Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors (56 page)

Sometime that fall of 1871, after Hump was killed, Crazy Horse worked up a small war party against the Crows. Only a few others were going along, or so Crazy Horse said. It was a feint, however; Crazy Horse did not intend to move against the enemy. Instead, he was running off with Black Buffalo Woman and the war party story was designed to reduce suspicion.

The night before the lovers ran away, Black Buffalo Woman gave her children to trusted relatives to take care of until she returned. But it did not seem likely she would be back soon, because No Water was a jealous man and besides Crazy Horse neglected to pay him for Black Buffalo Woman.

He Dog related that when No Water returned from a hunting trip and found his tipi empty, he went around the village and gathered up his children. “Crazy Horse had been paying open attention to the woman for a long time,” He Dog related, “and it didn’t take No Water very long to guess where she had gone. He gathered up a fairly strong war party and went after.” First, however, No Water went to Bad Heart Bull and borrowed a certain good revolver which Bad Heart Bull owned. No Water said he needed the weapon to go hunting.

Crazy Horse and Black Buffalo Woman were camping on the Powder River. No Water overtook them on the second night. No Water checked each tipi until he finally discovered Crazy Horse and Black Buffalo Woman sitting by the fire in a friend’s lodge. Throwing
aside the tipi flap, No Water rushed in, waved his pistol, and shouted, “My friend, I have come!”

Crazy Horse leaped up and reached for his knife, but Little Big Man, who was sitting next to him, grabbed his arm and held it, hoping to avoid bloodshed. No Water fired. The bullet hit Crazy Horse just below the left nostril, followed the line of the teeth and fractured his upper jaw. Crazy Horse fell forward into the fire.

Black Buffalo Woman screamed, then crawled out under the back of the tent and fled. She returned to her relatives and begged protection. No Water fled too, running into the night. He jumped on the nearest horse and took off. When he got back to camp he told friends he had killed Crazy Horse. No Water’s friends made a sweat lodge for him and purified him of the murder. Then he disappeared. Crazy Horse’s friends, meanwhile, not being able to find No Water, killed his favorite mule, slashing it to bits in their anger.

Here was trouble for the Oglalas of the worst possible kind. Crazy Horse was not dead, but he was seriously wounded. No Water was guilty of attempted homicide and of refusing to allow Black Buffalo Woman to live with whomever she pleased, as was the right of a Sioux woman. Crazy Horse had broken the vows he had taken as a shirt-wearer, putting his own interests ahead of the well-being of the tribe. A blood feud might result, or something worse; Crazy Horse was identified with the Hunkpatila band of the Oglalas (“those who camp at the end of the circle”), while No Water was a Bad Face with close connections to Red Cloud. The incident might even set the two bands of the Oglalas at war with each other.

Everything in Sioux culture recoiled at such a prospect. The important, steady men in both bands went to work at once to smooth things over. By the second day after the shooting it was clear that Crazy Horse would recover. He helped keep the peace, too, by signaling in the sign language (he could not speak yet) that there must be no trouble nor should Black Buffalo Woman be punished, for she had done nothing wrong. He fell into a fitful sleep. From time to time, he would stir, then mumble through his broken jaw something that sounded like, “Let go! Let go of my arm!” He was, perhaps, remembering his vision, when his arms had been held by one of his own people.

No Water’s friends and relatives in the Bad Face camp wanted to avoid further trouble, too, although they were willing to fight if necessary. Black Twin took his brother No Water into his lodge and said, “Come and stay with me and if they want to fight us, we will fight.” But he also encouraged No Water to atone for the injury
done, so No Water sent three ponies, including his best bay and his finest roan, to Worm, Crazy Horse’s father. By accepting the gifts, Worm signified that he was satisfied and wanted no more shooting.

Crazy Horse’s friends, meanwhile, had taken him to the small camp of his uncle Spotted Crow to recover. They were afraid to return him to his own camp and stir up the warriors there; fortunately the hot-tempered Little Hawk was off on an expedition against the Shoshonis. Even so, as He Dog put it, Crazy Horse’s friends “were very angry and thought they ought to have No Water turned over to them to be punished, or else wage war on his people. For a while it looked as if a lot of blood would flow.”

