Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (74 page)

“So the men rode back to their people,” Mari Sandoz writes, “waiting not far away for the good news of peace. And when Black Shawl saw the face of her man she went silently to strike her lodge for more wandering through the snow, chopping cottonwood for the horses, the men hunting buffalo for the kettle, everybody ready night or day to run from the horse soldiers brought against them by their own people.”

It was a terribly cold winter, the wind howling through Montana, piling up immense drifts. The hunting was poor, the people hungry. A small group of families tried to break away, to go into Red Cloud Agency and surrender. Crazy Horse would not allow it. He called for the
akicita
and had the warriors break up the lodge poles of the runaways and shoot their ponies. The next night, two or three days before New Year’s Eve, more messengers arrived, some from Miles, others from Crook at Red Cloud Agency. They said to come on in and be fed and get warm. Many wanted to go, but Crazy Horse declared that all deserters would be followed and punished. Nevertheless, the next morning some thirteen families started out for the agency. “We got quite a ways,” one of them later recalled, “supposing we had got quite away when all at once Crazy Horse appeared with a good many warriors who shot our horses, took our guns and knives and all our powder, and then told us if we want to go to the whites to go on.” They all turned back.

The whole sad business must have caused Crazy Horse great pain. It was a very un-Indianlike thing for him to do, forcing people to stay with him in a situation of extreme danger (Miles had been seen marching from his fort on the Tongue toward the village). No Sioux had ever done anything remotely like it before, and Crazy Horse wasn’t even a real chief, not like Bull Bear or Old Smoke or Old Man Afraid. His motivation may have been simple—he evidently believed that anyone from his band who went to an agency would be shot, as his peace envoys to Miles had been shot. Further, he couldn’t afford
any deserters, not with Miles coming. The women and children could hardly make it into the agency alone, so they would have to stay where they were, all of them, together. But if the motivation is simple, Crazy Horse’s feelings must have been complex, as, like Custer in Kansas, he forced deserters back onto the firing line.

On New Year’s Day 1877 Miles found Crazy Horse on the Powder River. He attacked at dawn, with infantry and artillery. Crazy Horse fought a rear-guard action while the women packed what they could and fled. Miles followed with bulldog tenacity, attacking again and again through the entire week. Casualties were light, but losses in food and equipment devastating. Crazy Horse’s people were eating their horses now, and some of the children had frozen limbs.

Although Crazy Horse and his two thousand or so Indians, mainly women and children, were capable of staying out on the Powder River through the winter, Miles and his soldiers could not cope with the weather, and after a fight on January 8 Miles called off the campaign. He was convinced that Crazy Horse was finished, that he would surrender in a couple of days or starve. Miles himself had to limp back to the warmth and security of his fort. Crazy Horse found a small buffalo herd and kept going, but he was a defeated man now, and he knew it. He no longer had the heart or the energy to stop deserters—he was tired of killing and running—and one by one little groups broke away and made their way to the agency.

The commanders of the various Army forts, meanwhile, kept sending runners to get Crazy Horse to come in. From the flood of telegrams exchanged between the forts, one might have supposed it was 1865 and that the officers were negotiating over Lee’s surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. Crazy Horse will come in, one would say. Then, Crazy Horse isn’t coming in. He is. He isn’t. On and on it went, generating excitement and tension. A typical Crook-to-Sheridan telegram read: “There is some little difference of opinion here as to whether Crazy Horse will come in or not. I have sent runners to learn positively and to report back here with the least possible delay.” Miles was also sending out runners, asking Crazy Horse to surrender to him on the Yellowstone—there was a tug of war between the two officers for the honor of capturing Crazy Horse.

Sitting Bull, meanwhile, paid a visit to Crazy Horse to urge him to join the Hunkpapas in a flight to Grandmother’s Land—Canada—where the red coats would treat them with kindness and respect and allow them to live the free, wild life. Crazy Horse must have been tempted, but in the end he said no. His people were coughing already and it was too cold in Canada. He told Sitting Bull that he was
staying where he was, in a sheltered valley where there was a little hunting, until spring, when he intended to surrender. Crazy Horse was sure he was safe for the remainder of the winter, because Miles wouldn’t dare venture out in such weather. Sitting Bull said Crazy Horse was a fool and left.

