Crazy Horse ( , ; – September 5, 1877) was a Lakota war leader of the Oglala band and one of the most renowned Native American figures of the nineteenth century. Known for his commitment to defending Lakota lands and lifeways, he emerged as a central figure in the northern Great Plains during a period of intense conflict with the United States. Crazy Horse resisted U.S. expansion into the Powder River Country, rejecting treaty settlements and reservation life, and became widely respected for both his tactical skill and his personal humility, which included a lifelong avoidance of being photographed.
He played leading roles in several major engagements, including the 1866 Fetterman Fight, in which a combined Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho force annihilated a U.S. Army detachment, and the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn, where he helped lead the combined Native forces that defeated the 7th Cavalry under George Armstrong Custer. His reputation as a warrior and strategist earned him admiration among his own people and grudging respect from his adversaries.
After months of pursuit during the Great Sioux War of 1876–1877, Crazy Horse surrendered to U.S. forces in May 1877, seeking to secure the survival of his band amid famine and military pressure. Tensions with military authorities and rival Lakota leaders soon followed. In September 1877, after being brought to Camp Robinson in northwestern Nebraska, he was fatally wounded by a bayonet in the course of an alleged struggle with a guard while being confined to the post guardhouse. His death quickly became the subject of conflicting accounts, but he has since endured as a symbol of Lakota resistance and cultural integrity.
Early life Conflicting reports exist about Crazy Horse's birth year, but modern biographer Kingsley Bray (among others) claims he was born in 1840. However, according to Šúŋka Bloká (He Dog), he and Crazy Horse "were both born in the same year at the same season of the year," which census records and other interviews place in 1842. Ptehé Wóptuȟ'a (Encouraging Bear), an Oglala medicine man and spiritual adviser to Crazy Horse, reported that Crazy Horse was born "in the year in which the band to which he belonged, the Oglala, stole One Hundred Horses, and in the fall of the year," a reference to the annual Lakota calendar or winter count. Oral history accounts from relatives on the Cheyenne River Reservation place his birth in the spring of 1840. In keeping with oral claims, the late native Lakota speaking author, actor, and educator Joseph Marshall likewise affirmed Crazy Horse's birth year as 1840.
Among the Lakota, black hair was a near-universal attribute—thick, lustrous, and persistent well into adulthood, particularly for males, yet Crazy Horse proved an exception. His hair was notably lighter than the Lakota norm from early childhood, which earned him the nickname Žiží (Light Hair). Bray similarly notes the distinctive hair, adding that as Crazy Horse matured, his lighter complexion and wavy brown-tinged hair earned him the family nickname Pehin Yuhaha (Curly Hair).
Immediate family
Crazy Horse was born to parents from two different bands of the Lakota division of the Sioux, his father an Oglala and his mother a Miniconjou. His father, born in 1810, was also named Tȟašúŋke Witkó (Crazy Horse). Originally, Crazy Horse was named Čháŋ Óhaŋ (Among the Trees) at birth, meaning he was one with nature. His mother was Rattling Blanket Woman, whom historian George Hyde asserts was Miniconjou and the sister of Spotted Tail, who became a Brulé head chief. She may have also been a member of the Lone Horn family, another prominent tribe amid the Miniconjou. She was said to be beautiful and a fast runner.
One account said that after the son had reached maturity and shown his strength, his father gave him his name and took a new one, Waglúla (Worm). Another version of how the younger Crazy Horse acquired his name stems from his haŋbléčheya ceremony, during which he was told to kill a red-tailed hawk and then at a gathering of holy men, a ceremony was performed conferring the name. Crazy Horse's cousin (son of Hewáŋžiča, Lone Horn) was Maȟpíya Ičáȟtagya (Touch the Clouds); the two were close friends. He saved Crazy Horse's life at least once.
In 1844, an Oglala raiding party attempted to steal some horses from the Crow but were discovered; among the raiding party was Rattling Blanket Woman's brother, He Crow, who was killed along with thirty-eight other Oglala tribesmen. Grief stricken by the loss of her beloved brother, Rattling Blanket Woman—who was supposedly carrying Worm's third child, according to one of her descendants—went into despair, found a "sturdy cottonwood" tree and hanged herself, which traumatized young Crazy Horse and the family kept secret. Worm went into mourning for four years. Rattling Blanket Woman's sister, Good Looking Woman, left her husband, offered herself as Worm's replacement wife, and stayed on to raise Crazy Horse. Other versions of the legend posit that Good Looking Woman was likewise grief-stricken by the deaths of those she knew.
White expansion and the impact of the Grattan Massacre During the first decade of Crazy Horse's life and into his early pre-teen years, white settler expansion proved detrimental to the Lakota people. Then in 1854, a dispute over a cow belonging to a Mormon emigrant party encamped near Fort Laramie precipitated a confrontation that would prove formative for the young Crazy Horse. Lieutenant John Lawrence Grattan, dispatched to arrest the Miniconjou man responsible, arrived at the Brulé camp with twenty-nine soldiers and an interpreter; when negotiations collapsed, Grattan ordered his men to fire. Conquering Bear, the Lakota head chief, fell wounded, and the Lakota—vastly outnumbering the soldiers—killed Grattan and all but one of his men in what became known as the Grattan massacre. The mortally wounded Conquering Bear was carried east by the Brulé, dying of his wounds several days later along the Niobrara River. The effect of Conquering Bear's death on the teenage Crazy Horse is a matter of contested tradition rather than documented history. That he subsequently experienced a vision afterward is better attested than the precise circumstances surrounding it.
