Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (10 page)

The completed treaty gave the whites the right to use the Oregon Trail (the “Holy Road,” the Indians dubbed it), which was the point of it all. The Indians promised not to make war on each other or on the whites—clauses impossible of fulfillment—and to respect the boundaries drawn on a map to mark their respective territory. Within the year, of course, the Sioux were ignoring the treaty and pushing the Crows out of the Powder River country. In return for the right of passage, the whites promised to pay annuity goods to the value of $50,000 yearly to the Indians. They insisted that each of the tribes have a single chief, so that he could take charge of the distribution and speak for the tribe. For an unexplained reason they passed over Old Smoke and chose Conquering Bear as chief of all the Sioux, a previously unheard of position.
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But Conquering Bear became, instantly, a man of power—more power than any Indian had ever dreamed of; he became a man to inspire awe. Father De Smet described how the process began: the Indians had all gathered in a gigantic circle, with the white officials in the middle. Conquering Bear and the selected chiefs of the Shoshonis, Cheyennes, and Crows walked to center stage, where with much pomp they were presented with gaudy uniforms. “You may easily imagine their singular movements upon appearing in public and the admiration they excited in their comrades. … The great chiefs for the first time in their lives pantalooned: each was arrayed in a general’s uniform, a gilt sword hanging at his side. Their long coarse hair floated above the military costume and the whole was crowned with the burlesque solemnity of their painted faces.”
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But if they looked funny to De Smet, they looked impressive as hell to the Indians.

Conquering Bear and the other chiefs now had everyone’s attention. When they began to distribute the white man’s presents, they got everyone’s gratitude. And a hold over their fellow tribesmen in the future, because the goods would come every year and the white man would deal only through the chiefs.

So now the Oglalas had a chief, and lots of the white man’s good things. Everyone had had a fine time. Curly and the Bad Faces left Laramie in a happy mood. They went north for a buffalo hunt and then to settle down for the winter. After the hunt the following spring they returned to the Laramie region, where they harassed passing wagon trains and waited for their annuity goods. Curly may have participated in some of the raids on the emigrants, for they were well-nigh continuous and exclusively the work of the hot-blooded young warriors. Amos Robinson, who passed over the Oregon Trail en route to California in 1852, the year after the Laramie treaty, recalled that his train was met by a party of Sioux one day’s march east of Laramie. The Indians plundered the train, taking what they wanted and killing a herder. The next day Robinson saw the same Indians hanging around Fort Laramie. The emigrants rested one day at the fort, then pushed on, only to be followed by the same Indians who again plundered the train a few miles away from the fort.
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During this period scarcely a train got through the Plains without being hit at least once by the Sioux.
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Friction was continuous. The emigrants hated the Indians and resented having to pay tribute to them; the Indians were furious at the ever-increasing flow of emigrants, whom they blamed for the disappearance of the buffalo herds from the Platte Valley and for the diseases that were wracking the tribes. Conquering Bear did all he could to keep the warriors quiet, but it was impossible, for the young braves were sure they were strong enough to destroy all the whites on the Plains. The soldiers at Fort Laramie, meanwhile, were just as sure they could teach a lesson to the disorderly, undisciplined, ill-armed Sioux and were itching for a chance.

In June of 1853, when the Indians had again begun to gather around Laramie to receive their summer hand-outs, there was more trouble. A young Miniconjou, visiting the Oglalas, asked a soldier for a ride across the river in a skiff. The soldier told the Miniconjou to go to hell; the Indian fired an arrow at him. The next day the soldiers, twenty in all, marched into the Oglala camp to arrest the offender. Some troublemaker, whether white or red is not known,
fired a shot; the men in uniform unloosed a volley, and five Oglalas lay dead. The Miniconjou got away. A few days later the Oglalas got revenge, attacking a small emigrant camp near the fort and killing a family of four. The soldiers marched out of the fort again and fired on the first Indians they met, killing one and wounding another. The pattern was typical—neither side, in the struggle for the possession of the Plains that was now underway, ever distinguished the guilty from the innocent. If Indian blood was spilled, white blood must run, even if the white victims had been miles away from the original incident; so too with the whites, who attacked the first red men they came across whenever an Indian outrage was committed.
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In 1853 Conquering Bear, who seems to have realized that his power was dependent on his favored status with the whites, was able to smooth things over and there was no general war. After the Indians got their annuity goods they drifted off again, with promises to return the next summer.

Throughout this period Curly continued to grow and learn. He and Hump, his kola, had added Little Hawk (Curly’s younger brother) and Lone Bear to their group. The four were always together, on raiding parties, watching the pony herd at night, making their bows, arrows, and other implements, hunting, or just loafing and talking. Curly had grown to nearly six feet in height, although he was on the thin side. His hair remained sandy brown, or even medium blond, and his complexion was light. Short Bull, who grew up with Curly, said “his features were not like those of the rest of us. His face was not broad, and he had a sharp, high nose. He had black eyes that hardly ever looked straight at a man, but they didn’t miss much that was going on, all the same.”
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He was shy, quieter and more reserved than his fellows; he was already showing that characteristic that his childhood acquaintance, He Dog, would later emphasize. He Dog said of Curly, “He never spoke in council and attended very few. There was no special reason for this, it was just his nature. He was a very quiet man except when there was fighting.”
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Chips, a medicine man slightly older than Curly, said that “when we were young all we thought about was going to war with some other nation; all tried to get their names up the highest, and whoever did so was the principal man in the nation; and Crazy Horse [Curly] wanted to get to the highest station and rank.”
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As a teen-ager, then, Curly was set on his life’s path. He would be a warrior and a hunter, protecting and providing for the helpless
ones of his tribe. He wanted prestige and fame and was willing, nay, anxious, to take great personal risks to achieve his goal. He thought of the Crows, Shoshonis, and Pawnees as his main enemies. He had seen much of the white man, but had at best a limited understanding of white culture or practices. He was a free young man, living his life the way he wanted to live it.

