Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (58 page)

But for all his nobility of character and role, Sitting Bull was very human. So, of course, was Crazy Horse, and the two men struck up a fast friendship in the period of 1870-72, when Crazy Horse began to drift northward and come into closer contact with the wilder Sioux tribes, especially the Hunkpapas. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse drew together, probably, because of their mutual vow to resist any change in their way of life, whatever the cost, for as long as possible To the Sioux, and increasingly to the whites, Sitting Bull (then in his late thirties) and Crazy Horse (seven or so years younger) symbolized a policy of bitter Indian resistance to white encroachment on Sioux land. Further, each man was ambitious, anxious to occupy
first place in the minds of the people. Most of all, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were proud to be Sioux and prouder still to be free.
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Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull fought together for the first time in the summer of 1872. The Northern Pacific Railroad had pushed as far west as the Missouri River, the town of Bismarck springing up on the east bank at the terminus point of the line. Surveyors pushed farther westward, along the valley of the Yellowstone in eastern Montana. They were protected by a strong military escort, provided by Sherman, who believed that the completion of the Northern Pacific would seal the doom of the hostile Sioux. With the Union Pacific to the south of their territory and the Northern Pacific along the Yellowstone, the Sioux would be trapped between two lines of settlement, their buffalo eliminated, and they would either have to come into the agencies or starve. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse saw the threat clearly and were determined to resist.
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By August 1872 Major E. M. Baker of the 2nd Cavalry, with a mixed force of four hundred infantry and cavalry, had pushed up the Yellowstone from its mouth in western North Dakota. Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and most of the Sioux hostiles (Oglalas, Miniconjous, Hunkpapas, Sans Arcs, and Blackfeet) were camped near the mouth of the Powder River in eastern Montana. When Indian hunting parties reported that the soldiers were moving southwest in the Yellowstone Valley, the Indians rode out to meet them. At daybreak, August 14, 1872, they discovered the soldiers’ camp at the mouth of Arrow Creek, northeast of the mouth of the Tongue. Crazy Horse had wanted to lay a careful plan for an attack, but the white man’s beef and horse herd were too tempting for the young warriors to resist, and a few of them rode down on the camp, whooping and hollering, cutting out cattle and horses. The soldiers started firing. Crazy Horse, angry, advised everyone to pull back—the soldiers had carbines and plenty of ammunition, so nothing could be accomplished now that they knew of the Indians’ presence.

But the northern Sioux had only limited experience with white soldiers and they took foolish chances. Plenty Lice charged them on foot and was cut down. Two men who had joined him were wounded. The Indians fell back, but they were not ready to give up. Long Holy, a Miniconjou medicine man with a strong vision, had recently organized an order of seven young men and, following the instructions he had received in his vision, he had made them bulletproof. (In fact, he had wounded several of his young men during a test, but the bullets had not gone through, the reason undoubtedly being that the shells were underloaded. Indians tried to stretch what
powder they had and consistently cheated on the powder load. Many a white soldier who was hit by gunfire in a vital spot nevertheless lived through these wars because of that Indian practice.)

Long Holy decided that Arrow Creek was an ideal place to display his power. Stanley Vestal, Sitting Bull’s biographer, relates the story. Repeating the bulletproofing ceremony, Long Holy announced that he and his young men were going to circle the soldiers’ position four times on their ponies. After that they would charge, the entire hostile force charging with them. So it was done, the bulletproof warriors riding at top speed around the whites, singing the song Long Holy had taught them. But one by one the circling warriors cried out, “I am hit!” or “I am shot!” By the time they finished the second go-round, four of the bulletproof seven were wounded.

As they began their third circle, Sitting Bull galloped out onto the prairie between the lines. He yelled at Long Holy and his young men, “Wait! Stop! Turn back! Too many young men are being wounded! That’s enough!” Long Holy protested. No one had yet been killed and only one of the bullets had gone through a warrior (Leading-Him had been shot in the neck, below the chin, and the bullet had passed clear through him). “I brought these men here to
fight,”
Long Holy told Sitting Bull. “But of course, if they
want
to quit, they can.” Sitting Bull paid no attention to Long Holy; he kept telling the young men to come back, and they did.

