Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (9 page)

The Sioux had a number of devices to keep any one
akicita
society from becoming dictatorial. First and foremost, they rotated the authority; the Kit Foxes would be the police one month, the Brave Hearts the next, and so on. Second, no man could simultaneously be a head of an
akicita
society and a tribal chief or member of the governing council. Third, the Sioux did not delegate real power to an individual, be he a head of an
akicita
society, tribal chief, or simply a brave individual. As Lowie puts it, “in normal times the chief was not a supreme executive, but a peacemaker and an orator.” Chiefs—all chiefs—were titular, “and any power exercised within the tribe was exercised by the total body of responsible men who had qualified for social eminence by their war record and their generosity.”
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Whites could never understand this point, incidentally; because they could not conceive of a society without a solid hierarchy, the whites insisted that the Indians had to have chiefs who would be a final authority and able to speak for the entire tribe. Later, much difficulty grew out of this basic white misunderstanding of Indian government.

The freedom of life on the Plains helped prevent the rise of dictatorship. The Sioux would not subject themselves to ineffectual or dominating leadership, primarily because they did not have to do so. If a war-party commander blundered and lost two or three men—or even one—the Sioux demoted him to the ranks by the simple process of not following him on any further expeditions. If a chief picked poor camping grounds or was unsuccessful in locating the buffalo herds, the people moved to another village. Families and groups were always separating from the village, drifting off to join another band, or establishing a new one themselves. Political, economic, and social secession, in short, caused no trauma. The Sioux felt no loyalty to an individual chief, or a village, or even a tribe—Brulés frequently came to live with Oglalas, for example, and there were usually a few Sioux families living with the Cheyennes or Arapahoes, and vice versa. The Sioux were loyal to themselves, their families, their close friends, and a set of ideas, not to an office or an institution.
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The Sioux lived without compulsion. While the society most assuredly and most vigorously tried to steer children in certain directions, it would probably be most correct to say that the Sioux had hopes, rather than expectations, for their children. No stigma was attached to those who chose other than the normal roles, nor did they suffer from punishment or in any material way. They did not become leaders or people of prestige, of course, but their choice was respected. Indeed, the Sioux could not imagine
not
following one’s inner voice, one’s feelings, usually expressed in a dream or vision but always authentic.

The Sioux had plenty of room for those who thought differently from the majority, as Curly found out. By the time he was well into his teen-age years many of his age-mates had gone through the Sun Dance, a religious ceremony involving excruciating self-torture, done for the well-being of the tribe and consequently an act of great prestige and an act that thoroughly tested a boy’s ability to withstand pain. Curly had always been among the most daring and courageous members of his age group, one of the first to kill a buffalo and to go on a war party. He now had a younger brother, Little
Hawk, whom he had taught the lessons of the Plains, and he had joined an
akicita,
the Crow Owners Society. But Curly chose not to undergo the ordeal of the Sun Dance. His status was not affected by his decision, nor was any pressure put on him to do otherwise than as he felt.

Curly had always been physically different from other Oglala children; as a teen-ager, additional differences developed. Curly was quiet and modest, not boastful like most Oglala boys. He had a sense of reserve that was unusual—Curly was somewhat offended by the Sioux custom of wild displays of emotion at moments of tragedy or victory. He did not object; he just didn’t much like it and removed himself from such scenes. Nor did he like to hear the warriors brag about themselves, and he refused to do it himself. He did not enjoy the rough jokes and loud singing at the
akicita
societies, either, so he joined the Crow Owners on expeditions but seldom in the society lodge. Nor did he feel he had to prove anything at the Sun Dance. He was earning enough respect to satisfy him as it was, as a promising hunter and warrior.
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As a mature war leader, Curly would discover the full cost the Sioux had to pay for their individualism. The absence of compulsion, the freedom to do what one felt like doing, so long as no one got hurt, made the Sioux a woefully inefficient people. They could not build or produce material goods in any quantity, their transportation system remained primitive, and their ability to withstand attack from a stronger outside force was severely limited. By granting priority to the individual’s need to be himself, the Sioux precluded unified military, economic, and political action. They had national heroes and sometimes effective tribal leaders, but they never developed a true national leader. Or a national policy. From the time they emerged onto the Plains until they went onto the reservations (and, in truth, down to the present day), the Sioux were divided against themselves, incapable of rallying around a cause or a leader, and thus in the end unable to defend their way of life.