No Water, meanwhile, told Black Twin that the medicine man Chips was responsible for the whole thing. No Water said Chips had made Crazy Horse a love charm to induce Black Buffalo Woman to run away with him—in No Water’s view, nothing else could explain Black Buffalo Woman’s leaving him. Black Twin tried to force Chips to admit that he had indeed made such a love charm, but Chips stoutly denied it. Chips said he knew nothing about the matter, although it was true that he had recently made Crazy Horse a protective charm for his war horses and earlier had made him a little medicine bundle to wear around his shoulder. Black Twin was finally convinced and let Chips go; Chips left the Bad Face camp and did not return for a long time.

The peacemakers, meanwhile, were at work. By great good fortune, as He Dog put it, “there were three parties to the quarrel instead of two. Bull Head, Ashes, and Spotted Crow, the uncles of Crazy Horse and the headmen of that band [the band Crazy Horse lived with while he recovered], worked for peace. Also, Bad Heart Bull and I thought we were involved in it, since Bad Heart Bull’s revolver had been used for the shooting [and He Dog was No Water’s cousin]. We did what we could.” There was a grand exchange of horses. Bad Heart Bull had Black Buffalo Woman come live with him in his tent “and left her there on condition that she should not be punished for what she had done. This condition was demanded by Crazy Horse. Then Bad Heart Bull arranged for her to go back to her husband in peace. If it had not been settled this way, there might have been a bad fight.”
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So the Oglalas managed to get through the crisis without any further spilling of blood or anyone getting killed. But they paid a high price for the incident. As He Dog explained to Eleanor Hinman, “Because of all this, Crazy Horse could not be a shirt-wearer any longer. When we were made shirt-wearers we were bound by very
strict rules as to what we should do and what not do, which were very hard for us to follow. I have never spoken to any but a very few persons of what they made us promise then.” After a pause, He Dog let a little of his anger show: “I have always kept the oaths I made then, but Crazy Horse did not.”
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So Crazy Horse lost his position for trying to take another man’s wife, but even that was not the end of it. The Big Bellies quarreled over who should replace Crazy Horse, quarreled so badly that the whole organization broke down. Unable to make a selection, the Big Bellies soon split, never to meet again. When Eleanor Hinman asked He Dog who replaced Crazy Horse as shirt-wearer, He Dog replied: “The shirt was never given to anybody else. Everything seemed to stop right there. Everything began to fall to pieces. After that it seemed as if anybody who wanted to could wear the shirt—it meant nothing. But in the days when Crazy Horse and I received our shirts we had to accomplish many things to win them.”
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The Oglalas had made a promising start in the development of a governmental organization that would have made it possible for them to act together in the face of an outside threat. Now that hope was gone. The Sioux male’s concept of property vis-à-vis women had ruined the whole scheme. The loss was not felt immediately, however, because in 1871 the whites were far away from the Powder River and the Crows and Shoshonis had been driven beyond the Bighorn Mountains. But the time would come when the Oglalas would feel keenly their failure to stick together.
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When Crazy Horse’s wound had healed into a scar, he joined a big camp on a buffalo hunt along the Yellowstone River. He had hardly entered the village when the expedition that had gone out against the Shoshonis returned to camp. The survivors reported that they had had a bad time of it, not from the Shoshonis, but from a band of white miners, well-armed, who had fired at them from behind cover. Little Hawk had been killed.
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Crazy Horse was stunned. Little Hawk was dead! The bravest of them all, one who, so it was said, would soon outstrip even Crazy Horse himself, if he managed to live. Little Hawk, to whom Crazy Horse had taught everything he knew and with whom he had shared countless adventures and experiences. Crazy Horse had seen his younger brother take innumerable risks in fights with other Indians and never get hurt; now he was dead, killed by a sneak shot fired by a white man.