* Conquering Bear was a Brulé. The whites thought they were making him chief of all the Sioux, but he seems to have assumed that he was now chief of the Oglalas and Brulés. There is great confusion on this point because the Indians could not conceive of anyone being chief of even the Oglalas or Brulés, much less
all
the Sioux.

CHAPTER FOUR

Curly’s Vision

“I give him a new name, the name of his father, and of many fathers before him—I give him a great name. I call him Crazy Horse.”  Crazy Horse’s father

In the summer of 1854, following the annual Sun Dance and the buffalo hunt, the northern Oglalas and the Brulés returned to the Fort Laramie region, there to await their presents from the government. The troubles of the previous summer were, they felt, of no more significance than the passing of a dark cloud over the face of the moon. They traded buffalo robes for whiskey, coffee, and other items at Jim Bordeaux’s trading house and at the American Fur Company post a few miles east of Fort Laramie, held feasts for each other, and pestered the emigrants on the Holy Road. Conquering Bear was there, camped with the Brulés, and so were Curly, Hump, Little Hawk, and Lone Bear, all living in the Oglala camp headed by Old-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses
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(Old Smoke was a very old man by this time and lived permanently at Fort Laramie, in retirement).
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The boys probably joined other youngsters on raiding parties against the emigrant wagon trains. Almost every day young braves would nip off a horse here, a cow there, or sneak into a camp at night and take an iron cooking pot or even a rifle. It was great fun, of course, and profitable; best of all, the emigrants did not pursue the thieves as the Crows or Pawnees would have done, and the tiny infantry garrison at Fort Laramie was much too small to do anything about it.

Or so the Sioux believed. Inside the fort, however, a young officer fresh out of West Point, twenty-four-year-old Lieutenant John L. Grattan, was itching to get at the Indians. Grattan had never seen the Sioux in battle, but he was certain that such an ill-organized,
undisciplined bunch of savages could never stand up to a force of U. S. Infantry. Like so many other whites on the frontier, Grattan was a heavy drinker—there not being much else to do on such an isolated post—and when drunk he often said that with twenty soldiers and a field piece he could whip the whole Sioux nation.
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For Grattan and the other troops inside Fort Laramie the situation was fast becoming intolerable. They were supposed to be protecting the lives and property of American citizens on the Holy Road, but it was almost as if they themselves were being besieged. They could do little more than offer the emigrants a place to rest, while every day the Sioux grew bolder. Bored, hot, and resentful at being sent to such a Godforsaken place, the officers (Lieutenant Hugh B. Fleming, twenty-eight years old and two years out of West Point, in command) decided that the Sioux had to be taught a lesson before they started carrying off the wagons themselves, instead of just a stray stock animal and a few utensils.

Their chance came on August 17, 1854. A Mormon wagon train passed the Brulé camp. At the rear of the wagons a Mormon was leading a lame old cow. Some young Miniconjous were staying with the Brulés, the same troublemakers from the previous summer; one of their number, High Forehead, shot the old cow with an arrow, perhaps as the result of a dare or just for the hell of it. The Mormon, terrified, fled the scene, hurried to Fort Laramie, where he told his story, with embellishments, and demanded that the Army do something.
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Fleming sent a runner to fetch Conquering Bear. When the old chief appeared, Fleming demanded that he bring in High Forehead and turn him over to the white authorities for proper punishment. Conquering Bear was astonished; here was a mere boy with less than one hundred men under his command telling a venerable chief of the Sioux, who had a thousand and more warriors in the vicinity, what to do. (One is struck by the extreme youth of the frontier Army leadership; Fleming was a very young man to be in such a responsible position—at twenty-eight, he was the chief representative of the United States Government on the whole upper Platte River.)

Conquering Bear told Fleming that the cow was lame and nearly dead, and that High Forehead’s action was no more than what other Indians had done a hundred times over. Why all the fuss? But Fleming said enough was enough and insisted on the surrender of High Forehead. Not wanting any trouble, Conquering Bear offered to take the Mormon to his personal herd of ponies and allow him to pick one for himself, in payment for the cow.

According to Frank Salaway, a fur trader who was there, Fleming brushed the offer aside and insisted, “I want you to bring that man in here.” Conquering Bear replied, “That man does not belong to my band. He is a Sioux, but he belongs to the Miniconjou band.” Fleming said that was immaterial; he wanted High Forehead brought in. Well, said Conquering Bear, “if you want him why don’t you go up there and arrest him? That is what your soldiers are here for.” Fleming was furious. The whites had made Conquering Bear chief of all the Sioux so that they could deal with the tribe through him, and here was Conquering Bear saying he had no power at all, no way to force a hot-blooded young warrior to toe a line. Conquering Bear’s gratuitous advice to be careful because High Forehead was hot-tempered did not help Fleming’s mood. He told Conquering Bear his soldiers would be in the Brulé camp the following morning. “All right,” replied Conquering Bear. “I’ll show you his lodge; I’ll show you the man.”
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