For the next couple of hours there was a long-range fight—“Just shooting,” as the Indians put it—with no casualties. Then Crazy Horse rode between the lines, slowly, being careful to stay out of effective range of the bullets. He hoped to draw out some white soldiers to fight, but he also wanted to demonstrate his courage to these northern relatives. Long Holy, meanwhile, kept complaining about Sitting Bull’s interference. He said that Sitting Bull was getting “mouthy.”

By midmorning, Sitting Bull had had enough. He couldn’t listen to Long Holy’s complaining any more and he was jealous of all the attention Crazy Horse was getting. It was time to show his friends who was the bravest of all. He took his tobacco pouch and long-stemmed pipe and walked coolly out in front of the Indian line, as nonchalant as if he were taking his evening constitutional. He strolled toward the soldiers and sat down on the grass one hundred yards in front of the Indian line, in the middle of the open prairie at the extreme range of the soldiers’ bullets. He took out his flint and steel, loaded his pipe, struck fire, lit the pipe, and began to puff away in his usual leisurely fashion. Turning his head toward his
astonished companions, he called out, “Any Indians who wish to smoke with me, come on!”

It was a show-off stunt, of the type that led Frank Grouard to say, “No man in the Sioux nation was braver than Sitting Bull.” But show-off or not, it was exactly the kind of demonstration that the Indians found most impressive. White Bull, Gets-the-Best-of-Them, and two visiting Cheyennes could not resist the dare. They walked forward and sat down in a row. Sitting Bull was calmly puffing away. He handed the pipe to White Bull, who puffed, then passed it along. White Bull later told Stanley Vestal, “We others wasted no time. Our hearts beat rapidly, and we smoked as fast as we could. All around us the bullets were kicking up the dust, and we could hear the bullets whining overhead. But Sitting Bull was not afraid. He just sat there quietly, looking around as if he were at home in his tent, and smoked peacefully.”

It just beat everything. Not one of those Indians had ever seen a braver stunt. After the pipe was finished, Sitting Bull got out his little sharp stick that he used for cleaning, cleared the bowl of ashes, ran the stick through the stem, then carefully put the pipe and stick back into their pouch. Stretching, he rose slowly and sauntered back to the Indian line, White Bull and the other three running ahead of him. Gets-the-Best-of-Them was so excited that he forgot his arrows and White Bull had to run back after them.

It was then about noon and everyone was talking excitedly of Sitting Bull’s bravery. Sitting Bull got his horse and mounted up, calling out, “That’s enough! We must stop! That’s enough!” But Crazy Horse could not ignore the challenge; he too had to demonstrate his courage. So he called out to White Bull, “Let’s make one more circle toward the soldier line.” White Bull took up the dare and away they charged. All four hundred white soldiers fired at them, filling the air with a constant stream of bullets. Finally one of the bullets hit Crazy Horse’s pony and it fell dead on the spot, but by then Crazy Horse was nearly back to the Indian line and he jumped to his feet and ran to safety afoot. White Bull and his horse were untouched. The Indians withdrew.
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It had been a show of force, a warning to the whites and not much more. Fortunately for the Indians, the white surveyors had gone about as far west as they wanted to that summer, and shortly after the fight the soldiers turned back, heading east, giving the Indians the impression they had won a significant victory.

It was evidently in that same summer of 1872 that Crazy Horse got married. The evidence indicates that it was a marriage of convenience
arranged for him by his friends, especially He Dog. Her name was Black Shawl and she was the sister of Red Feather, a strong warrior and a friend of Crazy Horse. In 1930 Eleanor Hinman asked Red Feather if he could tell her anything about the marriage of Crazy Horse and Black Shawl. “All I can say about that,” Red Feather replied, “is that both Crazy Horse and my sister stayed single much longer than is usual among our people.”
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Black Shawl was evidently in her late twenties. What seems to have happened is that He Dog, Red Feather, and others who fought with Crazy Horse decided that he needed a wife. He had recently suffered three grievous blows—the death of Hump, the death of Little Hawk, and the loss of Black Buffalo Woman—and may have been dangerously depressed. Perhaps a wife in his tipi, with the laughter of children soon to come, would cheer him up. So it was arranged.
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The marriage was a success. Black Shawl and Crazy Horse stayed together for the rest of their lives. Her mother came to live in the tipi, a common practice among the Sioux, so Crazy Horse was well taken care of, with extra moccasins to take along on war parties; a nicely arranged, comfortable tipi; good, well-prepared food to eat; and a warm atmosphere for his private life. Within a year Black Shawl had a baby, a girl, whom Crazy Horse named They-Are-Afraid-of-Her. The scattered bits of evidence about Crazy Horse as a father are more tantalizing than conclusive, but they indicate that he delighted in the role and played for hours on end with his daughter. He was growing older now, had reached his thirties, the age at which men begin to realize that they are not going to live forever, and he seems to have embraced new responsibilities, especially with regard to the youth of the tribe whose future he was fighting so hard to insure.

