A Legacy of Resistance
History Friday is back! And I can think of no better way to kick it back off than diving right in to another fascinating but tragic episode in American history…
By the mid 1800’s, the United States was bursting at its seams. A rapidly growing population needed, well, room to grow, and the U.S. government set its sights westward. The only problem? The land was already claimed.
Thousands of Native Americans had called both the Great Plains and western half the United States home for hundreds of years. One of these tribes was the Lakota, who made their home in what we now know today as the areas of the Upper Great Lakes and North and South Dakota. Made up of seven “sub-tribes,” the Lakota were hunters, gathers, and farmers, not just living off the the land but thriving off it; by 1880, their number was estimated at over 16,000.
One of the members of this tribe was a young warrior by the name of Crazy Horse, who lived in a Lakota camp in present-day Wyoming. In 1854, the camp was entered by Lieutenant John Lawrence Grattan and 29 other U.S. troopers, who intended to arrest a Lakota man for stealing a cow. In reality, the cow had wandered into the camp, and after a short time, someone butchered it and passed the meat out among the people. The U.S. soldiers, however, didn’t see the difference. Tempers flared, culminating in the shooting of Chief Conquering Bear. The Lakota returned fire, killing all 30 soldiers and a civilian interpreter in what was later called the Grattan massacre.
After witnessing the bloodshed, Crazy Horse began to see visions, varying in substance but with the interpretation always the same: Crazy Horse had a warrior within him, one that was destined to protect his people and never be wounded in battle.
He took the visions to heart.
Through the late 1850s and early 1860s, Crazy Horse’s reputation as a warrior grew, as did his fame among the Lakota. His first kill was a Shoshone raider who had murdered a Lakota woman washing buffalo meat along the Powder River. He went on to fight in numerous battles between the Lakota and their traditional enemies, the Crow, Shoshone, Pawnee, Blackfeet, and Arikara.
But his fights weren’t limited to other native people.
In 1864, after the Third Colorado Cavalry decimated Cheyenne and Arapaho in the Sand Creek Massacre, the Lakota allied with them against the U.S. military. Crazy Horse was present at several U.S./Native American clashes, including the Battle of Platte Bridge, the Battle of Red Buttes, and the Battle of the Hundred in the Hand, during which combined warrior forces killed all the US soldiers present, the Army’s worst defeat on the Great Plains up to that time.
On June 17, 1876, Crazy Horse led a combined group of approximately 1,500 Lakota and Cheyenne in a surprise attack against brevetted Brigadier General George Crook’s force of 1,000 cavalry and infantry, and allied 300 Crow and Shoshone warriors in the Battle of the Rosebud. The battle, although not substantial in terms of human losses, delayed Crook’s joining the 7th Cavalry under George A. Custer. It contributed to Custer’s subsequent defeat at one of the most famous skirmishes of the era, the Battle of the Little Bighorn. However, Crazy Horse’s tactical and leadership role in this battle remains ambiguous. While some historians think that Crazy Horse led a flanking assault, ensuring the death of Custer and his men, the only proven fact is that Crazy Horse was a major participant in the battle. His personal courage was attested to by several eye-witness Indian accounts. Water Man, one of only five Arapaho warriors who fought, said Crazy Horse “was the bravest man I ever saw. He rode closest to the soldiers, yelling to his warriors. All the soldiers were shooting at him, but he was never hit.” Sioux battle participant Little Soldier said, “The greatest fighter in the whole battle was Crazy Horse.”
Despite the resounding victory, the Native Americans soon proved no match for the U.S. Army and its never-ending supply of reinforcement. By January of 1877, Crazy Horse’s warriors had fought their last major battle. His people struggled through the winter, weakened by hunger and the long cold. Crazy Horse decided to surrender with his band to protect them, and went to Fort Robinson in Nebraska, where he was ultimately killed on September 5, 1877, 148 years ago, during a scuffle with soldiers who were trying to force him inside a cell.
Crazy Horse is commemorated by the Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota, near the town of Berne. He remains a legendary figure in both United States and Native American history, revered for both his bravery and his loyalty to his people. As summarized by Ian Frazier in his book, The Great Plains:
“Even the most basic outline of his life shows how great he was, because he remained himself from the moment of his birth to the moment he died; because [though] he may have surrendered, … he was never defeated in battle; because, although he was killed, even the Army admitted he was never captured. His dislike of the oncoming civilization was prophetic. Unlike many people all over the world, when he met white men he was not diminished by the encounter.”
