Crazy Horse daring warrior

Page 12

Crazy Horse (Oglala Sioux)

Crazy Horse (Tashunke Witko) a military figure of the Oglala Sioux tribe, came

to power while still a young man in his middle twenties, during Red Cloud's War along the Bozeman Trail.

Unlike Red Cloud, Crazy did not settle on Sioux lands established by the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, but with his followers stayed out in unceded buffalo country to the west.

Courageous, daring skilled in the techniques of Indian warfare, the bold and implacable Crazy Horse never yielded in his hatred of the white man, and made it clear that he had no intention of abandoning hunting and fighting for reservation existence.

In December of 1875, the Indian Commissioner in Washington, alarmed by reports of Sioux hostilities, directed that all Indians in the area return to their agencies by January 31, 1876. When some Sioux bands, far afield in search of game, failed to meet his impossible deadline, Gen. George Crook was ordered to attack their winter settlements and he sent Col. J. J. Reynolds to take Crazy Horse's village by surprise. Crazy Horse organized a counter-attack, recovered his warrior's scattered ponies, and drove off Crook's cattle. Without food, the General was forced to return with his men to his post.

Realizing that Crazy Horse was a more formidable adversary than he had thought, Crook planned a new strategy, and the following June with 15 troops of cavalry and 5 of infantry, marched up the Bozeman Trail to the Tongue River. One June 17, his army, ran headlong into 1,200 Oglalas and Cheyennes under Crazy Horse at the Rosebud River. At the end of a day-long battle, Crook was forced to withdraw with heavy losses, chagrined at his second defeat at the hands of the Sioux chief.

A week later, Gen. George A. Custer attacked the fugitive village where more than 3,000 Indian warriors were encamped along Montana's Little Big Horn River. Again Crazy Horse played a leading role. After the repulse of Maj. Marcus A. Reno's battalion by Indians under Sitting Bull and other chiefs, the braves concentrated almost their entire force on Custer and his men, some 4 miles away. In a little more than an hour, the Sioux and Cheyennes had overrun Custer and his 224 men, slaughtering everyone.

After their victory at the Battle of the Little Big Horn ("Custer's Last Stand"), the Indian bands dispersed. One by one, as more and more soldiers poured into their country, they surrendered.

In January of 1877, Gen. Nelson Al Miles, surprising Crazy Horse's winter camp, scattered the Indian s without food or adequate clothing on the frozen plain. The following May, Crazy Horse and about 1,000 men, women and children surrendered to the Sioux Chief's old adversary, General Crook, at Red Cloud Agency in Nebraska.

But the young warrior could not stand reservation life. Rumors flew that he was placed under arrest. When he realized that he was about to be locked up, Crazy Horse, desperate, drew his knife and tried to cut his way to freedom. Hhe was bayonetted in the back by a white sentry, and died several hours later.

When the Oglalas left the Red Cloud Agency, Crazy Horse's remains went with them to Pine Ridge Agency. Legend has it that they were subsequently moved from their original burial place there, and given a final resting place near a spectacular butte close to Manderson, S. Dakota, known as "Crazy Horse Butte."

No photographs has ever certainly been identified as that of the great Sioux warrior, although pictures of other Sioux who resembled him somewhat, have sometimes been claimed to be his.