Whatever his motivation, Crazy Horse became something like a storyteller, gathering the children around him and filling them up with stories about the Sioux heritage. Black Elk, who would later become famous as a holy man and author (
Black Elk Speaks,
edited by John Neihardt) was among those who sat at Crazy Horse’s feet. Crazy Horse also taught the boys of the village all the lessons they had to master in order to live a free life on the Plains—how to make a bow and arrows, how to track game, how to hunt, how to fight. He was still the best hunter among the Oglalas, and he delighted in leading an occasional war party against the Crows, to keep them pinned back on the Bighorns, or against the white soldiers and surveyors on the Yellowstone. Altogether, despite the loss of his best
friend, his brother, and the woman he had loved, the early seventies brought many rewards to Crazy Horse.

In March 1873 Custer gathered the 7th Cavalry at Memphis and began the journey to the far-north country. He had most of the old gang with him, Tom Custer, George Yates, William Cooke, Captain Myles W. Keogh, James Calhoun—and Libbie. His cook, Eliza, had gotten married and left him, so Custer had hired a black couple, Ham and Mary, to accompany him and care for his personal needs. He also brought along cages of mockingbirds and canaries, plus a basketful of puppies.
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The 7th Cavalry was headed for Fort Abraham Lincoln, just down the Missouri from Bismarck. Sherman and Sheridan were encircling the northern Sioux with forts, with five on the Missouri River in North Dakota alone, plus others to the west and south of Sioux territory. The preparations were being made, in other words, for the show-down with the hostiles. Custer’s initial job was to help protect the Northern Pacific Railroad surveyors as they worked their way westward along the Yellowstone. Whether or not the whites had a legal right to cross these Plains is a moot point, as the treaty of 1868 failed to set a northern boundary for the Sioux. The whites said the Yellowstone was the boundary and they planned to build the railroad along the north bank of the river; the Sioux claimed that the Canadian border was the boundary. Custer had ten troops of cavalry under his command, but that was only part of the total expedition, as Sherman wanted a strong column this summer after the events of August 1872. Colonel (Brevet Major General) David S. Stanley led the full expedition, which included 1,500 soldiers and 400 civilians. Stanley had a train of 275 wagons, supplemented by steamboats plying the Missouri and the Yellowstone.
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Stanley was a quiet, competent soldier. He had graduated from West Point in 1852 and had been an Indian fighter on the Plains before the Civil War. He had risen steadily during the war, fighting under Sherman in the Atlanta campaign. Although Sherman blamed some lost opportunities on Stanley’s lack of “dash and energy,” Sherman must have found him steady, since he made Stanley a corps commander, in which capacity he fought with credit to the end of the war.
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Although both Stanley and Custer were successful soldiers, the contrast between them was marked. Stanley was ten years older than Custer, rather quiet and somewhat modest, a man who had a job to do and did it without fuss. He had no stars in his eyes. The contrast
between the two men stands out in boldest relief when one compares their reactions to the conditions encountered on the Yellowstone expedition of 1873.

On June 26, from camp on the Heart River, forty-five miles west of the Missouri, Stanley and Custer wrote letters to their wives. (Libbie had gone to Monroe for the summer as there were no suitable quarters for her at Fort Abe Lincoln). Stanley said they were laid over on account of high water on the Heart. Custer said they were laid over to wait for some railroad engineers. Stanley said it had rained four out of the past six days, sometimes in torrents, and that he was miserable. Custer said, “Our march has been perfectly delightful thus far.” He had never seen better hunting in his life; the antelope were so plentiful that one bunch actually ran through the wagon train. He was hunting constantly, but assured Libbie that he always stayed within sight of the column. He marveled at the unspoiled prairie. Not many white men had passed over this route, the game was as plentiful as it had once been down on the Platte, Republican, and Arkansas rivers, the grass was waist-high and higher, and Custer was altogether thrilled. He took one look and loved that country for the rest of his life.