The next day Crazy Horse went hunting. It helped ease the pain in his heart a little to drive his arrow through a buffalo and he
brought down a fat cow. Late in the afternoon he started back toward camp, walking, with packs of meat loaded on his pony. Closer to camp a man named Moccasin Top who had also been hunting was still dressing his kill. Moccasin Top owned a fast buckskin pony and had it tethered near him while he worked. No Water, who did not know that Crazy Horse was in the vicinity, came along on foot and saw Crazy Horse approaching. No Water untied the buckskin, jumped on, and galloped away.

“Are you still here?” Crazy Horse asked when he reached Moccasin Top. “Then who was the man that just rode off on your buckskin?”

“That was No Water,” Moccasin Top answered.

“I wish I had known it!” Crazy Horse exclaimed. “I would certainly have given him a bullet in return for the one he gave me.”

Cutting the meat loose from the pack, Crazy Horse leaped on his pony and gave chase. He followed No Water to the banks of the Yellowstone, where No Water forced the buckskin to plunge into the river and swim across. Crazy Horse decided not to follow. No Water rode downstream for some time, then recrossed the Yellowstone and went south, eventually joining Red Cloud at the agency. According to He Dog, “he stayed at the agency all through the war with the white people and had nothing more to do with the hostiles.” Black Buffalo Woman returned to No Water. Some months later she gave birth to a light-haired, light-complexioned little girl. Gossips said it was Crazy Horse’s daughter.
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In January 1872 Custer received a most welcome order from Sheridan. The Grand Duke Alexis of Russia was touring the world, was currently in the United States, and wanted to try his hand at buffalo hunting. The son of Czar Alexander II, only twenty-two years old, was an avid sportsman and the United States Government wanted to show him every courtesy and consideration. Relations between Russia and the United States were excellent, especially because Russia five years before had sold Alaska to the United States at a bargain price, and Alexis had been on a triumphal tour of eastern and midwestern cities. Sheridan was going to make sure the grand duke bagged his buffalo and had arranged for Spotted Tail and some Brulés to join the hunt. He had also signed up the famous scout William F. Cody, later to be famous as a result of Ned Buntline’s dime novel
Buffalo Bill.
Sheridan brought Custer along because he had a reputation as an outstanding hunter.
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The party, including actor Lawrence Barrett, detrained at North Platte, Nebraska, then rode south fifty miles, accompanied by picked
companies of cavalry. There camp was set up on the Red Willow Creek, and what a camp it was! Sheridan had arranged for forty of the Army’s best wall tents, plus two gigantic hospital tents for the use of the grand duke and his party. The hospital tents were elegantly carpeted and there was champagne served with the meals.
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Spotted Tail’s camp of six hundred carefully chosen Brulés was just downstream. Sheridan had promised Spotted Tail twenty-five wagon-loads of presents if he would be good, so the Brulés put on quite a show. Both the people and the village were spick and span, with fine tanned-skin clothing and new tipis. Pawnee Killer was along; one wonders if Custer talked with his old nemesis about their skirmishes in Kansas in 1867. The Brulés entertained the imperial party at night with songs and dances. Custer was reported to have flirted shamelessly with Spotted Tail’s sixteen-year-old daughter, who was Crazy Horse’s first cousin.
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On January 13, 1872, the party made its first hunt, Spotted Tail and eight warriors coming along. Sheridan was sick, so Custer, Cody, and the grand duke led the way through snow that in places was eighteen inches deep. A newspaperman reported that Custer wore “his well-known frontier buckskin hunting costume, and if, instead of the comical seal-skin hat he wore, he had feathers fastened in his flowing hair, he would have passed at a distance for a great Indian chief.”
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Cody located a small herd of buffalo, Custer and the grand duke charged, and Alexis got his buffalo with a revolver shot in the head. Returning to base camp, Alexis sent a runner to North Platte to cable the good news to the Czar.
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On the next day’s hunt the grand duke killed a few more buffalo, but the herd again was small and it soon scattered and was lost to sight. Both Cody and Custer went scouting but neither could find the buffalo, so Spotted Tail and his eight warriors were given permission to try their luck. They not only found the beasts, but held them together at the entrance of a long and widening canyon. There were broken sides and high hills on either side, forming a magnificent arena. Spotted Tail told the whites to stay on the hills; he and his men would show them an old-time Indian hunt.