Curly knew that his people were divided as soon as he became aware of events outside the tipi. Indeed, in the year of Curly’s birth his band, the Oglala, split into two feuding factions, a split that continued until well into the twentieth century. Details on the origin of the feud are few, and those that do exist are disputed, but the general outline is clear enough.

In a way the whites were responsible. Fur traders first entered the Laramie region of the North Platte River in 1834, and the Oglalas soon fell into the habit of spending much of their time in
that vicinity, where they became victims of a bitter rivalry between the American Fur Company and its competitors. The traders knew that their most potent weapon in the struggle for the Indian trade was whiskey, and they used it indiscriminately. Many Oglala men soon became nothing more than common drunks, nearly all became irritable and quarrelsome, and petty differences between individuals were escalated into serious trouble. Incidents previously unheard of among the Oglalas, such as stealing in order to have something to trade for whiskey or fights within the village between members of the same band became routine.

Adding to the difficulty was the rivalry between Bull Bear, a loud, aggressive, powerful chief who came closer than anyone else to dominating the Oglalas, and Old Smoke, a fat and jovial chief. Bull Bear was a chief of the Koya band of the Oglalas, while Old Smoke led the Bad Faces. The white traders evidently tried to push Old Smoke to the forefront, as he was easier to deal with than the tyrannical Bull Bear. Furious at this turn of events, Bull Bear paraded through the Bad Face camp, loudly challenging Old Smoke to come out and fight. When Old Smoke refused to leave his tipi, Bull Bear killed Smoke’s favorite horse and triumphantly marched back to the Koya camp.

A few years later, in the fall of 1841, the Bad Faces got their revenge. Bull Bear and a few followers rode into Old Smoke’s camp on the Chugwater, an eastern branch of the Laramie River, and started a quarrel. The American Fur Company men were in Old Smoke’s camp, trading liquor for robes, and Old Smoke’s people were drunk. Soon enough arrows were flying, and old Bull Bear fell dead, some say at the hands of a young Bad Face warrior named Red Cloud.

Following this incident the Koyas, now known as the Cut-Offs, drifted southeastward, occupying the lands between the Platte and Smoky Hill rivers in Kansas. The Bad Faces moved northward, toward the Black Hills and even further westward toward the headwaters of the Powder River, where they were soon associating with the northern Cheyennes and the Miniconjous. These associations were more geographical than political; the various tribes formed no firm alliance. Each little group acted independently.
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When Parkman joined the Old Smoke band five years later, he found the Oglalas divided and leaderless. To his disgust, they could not even get together to strike their enemies. Much of Parkman’s journal consists of his complaints at the Sioux inability to organize a grand revenge expedition against the Shoshonis, who had whipped an Oglala war party the previous summer. All the Oglalas were supposed
to participate, along with some Miniconjous and others, but nothing came of it.

Nor could the Indians agree on when and where to move. One morning Parkman asked Eagle Feather, a warrior, if the village would move the next day. “He shook his head, and said that nobody could tell, for since old Mahto-Tatonka [Bull Bear] had died, the people had been like children that did not know their own minds. They were no better than a body without a head.”
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The Oglalas divided just as they faced their most serious challenge. Shortly after Bull Bear’s death increasing numbers of white emigrants began to file through their country, following the Platte River on their way west. Over the years the Sioux gradually became aware that these whites were spoiling the Platte Valley, destroying the timber, trampling down or overgrazing the grass, driving off the game animals, and altogether turning the valley into a white man’s country “where the Indian was only tolerated as an unwelcome intruder and was expected to conform to the white man’s laws and regulations, which he did not understand.”
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Because Old Smoke liked his coffee, Curly spent much of his childhood on or near the Platte, where he saw the friction between the whites and the Indians grow and flourish. Given the cultural differences between the two groups, the clash was inevitable. Indians took stray cattle and horses from the emigrants. To the red man this was no more than simple duty, but to the white man it was a crime demanding punishment. Young warriors sporadically raided the wagon trains, then visited the same emigrants the next day to beg coffee and sugar. Whites complained that whatever was not tied down was stolen; Indians complained that the whites were stingy.

