Crazy Horse and his folks then went
back their own ways into the hills. Little did he know he was followed
by Colonel Nelson A. Miles and his soldiers. Miles wanted to
register all Indians with the government agencies. Crazy Horse
was not a fan of this plan, but cold and hunger were nibbling on
his people and so they surrendered to General Crook at the Red Cloud
Agency in Nebraska.
That was on May 6, 1877.
The Death of Crazy
Horse
Crook took Crazy Horse prisoner and brought
him to Fort Robinson. In the fort, Crazy Horse was stabbed to death.
Nobody really knows what exactly happened.
Larry McMurtry mentions in
his book that Crazy Horse got a hair cut the day
before he was stabbed. Thus, so McMurtry, he could have easily been mistaken for
someone else.
One of several theories.
Crazy Horse - His
Family and Friends
Contemporaries mention Crazy Horse's light complexion, something we would
have liked for his mother to explain, but apparently
nobody asked her, of if they did, they didn't put it on
record.
Speaking of Crazy Horse's mother: She was of the Brulé branch
of the Sioux and the sister of Spotted Tail.
Crazy Horse's father was the
Medicine
Man Crazy Horse Senior.
When he was a child, Crazy Horse Jr.
was called Curly (light complexion + Curly = youtellme). Once the boy had his reputation established as a
seasoned warrior, Crazy Horse Senior passed on his name to his son.
After this name transfer, Crazy Horse
Senior decided his new name should be Worm.
Crazy Horse's brother was Little
Hawk. Crazy Horse's daughter was They-Are-Afraid-Of-Her.
She died of cholera.
Among others, Crazy Horse's friends were
Hump
and Lone Bear.
The girl of Crazy Horse's dreams was
Black
Buffalo Woman, Red Cloud's niece, who was unfortunately married
to another guy, named No Water.
Married or not, Crazy Horse didn't
care because he was in love. He took Black Buffalo Woman and ran away
with her. No Water
was furious, tracked them down, and shot Crazy Horse in the jaw. The tribe
handled the incident by arranging for Crazy Horse to marry the decent woman
Black Shawl.
Black Shawl later died of tuberculosis. Crazy Horse's second wife was
Nellie Larrabee (or Laverie),
who was half Cheyenne and half French.
What Happened to Black
Buffalo Woman?
Author Larry McMurtry states in his
book Crazy Horse (1999, Penguin) page 72,
"Black Buffalo
Woman's fourth child, a daughter, was notably light-skinned; perhaps
the child of Crazy Horse, she lived into the 1940s."
On we read on page 73,
"Very probably he [Crazy Horse] never quite
got over Black Buffalo Woman, about whose later life nothing is
known."
How Did Crazy Horse Look Like?
We are a little short of Crazy Horse
photos, but this is how the majority described his looks: not tall,
not little, sharp features. The picture at the top of the page might or might not be Crazy Horse.
Crazy Horse Sculpture
A sculpture was built in honor
of Crazy Horse in a town called Custer, of all names, in South
Dakota.
This is
the link to the
Custer Chamber of Commerce.
And this is the link to the website
of the
Crazy
Horse Memorial in South Dakota. The site has a
live webcam. Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski started blasting his
way into the Thunderhead Mountain in 1948 but died in 1982. His
family continues his art work.
The World's Largest Sculpture
Crazy Horse Books
There is Larry McMurtry's book Crazy Horse : A Penguin Lives Biography. Larry
is also the author of Lonesome Dove.
Then we have Ian Frazier's
Great Plains.
There's also Peter Matthiessen's In the Spirit of Crazy Horse
and George E. Hyde's Red Cloud's Folk: A History of the Oglala Sioux Indians (Civilization of the American Indian Series)
and
Spotted Tail's Folk: A History of the Brule Sioux.
See also
American Timeline.
