Shoshonis and Crows from the Powder River country, making that prime buffalo range their own. Those were fat times for the Oglalas, the smell of roasting buffalo ribs rising up from their campfires, plenty of good skins for the lodges, the horse herds growing every year at the expense of the Crows and Shoshonis. War parties went out each summer, giving ambitious young braves opportunities to count coup, steal horses, and win honors. It was glorious warfare, for the most part, exactly suited to the Oglala style. Nearly all the fighting was done in the summer; the Oglalas would set the war aside for the spring and fall buffalo hunts and during the winter, taking it up again only after the Sun Dance in early summer. Losses in battle against the Crows and Shoshonis were minimal, nothing like the number of lives taken when the Oglalas found themselves at war with the white soldiers.

The Oglalas were no longer begging handouts from whites on the Holy Road, no longer drinking themselves into a stupor on the white man’s whiskey, no longer catching the white man’s diseases. They had returned to the old ways, the ways of the people before the Holy Road was opened and Fort Laramie established. Best of all, the Oglalas and their allies were living in what must have been, at that time, the finest hunting country in North America.

These were the years of Crazy Horse’s maturity. During them he experienced a wide range of human emotions—deep satisfaction at providing a fresh-killed elk for a temporarily hungry village; the joy and excitement that came from riding pell-mell into a herd of stampeding
buffalo and shooting down one, two, three, a dozen fat cows for the women to butcher; exaltation at counting coup upon or stealing a few horses from his Indian enemies; anger and helplessness at the violent death of his closest comrades; pleasure and ego enrichment at being selected a leader of the people; and the despair and blackness of heart that engulfs a rejected lover.

Crazy Horse was a free man. He traveled all across the northern Great Plains, visiting other Sioux bands, living with the Cheyennes, staying alone for weeks at a time on the prairie. He never underwent the ordeal of the Sun Dance, but he was one of the best hunters among the Oglalas and the most daredevil of their warriors, so he rose in prestige. He remained quiet and introspective, dressed modestly, gave away the ponies he had stolen from the Crows or the meat he had brought into camp from his solitary hunting trips, but still his exploits became legends, told and retold around the winter campfires.

The mature Crazy Horse spent much of his time in camp, making his bows and arrows, listening to gossip, perhaps contributing a bit of information himself from time to time, smoking his pipe, training his ponies, just sitting in the sun on a warm June day, watching the pretty young maidens and the old squaws at their work. Occasionally he would go to his
akicita
lodge to sing songs or listen to others boast of their brave deeds.