Visions According to the most widely repeated account, which derives principally from the white trader and interpreter William Garnett—who claimed to have heard it from Crazy Horse himself in 1868—Crazy Horse fasted for two days on the open plains, keeping himself awake by placing sharp stones beneath his body; when no vision came, he descended toward his horse hobbled near a lake, and the vision overtook him there, possibly because he fainted. In the vision, a man rode out of the lake on horseback, changing colors as he approached and floating above the ground. He wore plain leggings and a simple shirt, his face unpainted, a single eagle feather in his long brown hair, and a small brown stone tied behind one ear. The man told Crazy Horse never to wear a war bonnet, never to tie up his horse's tail, and to rub dust over his hair and body before battle; he would never be killed by a bullet or an enemy, and should never take anything for himself. Arrows and bullets disappeared around the man as he rode; he was seized repeatedly by those behind him, but broke free each time. A storm arose—lightning appeared on his cheeks, hailstones on his body—and as a hawk screamed overhead, the vision faded.
Garnett's account, recorded decades after Crazy Horse's death, warrants measured scrutiny. Chips (Wóptura), Crazy Horse's longtime friend and spiritual mentor—the medicine man who interpreted the war leader's vision and provided the talismans he carried into battle—stated flatly: "There is no truth in the story of the horseman coming out of the pond and telling Crazy Horse what to do." Black Elk, a cousin of Crazy Horse, offered a different rendering, learned secondhand from his father, explaining that Crazy Horse:
He Dog corroborated at least the outward expression of the vision in Crazy Horse's battle preparation: he never wore a war bonnet; Chips had given him power on the condition that he wear an eagle-bone whistle and one feather in battle, and carry a certain round stone with a hole in it beneath his left arm on a leather thong over his shoulder. Crazy Horse's brother-in-law, Red Feather, likewise reported that he wore a stone on a thong under his left arm when going into battle.
Personality Crazy Horse was profoundly "scarred by personal tragedy and loss," which rendered him melancholic and reticent; for the Lakota people, this implied he was a heyoka or a "dreamer of thunder." He was otherwise considered "reserved", since often he refrained from speaking at meetings of the council elders, and his shyness could be misunderstood as aloofness. Crazy Horse was nonetheless generous to the poor, the elderly, and children alike. In John Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks, one finds the following about Crazy Horse:
Black Elk also stated that Crazy Horse never wanted much for himself and that unlike other chiefs, he had few ponies. Aside from his austere nature, Crazy Horse was said to have "deplored alcohol and its effect on tribes."
Given his standing as a great warrior and his revered place among the Lakota people, Crazy Horse could have led in an authoritarian fashion, but as Joseph Marshall relates, because of his personality and character, he instead led by example.
War leadership Early exploits and title of "Shirt Wearer" Through the late 1850s and early 1860s, Crazy Horse's reputation as a warrior grew, as did his fame among the Lakota. The Lakota told accounts of him in their oral histories. His first kill was a Shoshone raider who had murdered a Lakota woman washing buffalo meat along the Powder River. After the skirmish with the Shoshone was complete, Crazy Horse had collected a scalp and two horses. Crazy Horse fought in numerous battles between the Lakota and their traditional enemies, the Crow, Shoshone, Pawnee, Blackfeet, and Arikara, among the Plains tribes.
Following the transformative visionary experiences of 1857 and Crazy Horse's demonstrated war-fighting abilities, his father became a convinced believer in his son's singular capacity for leadership. Warriors and visionaries from across the northern Oglala and Miniconjou bands shared that conviction—among them High Backbone, who declared that Crazy Horse would be the greatest warrior of his generation. Holy men from the Wakan family of the Oyuhpe band prepared a sacred bundle containing the stuffed skin of a hawk, its layers of skin and cloth enclosing additional charms consecrated through prayer and song. This bundle constituted his wotawe—his protective war charm—which he opened reverently in moments of crisis. The hawk embodied controlled swiftness and endurance, twin attributes of the warrior. Crazy Horse was instructed to "remember" his guardian spirit through an acute mental discipline in which hawk and dreamer became one; at times, he rode into battle wearing the whole body of the hawk tied in his hair, though as additional visionary powers accrued, he more commonly wore two or three of its feathers at his crown. The holy men advised him to carefully study the hawk's patient scanning and split-second calculation before a killing stoop. Recounting his friend's "attention to marksmanship," He Dog stated that Crazy Horse "... wanted to be sure that he hit what he aimed at."
During the spring of 1859, Crazy Horse participated in a raid of repudiation (accompanied by his Oglala friend, He Dog) against some Crow raiders who had killed two sons belonging to the Miniconjou chief Black Shield. The brief and successful operation included a trek down the Yellowstone River before ending at the Little Bighorn, where the Lakotas killed eleven Crow men and women, forcing the Crows westward.