Turn the Stars Upside Down: The Last Days and Tragic Death of Crazy Horse Read online

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Cast of Characters

  On Crazy Horse

  Map

  Foreword

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Epilogue

  Notes

  Afterword

  The Plainsmen Series by Terry C. Johnston

  High Praise for the Work of Terry Johnston

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Because he bravely stood and fought beside me over these past ten years, making possible the renaissance of my mid-life, I dedicate this sad tale of Crazy Horse’s final days to the warrior who has many times done battle at my shoulder, fighting victoriously so that my kids, Noah and Erinn, will now remain with their father until it’s time for them to spread their own wings and leave my nest. For my Montana-born Irish friend, “Seamus”—

  I dedicate this book to

  JAMES ROBERT GRAVES

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Seamus Donegan

  Colin Teig Donegan

  Samantha Donegan

  OGLALA LAKOTA

  Crazy Horse / Ta’sunke Witko

  Worm / Waglu’la (father)

  Black Buffalo Woman

  They Are Afraid of Her (daughter)

  Hump / Buffalo Hump

  Little Big Man

  Flying Eagle

  Walking Eagle

  Jumping Shield

  Chips

  No Water

  Lone Bear

  Red Cloud

  Little Wound

  Red Feather

  Black Fox

  Big Road

  Little Hawk (brother)

  Black Shawl (wife)

  Little Hawk (uncle)

  Young Man Afraid

  He Dog

  Eagle Thunder

  Good Weasel

  Looking Horse

  Kicking Bear

  Woman’s Dress

  Little Wolf

  Red Dog

  American Horse

  Shell Boy

  No Flesh

  BRULE / SICANGU LAKOTA

  Spotted Tail

  Black Crow

  Good Voice

  Swift Bear

  White Thunder

  Horned Antelope

  MINNICONJOU / MNICOWAJU LAKOTA

  Touch-the-Clouds

  High Bear

  MILITARY

  Brigadier General George Crook—commander, Department of the Platte

  Lieutenant Colonel Luther Prentice Bradley—commanding officer at Fort Robinson/commander of the District of the Black Hills

  Major Julius W. Mason—Third U.S. Cavalry at Fort Laramie

  Captain Daniel Webster Burke—commanding officer of Camp Sheridan

  Captain James Kennington—Fourteenth U.S. Infantry

  Lieutenant William Philo Clark / “White Hat”—military agent to the Oglala Lakota at Red Cloud Agency / chief of U.S. Indian Scouts (K Company, Second U.S. Cavalry)

  Lieutenant John G. Bourke—aide-de-camp to General George Crook

  Lieutenant Jesse M. Lee—agent to the Brule Lakota at Spotted Tail Agency

  Lieutenant William Rosecrans—Fourth U.S. Cavalry

  Lieutenant Henry L. Lemley—E Company, Third U.S. Cavalry

  Private William Gentles—F Company, Fourteenth U.S. Infantry

  Dr. Valentine T. McGillycuddy—Assistant Post Surgeon, assigned to Camp Robinson

  CIVILIAN

  Helen “Nellie” Laravie (“Chi-Chi”) (known among the Lakota as Brown Eyes Woman / Ista Gli Win)

  Long Joe Laravie

  Frank Grouard (Grabber)

  Baptiste “Big Bat” Pourier

  Dr. James Irvin—civilian agent at Red Cloud agency

  Benjamin K. Shopp—special Indian agent

  Lucy Lee

  Billy Garnett

  John Provost

  Louis Bordeaux / Louis Mato

  Joe Merrival—interpreter for Jesse M. Lee

  The death of Crazy Horse was in short a tragedy just as Wounded Knee was; moreover it was a “tragedy” in the Shakespearean sense as well, for a great man was slain by a lesser man.

  —BRIAN POHANKA

  Time/Life Books

  Although Red Cloud was not as skilled a politician [as Spotted Tail], he compensated for the shortcoming with a cunning ability to manipulate both the military and his own kindred. To maintain his prominence, Red Clould would remove any obstacle which posed a threat to his political aspirations.

  —RICHARD G. HARDORFF

  Crazy Horse: A Source Book

  As the grave of [George Armstong] Custer marked [the] high-water mark of Sioux supremacy in the trans-Missouri region, so the grave of “Crazy Horse,” a plain fence of pine slabs, marked the ebb.

  —LIEUTENANT JOHN G. BOURKE

  On the Border with Crook

  After [Crazy Horse’s] surrender he was made a hero by the army officers and shown much attention by the people generally. The agency Indians, becoming envious of Crazy Horse, told all manner of stories about him, and … false rumors.

  —CHARLES P. JORDAN

  former chief clerk at Red Cloud Agency

  Red Cloud had reason to be jealous. Several times during the summer, he had been pushed aside while the prestige of Crazy Horse had been bolstered … Spotted Tail, too, was jealous of Crazy Horse and didn’t want him to go to Washington … [Crazy Horse] was sure in Spot’s acute understanding to be the lion of the delegation and to shadow and efface Spotted Tail in the public mind and diminish his influence as a chief.