In the summer of 1845 the first white soldiers came into Sioux country to protect the emigrants. Colonel Stephen W. Kearny marched up the Platte at the head of a force of dragoons to quiet the tribes through a display of strength. Kearny met with the Bad Faces and other Oglalas on Laramie River, warning them sternly that if they molested the emigrants they would be severely punished. Despite the troubles, the Oglalas continued to hang around the whites, drawn to the Oregon Trail by the good things white society had to offer.
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In 1849 disaster struck. White man’s diseases, including cholera, smallpox, and measles, hit the Sioux. Cholera especially raged all across the Plains; Cheyennes fleeing southward came across other Cheyennes fleeing northward, both groups trying to get out of cholera country. The Brulés and Oglalas fled northward, back toward
their old homes on the White River in South Dakota, where they discovered a ghost camp, the tipis all standing, and all full of dead people. The cholera hung on for a year, killing nearly half the Cheyenne tribe and causing dreadful losses among the Sioux. It was followed in 1850 by a smallpox epidemic, which carried off hundreds of additional Indians. The Sioux and Cheyennes began to talk of vengeance against the whites, whom they blamed. Many were convinced that the cholera was a wicked magic that the whites had deliberately introduced among them.
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By 1851 the epidemics had dissipated, but not the white men. They wanted all the tribes that lived on or near the Platte River to come to a council at Fort Laramie—since 1849 a government post with a small detachment of troops garrisoned there—to sign a general peace and friendship treaty. The soldiers were supposed to protect the emigrants on the Oregon Trail from the Indians, but given the extent of the territory involved, the minuscule force (one company of infantry) could do little more than maintain Fort Laramie as a way station. The whites decided to pay for the privilege of walking through Indian lands, a realistic policy since the U. S. Army could not possibly bring enough strength to the Platte Valley to shoot a path through.

So government agents went out to all the tribes of the Platte region, including Old Smoke’s. The agent promised him handsome gifts of beads, blankets, guns, and utensils if he and his people would come down to Fort Laramie for the peacemaking. Old Smoke consulted with his tribesmen; everyone wanted to go; and they were off.

They arrived in August 1851, along with 10,000 other Indians. They made a great splash of color on the brown, burned-out prairie dirt. There were Shoshonis there, from beyond the Bighorn Mountains, and Crows from the Yellowstone River; Sioux from the Missouri River and both sides of the Platte River, Cheyennes from the Powder River. Curly had never seen anything like it—the Laramie Council was the largest assembly of Indians on the Plains that had yet taken place.

Curly was about ten years old at the time of the Laramie Council, and one can suppose that he had a marvelous time, riding from camp to camp, getting to know his sworn enemies, meeting Cheyennes, racing on horseback, counting playful coups, asking questions, observing. The boys had no difficulty communicating with each other, because all were proficient in the sign language, that unique
skill of the Plains Indians that cut across all language barriers. The atmosphere of the council was probably somewhat like that of the county fair eleven-year-old George Custer attended that summer in Ohio, although the Indian council lasted longer.

Certainly Curly feasted. The tribes vied with each other as hosts, and the eating was continuous. Father De Smet, the famous Catholic missionary, who was there, declared that “no epoch in Indian annals probably shows a greater massacre of the canine race.”
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The Indians were camped at Fort Laramie for nearly a month before the treaty was finally signed and the presents distributed, so Curly had plenty of time to get to know, and eat with, many new people.