Crazy Horse

He was born about 1840 near Rapid Creek in the Black Hills, though He Dog put it two years later and the record will not settle it. His name at birth was Čháŋ Óhaŋ, Among the Trees. His hair was lighter than the Lakota norm and stayed so, and the family called him Light Hair, then Curly. His father was an Oglala holy man of the same name, which he later handed to his son. His mother, a Miniconjou called Rattling Blanket Woman, hanged herself from a cottonwood in 1844 after her brother was killed raiding Crow horses. Her sister left her own husband to raise the boy. He grew up reticent, gave away what he killed, never danced, and by several Lakota accounts noticed nobody in camp but children.

The Lakota named him a Shirt Wearer in 1865. He rode as the decoy who pulled Fetterman's 81 men over Lodge Trail Ridge in December 1866. On June 17, 1876 he helped turn Crook on the Rosebud and pin the column meant to close the trap, eight days before the Little Bighorn, where his tactical part is argued and his courage is not. His last fight came in a January blizzard on the Tongue. BriefHistory has the war and what it took from the Plains. This page is about the four months after he laid the guns down.

Around 1870 he left with Black Buffalo Woman, the wife of No Water. No Water tracked them down, walked into the lodge and fired at his face. The bullet broke his upper jaw and left the scar he carried on his left cheek. He gave her back, took three horses in compensation, and lost the Shirt Wearer title. He married Black Shawl in 1871. Their daughter, They Are Afraid Of Her, died in 1873 while he was away with a war party, and he stayed at her burial scaffold three days and nights. In August 1877 the Army asked him to fight the Nez Perce and he answered that he would fight until all the Nez Perce were killed. Frank Grouard, interpreting, reported that he had said he would go north and fight until no white man was left.

On September 5, 1877 they walked him to the guardhouse at Fort Robinson. He saw the cells and turned. Little Big Man grabbed him from behind and a sentry bayoneted him. Seventeen eyewitness accounts survive and disagree. One names Private William Gentles, two other names surfaced later, and Little Big Man alone said he had deflected Crazy Horse's own knife. He died that night. His parents took the body away on a travois and buried it where nobody has found it. No photograph of him is authenticated. Since 1948 a Black Hills mountain has been carved toward his likeness, which many Lakota call a desecration of sacred ground and a monument to a man who refused the camera.

Crazy Horse's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Battle of the Hundred in the Hand mission
  He led the decoy party. All 81 men under Captain Fetterman were killed 1866
• Wagon Box Fight mission
  He opened the assault. New breech-loading rifles held the corral 1867
• Battle of the Rosebud mission
  Rallied the line and stopped Crook, eight days before the Little Bighorn 1876
• Battle of the Little Bighorn mission
  He fought in both the Reno and the Custer phases. The great flanking charge of legend is a later invention 1876
• Battle of Slim Buttes mission
  His afternoon counterattack with six to eight hundred warriors 1876
• Battle of Wolf Mountain mission
  His last major engagement, fought in a blizzard on the Tongue River 1877

• 1844 aged ~4 His mother hangs herself after her brother is killed on a raid Her sister, Good Looking Woman, left her own husband to raise him. His father mourned four years.
• 1854 aged ~14 The Grattan fight near Fort Laramie, and the vision that followed The vision itself is contested. His own medicine man denied the version usually told.
• 1865 aged ~25 Named a Shirt Wearer in his mid-twenties
• December 21, 1866 aged ~26 Leads the decoy party that destroys Fetterman's command The worst defeat the U.S. Army had yet taken on the Great Plains.
• c. 1870 aged ~30 No Water shoots him through the jaw over Black Buffalo Woman He lost the Shirt Wearer title over the affair and kept the scar on his left cheek.
• 1873 aged ~33 His only child dies while he is away with a war party They Are Afraid Of Her. He mourned at the scaffold three days and nights.
• June 25, 1876 aged ~36 Fights at the Little Bighorn An Arapaho witness called him the bravest man he ever saw, riding closest to the soldiers.
• May 6, 1877 aged ~37 Surrenders at the Red Cloud Agency with about 900 Oglala The column came in singing a peace chant. One officer called it a triumphal march.
• September 5, 1877 aged ~37 Bayoneted at the Fort Robinson guardhouse He died that night. The identity of the soldier is still unresolved in the scholarship.

• William Tecumseh Sherman 1820–1891
  Union general whose campaigns through Georgia and the Carolinas helped destroy the Confederacy’s capacity to wage war. opposed by
• Chief Joseph 1840–1904
  Nez Perce leader remembered for resistance to forced removal and eloquent advocacy for his people. refused to fight
• Geronimo 1829–1909
  Apache leader whose prolonged resistance became a powerful symbol of Indigenous opposition to U.S. expansion. parallel holdout
• Quanah Parker 1845–1911
  Last Comanche war leader who became a reservation-era negotiator and figure in the Native American Church. parallel holdout
• Tecumseh 1768–1813
  Shawnee leader who sought a broad Indigenous confederacy to resist U.S. territorial expansion. earlier confederacy
• Russell Means 1939–2012
  American Indian Movement leader whose occupations drove Native activism into national view. carried the argument forward