  —EDWARD KADLECEK

  To Kill an Eagle

  It is absurd to talk of keeping faith with Indians.

  —GENERAL PHILIP H. SHERIDAN

  At the time, and ever since, I held that the arrest and killing of the chief was unnecessary, uncalled-for and inexcusable. It was the result of jealousy, treachery and fear, and placing too much weight or reliance on reports that Crazy Horse was again contemplating joining Sitting Bull, still in British territory, there being a manufactured propaganda to that effect �
�

  A combination of treachery, jealousy and unreliable reports simply resulted in a frame-up, and he was railroaded to his death.

  —DR. VALENTINE T. MCGILLYCUDDY

  in correspondence with author E. A. Brininstool

  They could not kill him in battle. They had to lie to him and kill him that way.

  —BLACK ELK

  Black Elk Speaks

  [Crazy Horse] trusted both sides—and then they killed him.

  —LUTHER STANDING BEAR

  My People the Sioux

  FOREWORD

  Despite all the rumor, half-truth, and fiction written about Crazy Horse, what little we do know about this mysterious man will forever be cloaked in legend.

  Even as you gaze at the bloodied bayonet portrayed on the cover painting created for me by my old friend Lou Glanzman—America’s most prominent illustrator—there still rages some controversy over exactly how Crazy Horse’s life ended. Not only in seamy details of his “political” undoing by fellow Oglala leaders but also in the specifics of that very moment the death wound was inflicted. At that time, and even down to this day in some circles, it was believed that Crazy Horse actually stabbed himself with the knife he suddenly yanked from beneath the blanket hung over his arm in traditional fashion. To stab himself in the kidney, from behind, during a desperate struggle with his old friend Little Big Man?

  As you look upon the cover artwork, ponder what sorts of covers have been on all the other books that seek to represent the death of Crazy Horse. And then remember that the last thing I want to write is a book about the surrender of this Oglala mystic. No, this is not a book about the surrender of Crazy Horse. While he did give his body over to the U.S. Army at Red Cloud’s agency in May of 1877, he did not turn over his mind, his heart, his warrior spirit. In the end, this is not a story of surrender, but a tale of triumph.

  This is a story about how—despite all the efforts of the army officers and the white officials, along with many of Crazy Horse’s own Oglala people—this lone man succeeded in not surrendering everything that mattered most to him and, ultimately, what mattered most to the Lakota.

  No, this is not a book about surrender. Instead, I have sought to tell you a story about the very personal victory of one solitary and misunderstood man.

  Like other men of that dramatic era—men like George Armstrong Custer himself, who died an early and very human death, only to rise again as mythical and immortal—so too has Crazy Horse continued to live on, less as a man and more as a symbol of steadfast opposition to white dominance. It is not this legendary Crazy Horse I seek to write about. Others have already done so. Instead, it is the Crazy Horse who has not yet appeared in film, nor between the covers of a book—a flesh-and-blood Crazy Horse who is something less than mythic hero yet somehow more than mere man.

  In the afterword that follows this tragic story, I list the many sources I relied upon to write this tale of surrender, betrayal, and murder. Despite all that has been put in print about this “Strange Man of the Oglala,” I found I had come to know very, very little about him from the written record. Instead, it took me walking the ground where Crazy Horse once stood, or fought, and where he ultimately died, before I felt I had come to some understanding of him … perhaps because he was so directly, so organically, tied to the land, his land, that his country—unlike what those of us who record our thoughts and hopes in print can ever say—will remain his one true legacy for all time.

  Think of it. Standing in the shadow of Bear Butte, where most sources agree Crazy Horse was born. Sitting out on the barren, wind-battered end of what is now called Scotts Bluff in southwestern Nebraska, those heights generally accepted to have been the site of this man’s momentous and tragically prophetic vision quest. Walking through the calf-deep, icy snow crusted along the narrow ridgetop where Crazy Horse and the rest of his decoys lured Fetterman’s freezing, frightened soldiers for what would be this young warrior’s first great fight against the blue-coats. Stepping across the narrow strip of asphalt smeared atop Custer’s ridge, moving from that tall, stark monument to where we used to be allowed to stand and look down the slope to the north, imagining how Crazy Horse and his warriors raced around the base of this bluff to hurl themselves against the remnants of those five companies of U.S. cavalry punching north off the ridgetop, driven back to make their last stand in what took but minutes to become this war chief’s greatest victory against the blue-coats. Then you must trudge through the deep snow and January cold up a gradually rising bluff to reach the ridge where he and his last hold-outs suffered winter’s cruelest bite as a blizzard closed its maw on Battle Butte.… Don’t you sense despair seizing your heart like a hawk’s talons as you realize this was where Crazy Horse fought his last fight against the U.S. Army?