During this winter, Crazy Horse often went out alone, to hunt or to think. The others worried about him. The elder Black Elk, father of the holy man-author, found Crazy Horse one day, alone on a little hill. When Crazy Horse saw the concern in Black Elk’s face, he said: “Uncle, you notice the way I act, but do not worry. There are caves and holes for me to live in, and perhaps out here the powers will help me. The time is short, and I must plan for the good of my people.”

In midwinter, Crook persuaded Spotted Tail to go to Crazy Horse to see what he could do. Crazy Horse, Crook hoped, would listen to Spotted Tail. Crook was so anxious to steal Crazy Horse from Miles that he authorized Spotted Tail to make a series of promises, none of which Crook was in a position to fulfill. Crook said that if Crazy Horse would surrender to him at Camp Robinson on the Red Cloud Agency, Crazy Horse could have his own agency in the Powder River country. Further, Crook would see to it that the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail Indians would not be forced to make the hated and dreaded move to the Missouri. This last point put great pressure on Crazy Horse to surrender and come in, because it linked the fate of the Red Cloud Oglalas and the Spotted Tail Brulés with Crazy Horse’s actions.

Spotted Tail, accompanied by two hundred fifty Brulé warriors, started out for the Powder on February 15, 1877. It was a long and hazardous journey—it is instructive to recall that no Army column, no matter how well equipped, and even if commanded by Custer himself, could possibly have made the trip. Spotted Tail found Touch-the-Clouds and his Miniconjous on the Little Missouri, north of the Black Hills, and they agreed to come in as soon as the weather permitted. Spotted Tail then moved west. He found the Crazy Horse camp on the Powder, but Crazy Horse was out alone on a hunt, whether because he wanted to avoid Spotted Tail or by accident is not clear (Spotted Tail thought he had been deliberately insulted by his nephew). Spotted Tail sent some scouts out to find Crazy Horse, but they could not locate him. Worm, Crazy Horse’s father, meanwhile told Spotted Tail that his son had left a message saying that he shook hands with his uncle through his father and that
he would bring his camp of Cheyennes and Oglalas, about four hundred lodges now, into Red Cloud Agency as soon as weather permitted. In early April, Spotted Tail returned to General Crook with this good news.

By this time the agencies seethed with political plots and intrigues. So it has always been with a conquered people—some do their best for all the people in a bad situation, while others try to advance themselves. The conquered split into factions and contend among themselves for the petty favors of their oppressors. But except for the headman of the oppressors, no one has any real power.

Red Cloud was jealous of Spotted Tail, and Lieutenant William H. Clark, the military head of Red Cloud Agency (which was administered separately from Camp Robinson), was jealous of Crook. In addition, Clark wanted Red Cloud reinstated as head of the Oglalas, so that his agency would be as important as Spotted Tail’s. So, when Spotted Tail came back to Crook with the great news that he had convinced Crazy Horse to surrender, Clark and Red Cloud were furious. They thought the honor of bringing in Crazy Horse should have been theirs. Clark called Red Cloud to his office, where he reviewed events since Crook had stripped Red Cloud of his chieftainship. Clark then said, “Now, I want you to go out and bring Crazy Horse in … I don’t want Spotted Tail to get ahead of you.” Clark added that after Crazy Horse came in, both chiefs would make the trip to Washington to consult with the Great White Father about their new agency. The Army wanted Crazy Horse in the delegation, to prove to the Great White Father and to the American public that it really had won the Sioux war. If Red Cloud would bring in Crazy Horse for him, Clark said, “I will recognize you as the highest officer among the chiefs; so that you can have control of your people. I will assist you with all the rations you think you will need.” This last was the key—the whites distributed rations via the chiefs, and the chief who controlled the rations was, without question, the big chief. Spotted Tail had stolen Crazy Horse from Miles for Crook; now Red Cloud was to steal Crazy Horse from Spotted Tail for Clark.

Red Cloud was well pleased. Clark let him take one hundred men and lots of food and other presents, and he set off to escort Crazy Horse in. By April 27 Red Cloud had found Crazy Horse and his people already on their way to his agency. They were moving slowly because of the condition of their ponies, Red Cloud reported to Clark by runner, but they would be in within ten days. The Cheyennes under Two Moons, Ice, and Little Wolf were also coming in
by a different route. They surrendered, too, in late April—109 families of Cheyennes, a total of 524 people (about 150 warriors) and 600 ponies. That made a total of 752 Cheyennes who had come in since March 1, plus 243 Sioux from scattered bands, all formerly members of the Crazy Horse camp.

