Crazy Horse and Custer Quotes

“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.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“Discipline is what makes an army—and civilization.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“Of the tens of thousands of men who died in combat in the war, possibly as many as half lost their lives in vain. Lee’s charges at Malvern Hill and Gettysburg, Burnside’s at Fredericksburg, Grant’s at Vicksburg, and many others left the dead strewn everywhere for no discernible military gain. The Sioux would never have followed men who led such bloody, futile assaults, but the Americans made heroes out of these generals—and the higher a general’s losses, it seemed, the greater the hero he became.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“Crazy Horse called to his men, “Ho-ka hey! It is a good day to fight! It is a good day to die! Strong hearts, brave hearts, to the front! Weak hearts and cowards to the rear.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“It is perhaps the consummate irony,” Arthur Moore writes, “that at each step up from savagery the human race has regarded the fruits of progress with a degree of misgiving and often longed against reason for a return to a simpler condition.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“The answer was simple and direct, as it had been throughout the period of white contact with the red men. First, make them dependent. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark saw this in a flash after their initial encounter with the Sioux, of whom they said, “These are the vilest miscreants of the savage race, and must ever remain the pirates of the Missouri, until such measures are pursued, by our government, as will make them feel a dependence on its will for their supply of merchandise.”22 All that would then be needed to put the Indian on the road to civilization was, in the words of Henry Knox, the Secretary of War in 1789, to give the Indian “a love for exclusive property.”23”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“At the supreme moment of his career, Crazy Horse took in the situation with a glance, then acted with great decisiveness. He fought with his usual reckless bravery on Custer Hill, providing as always an example for the other warriors to admire, draw courage from, and emulate, but his real contribution to this greatest of all Indian victories was mental, not physical. For the first time in his life, Crazy Horse’s presence was decisive on the battlefield not because of his courage, but because of his brain. But one fed on the other. His outstanding generalship had brought him at the head of a ferocious body of warriors to the critical point at the critical moment. Then with his courage he took advantage of the situation to sweep down on Custer and stamp his name, and that of Custer, indelibly on the pages of the nation’s history.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“Like so many of his fellow Americans, Cooper was drawn to the ideas of a primitive, free access to the bounty of nature, the rough equality of all men in a society, and of a natural, intuitive theology. These themes enjoyed something of a vogue in the America of Custer’s youth, especially among intellectuals and reformers, who were disappointed at (or resentful of) America’s failure to become a “new society” in a New World. In their eyes, the United States had repeated all the mistakes of Europe, with individual appropriation and inviolable property rights locking the many out from access to the wealth of the few, leading to a social stratification based on unequal distribution of property.1”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“Both Custer and Crazy Horse, in short, still had much to learn about each other.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“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.”33 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.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“The myths emphasized the relatedness of life, for in them plants and animals talked and exhibited other human characteristics. The myths taught young Curly that everything had its place and function and that all things and animals were important The stories also gave him a feeling of balance; one, for example, told how the animals got together one day and decided to get back at mankind for killing and eating them. Each animal decided on a different disease he would give to man in retribution. Upon hearing of this, the plants got together and each one decided to provide a remedy for a specific disease. The telling of this myth might lead to the handing down of ancient wisdom about the medicinal properties of various leaves, bark, roots, and herbs.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“Arthur Moore describes the results: “Whole forests of oak, beech, poplar, maple, and walnut, standing since Columbus, collapsed … from girdling and deadening with fire. There was in the heart of the new race no more consideration for the trees than for the game until the best of both were gone; steel conquered the West but chilled the soul of the conqueror. This assault on nature, than which few more frightful spectacles could be imagined, owed much to sheer need, but something also to a compelling desire to destroy conspicuous specimens of the fauna and flora of the wilderness. The origin of this mad destructiveness may be in doubt, but there is no question about its effect. The Ohio Valley today has neither trees nor animals to recall adequately the splendor of the garden of the Indian which the white man found and used so profligately.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“committing all its strength. Rather, they tended to be individual duels. The Crows would gather”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“other,”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“place,”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“generations.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“whites”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“recognized”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“different”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“Crazy”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“usually”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“Sometimes”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“philosophical”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“Custer”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“He was a complicated man, George Armstrong Custer, as unsure of himself in the study as he was confident on the battlefield. When he wrote, he made Libbie sit across the table from him. He would read aloud to her as he put words down on paper. Overhead he had hung portraits of his two favorite generals, McClellan—and Custer.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“and riding at full gallop across the unfenced Great Plains of North America, day after day, was a source of never”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“(Cambridge,”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“Rivers of America (New York, 1949), 10. 11.​DeBow, Statistical”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“most of all, there were buffalo. Enormous beasts—a full-grown bull weighed nearly a ton and a half—they looked a little like oversized cattle, except for the humps on their backs and their shaggy hair.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“husband”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors