CRAZY HORSE

Greatest of War Chiefs

We murdered him, then erected a monument to him! Crazy Horse.

If we erected a monument to every great Indian we murdered, there would be many of them, not just one.

Fifty-five years of remorse prompted the Government to place a monument to the greatest war chief of modern times. It was a tribute to the red general who outgeneraled all of our white generals! Though the power of the U.S. Army was arrayed against him with inexhaustible supplies and money, this red general was never conquered! After he had licked Crook's army and wiped Custer out, we promised him food and clothing for his ragged hungry warriors and their suffering women and children if he would come in and give up his arms and live on the reservation. He "fell" for the promises; he accepted the pledge of the authorized government officials, as he had a right to, - and voluntarily surrendered.

But instead of food, clothing, and kind treatment, which he had been prescribed due, he received stab in the back from a bayonet in the hands of a government officer or trooper. With this wound in his kidney, he was allowed to linger in untold agony on the floor of the officer-quarters until he died before daylight the night of September 7, 1877.

It is one of the blackest of the many black spots that spatter the pages of United States history. The father and mother of this young man sang the death song as he breathed his last and dragged the body from the room, placed it on a travois, and led the pony as it drew the sorrowful load far into the bad lands. There they buried the son in a secret place, covering it with stones to protect it from the wolves. They did this with the statement that no white man should defile their chief by so much as a touch or know where his body was laid away.

Chief Flying Hawk was his cousin, and boyhood friend and constant companion; They were i the Custer fight together, and he knew the famous chief better than any one else. He told the writer that the parents went to examine the grave some years later, and found that the bones were petrified. He told of many personal characteristics of his cousin; how he had taken revenge upon white settlers who had, while passing along in their covered wagons, and without provocation, shot his younger brother. For this, he followed their trail to their settlement, secreted himself and picked them off singly until he had killed nine of them, when he felt that he had taken sufficient toll, he returned to his home satisfied.

Crazy Horse never wore a war bonnet, nor any kind of ornament as was the custom amongst his people; he never made a speech, nor boasted of his prowess, and he never was photographed. He was deeply religious and believed in dreams and his own "medicine" and what the spirits told him; he led in every war planned by Red Cloud and Sitting Bull - and always won.

Several of the writer's old time friends and chiefs attended the ceremony of unveiling the memorial at Ft. Robinson of whom twenty were photographed, along with four army officers. For them it was a notable occasion and, though a half century overdue, helped in a small way to heal deep heart wounds of the Sioux.