Crazy Horse

Crazy Horse was a Native American in the Oglala clan of the Eton Sioux Indians. He lived during the middle of the nineteenth century, when the federal government attacked Native Americans to take their lands. Crazy Horse worked as a warrior to defend his people and their homelands and communities.

Crazy Horse was probably born in 1842 along Rapid Creek near Rapid City, South Dakota . His father, also called Crazy Horse, was a medicine man in the Oglala Sioux clan. His mother, Rattle Blanket, was a member of the Brulé Sioux.

Crazy Horse was known as Curly as a young child. In his teens, he was called Horse Stands in Sight. When he was around seventeen, his father observed how hard and well he fought in a battle against other Native Americans. At this time, Crazy Horse received his father's name as his own.

In the late 1840s, the California gold rush and the American victory in the Mexican-American War (1846–48) led to massive settlement of the western portion of the continent. Such settlement led to decades of conflict with the Native American populations who already lived there. By 1857, Crazy Horse had seen American soldiers destroy three Native American villages. That year, he attended a council of Native Americans near Bear Butte at the eastern edge of the Black Hills, South Dakota, to discuss the federal problem.

Resistance

In the 1860s, Crazy Horse joined forces of Native Americans who resisted passage for the American military and settlers through the Powder River region, which is in Montana and Wyoming . The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 temporarily ended this dispute between the Sioux and the federal government. The discovery of gold in the Black Hills in 1874, however, led the government to disregard the treaty in favor of gold prospecting.

During the Black Hills gold rush, Native American tribes joined to oppose the taking of their lands. On March 17, 1876, Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds (1822–1899) destroyed the village in which Crazy Horse lived. Crazy Horse led his people on a raid to recapture the horses taken by Reynolds and his men. On June 17, Crazy Horse and his men deflected forces led by General George Crook (1828–1890) near Little Bighorn, a river in Montana. On June 25, Crazy Horse fought the famous battle of the Little Bighorn, also called Custer's Last Stand , at which the Native Americans killed General George Custer (1839–1876) and all 264 of his men.

Defeat

The Native American victory at Little Bighorn did not win the war. Crazy Horse's people went into winter quarters in the Wolf Mountains near the headwaters of the Rosebud Creek in Montana. On January 8, 1877, Colonel Nelson A. Miles (1839–1925) led an attack on the village. Crazy Horse continued to fight for four more months, but his people ran low on food for themselves and their horses. They surrendered to federal authorities on May 6, 1877.

Four months later, Crazy Horse was in custody at Fort Robinson in Nebraska . The federal government had not honored its promise to move Crazy Horse and his people to a reservation in Wyoming. The government, in fact, might have had plans to exile Crazy Horse, perhaps to Florida .

On September 5, 1877, Crazy Horse pulled a knife when he thought he was about to be imprisoned in a guardhouse. He was stabbed in the ensuing scuffle, either by his own knife or by a soldier's bayonet. Crazy Horse died hours later in the presence of his father and a man named Touch the Clouds. He supposedly was buried near Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Within a few weeks, his people were sent to reservations in South Dakota.