Red Cloud fed the Crazy Horse people with the agency rations he had brought with him and then told them, “All is well, have no fear, come on in.” Crazy Horse spread his blanket for Red Cloud to sit on and gave him his shirt, as a signal that he was surrendering to Red Cloud. It must have been a poignant moment. Together Red Cloud and Crazy Horse had planned the defeat of Fetterman eleven years before; together for three years they had kept up the pressure on Fort Phil Kearny, eventually winning what seemed to them to be a decisive campaign. But then the paths of these comrades-in-arms had split, and now the once mighty Red Cloud was a lackey for the whites, eager to do their bidding, and Crazy Horse was his prisoner. One wonders if Red Cloud, who had not seen Crazy Horse since the Fort Phil Kearny days a decade earlier, asked Crazy Horse why he stayed out so long and brought so much trouble down on the Oglalas. If he did, Crazy Horse may have responded with a question of his own: Why did Red Cloud give up so easily?

When Clark heard from Red Cloud that Crazy Horse was coming in, he dispatched Lieutenant William Rosecrans of the 4th Cavalry, with Billy Garnett as interpreter, fifty Indian scouts, and ten wagon-loads of rations plus one hundred cattle. Rosecrans met the Red Cloud-Crazy Horse group on the Laramie-Black Hills stage line. American Horse, an Oglala elder, led the scouts and, as Garnett later put it, “true to his instincts as ever to help himself, Chief American Horse posed his scouts in line in front of all the others and had them sitting down facing the Indians coming in from the north.” Rosecrans did not understand, but the Sioux custom compelled the Crazy Horse people to give a pony to each of the scouts. (The irony was that though Crazy Horse was surrendering for the good of his people, they were better off, at least in ponies, than the agency Indians, whose ponies Crook had taken. Although they had from time to time eaten horseflesh to survive that winter, the Crazy Horse people still had 2,500 ponies.) Then Rosecrans shook hands with Crazy Horse, the first white man to do so. The Crazy Horse people made camp and rested and feasted for three days before taking up their final march.

On May 6, 1877, on a flat two miles north of Camp Robinson, Lieutenant Clark and an escort met the column. Crazy Horse and his
headmen sat in a row and motioned for Clark to come forward and shake hands. Crazy Horse used his left hand, telling Clark, “Friend, I shake with this hand because my heart is on this side; the right hand does all manner of wickedness; I want this peace to last forever.” Crazy Horse had never had a war bonnet, so he could not present one to Clark as a token of surrender; He Dog stepped forward and put his bonnet on Clark’s head and his shirt on Clark’s back, and he gave the lieutenant his pipe.

Then began the march to the fort itself. Crazy Horse and the chiefs led the way, most wearing their war bonnets, all carrying their arms. Their ponies and their bodies were painted for war. Crazy Horse had the single hawk’s feather in his hair, his brown, fur-wrapped braids falling across his plain buckskin shirt. His Winchester rested easily across his lap. He Dog was on one side of Crazy Horse, Little Big Man on the other. Behind them came the warriors in a tight military formation. Then came the women and children. Altogether the column stretched out for two miles.

When they came within sight of Camp Robinson, the chiefs began to sing, the warriors and then the women and children taking it up, filling the White River Valley with their song. Thousands of agency Indians lined their route, and they too began to sing and to cheer for Crazy Horse. One of the watching Army officers put down his binoculars and complained to those around him, “By God, this is a triumphal march, not a surrender.”

It must have been at this moment that the officers, and Red Cloud, knew that although Crazy Horse was captured, their troubles were far from over. Suddenly they realized that Crazy Horse was a hero, the greatest hero of them all, idolized by nearly every Indian on the agency. He might very well upset the cozy relationships that existed between Red Cloud and the military; he certainly would be a rival for leadership.

Clark had Crazy Horse move to an area about a mile south of Camp Robinson, then disarmed and dehorsed his people. Crazy Horse surrendered about three hundred families, totaling 889 Oglalas (250 warriors). Between them, the warriors had forty-six breech-loaders (an eloquent commentary on the Army’s claim that at the Little Bighorn the Indians were better armed than Custer’s men), thirty-five muzzle-loaders and thirty-three revolvers.