  Eventually I find myself standing right outside the bolted door of this low-roofed log structure where few people come to intrude upon my thoughts while I stare at the ground, feeling like I’ve been kicked in the belly by the realization that it was right here that a bayonet was thrust into the body of Crazy Horse, that it was right next door that he took his last breath. That it was here that the great spiritual hoop of the Lakota people was irretrievably broken for all time.

  Save for the Donegan family, all the rest of the characters in my story are real, and were there, on this very ground, during those final and fateful months of Crazy Horse’s life.

  While a few of the scenes portrayed here may not have happened at all, or may not have happened as I have written them, you must bear in mind that I have attempted with the utmost fidelity to render this story just as true as I can make it, despite all the conflicting testimony from those who witnessed these final days.

  Because Crazy Horse rarely spoke in public, even among his own people and especially in the presence of white men, little is left but the reminiscences of his friends, companions, and enemies. From them I have constructed the very psyche of the man I believe was this great Oglala chief—a man who had feet of clay, who had never desired the mantle of leadership to be laid about his shoulders, a man who wanted one woman but ended up settling for another, a father who wanted children of his own but in the end lost the only daughter we are certain he ever had. A man who weighed his obligations to his people against the hungers of his own soul.

  So while not every scene in the book you are about to read may have actually occurred, I hope that by the time you close the covers on my story you will say to yourself that it had the ring of truth, perhaps saying to yourself that if we don’t really know exactly what happened to undo these last days of all that Crazy Horse was … then perhaps this short tale is how it might well have happened.

  How Crazy Horse—this quiet Strange Man of the Oglala—emerged from some two decades of warfare to turn over his people and his weapons to the hated wasicu, and became mired in a tangle of events that he could not escape.

  Perhaps this is how it happened.…

  PROLOGUE

  Pehingnunipi Wi

  MOON OF SHEDDING PONIES, 1877

  BY TELEGRAPH

  ILLINOIS.

  Crook on the Indians.

  CHICAGO, May 2.—The Post has an interview with General Crook concerning the Indian question, the substance of which is that General Crook considers the Indians are like white men in respect to acquisitiveness; that if they are given a start in the way of lands, cattle and agricultural implements, they will keep adding to their wealth and settle down into respectable, staid citizens.

  Ta’sunke Witko!

  Oh, how he wanted to ignore that summons.

  Ta’sunke Witko! Listen! For I am calling you, Ta’sunke Witko!

  He finally opened his eyes into the cold, chill breeze of this springtime moon and looked around him, just to be sure one of his friends was not playing a child’s trick on him. No one. Which was as he preferred it, for he sat alone on the brow of this hill.

  “You know me. I am the one called Ta’sunke Witko; I am Crazy Horse,” he sighed wear
ily, a pale streamer of his breathsmoke whipped away on a gust of wind. “Why do you come talk to me now, when you have not spoken to my heart in so many moons?”

  A sudden sound erupted on the wind behind him, brushing his ears, like that of a rush of wings as a great bird settled behind him, coming to rest. Closer still—he sensed the being at his back, upon the crest of the hillside where he sat staring down into the valley where the sun would soon emerge. His people were awakening below, some of the old men kicking life into last night’s fires, old women starting into the brush to gather wood, the young boys leaving their blanket and canvas shelters, hunched over in the cold wind as they trudged out to the surrounding hills to bring in the first of the travois horses for their families and that day’s travel.

  I have always been with you, Ta’sunke Witko. Even though I had no words to speak, I have never abandoned you.

  “Then why has this felt like being so alone, if you truly were with me, Sicun?” he asked his spirit guardian.1

  You are a man, so you are not always aware I am here. Sometimes … many times, your thoughts and your heart are so busy with other matters and feelings that it may seem as if I am not here with you. But … the truth remains that I am a part of you, and you a part of me until your final breath escapes your body. Until we are freed together.

  “Why have you come to me now, Spirit Guardian?”

  And he closed his eyes gently, imagining the majestic appearance of that spotted war eagle that was given birth inside his breast so many summers ago. The same Winged Being that had instructed him to wear no bonnet, only two feathers2 tied at the back of his long, sandy hair, their tips pointing down. The medicine pouch hanging from his neck contained the dried, shriveled brain and heart from the same golden, or spotted, eagle he had captured bare-handed in his youth, mixed with the petals and leaves of the wild aster. One of the eagle’s wing bones he had used to carve a whistle that he blew each time he raced into battle.

  Didn’t you call me? Didn’t you make the climb up this hill in the cold darkness to talk to me?

  “You know that I did.” Crazy Horse stared down at his hands, fingers interwoven together in his lap, his skin much lighter than that of most Lakota.3

  Finally he raised his eyes to the horizon growing reddish orange below the purple bellies of the storm clouds that had soaked them all last night before lumbering off to the east with their fury. “But … how do I say the words that I have never spoken?”