Washington's birthday has become a fixture with us, like Christmas, the Fourth of July and Sunday; we speak and think of Washington as we would Christ, vaguely, reverently, as if we should remove our hats and tread softly. Washington has become a sort of saint to us, a hero to mention with awe. This is proper and admirable in us; we owe it to him, for perhaps no greater name exists in all history when measured by the results of his achievements; his influence for good among the People of Civilization has been deeper and wider perhaps than any other man in modern times.

Washington! The very name somehow sends a thrill of patriotism through every American citizen, and scarcely less known is the name to every civilized people on the earth. Washington, the state; Washington, the city; Washington, the county in every state; Washington, the building in every city; the very name is so intimately associated with everyday life that we fail sometimes to appreciate just what Washington does mean after all.

When we once get down to think of George Washington, what do we see in the mind's eye? First, the picture of the aged man with the silver curls; then the one on the prancing steed with the sword slung at his side; then the majestic commander with three-cornered cockade and military cape, standing in the prow of the row-boat, filled with soldiers, prodding cakes of ice, while crossing the Delaware. If we go beyond the fanciful engravings fixed permanently in our childish minds at school, we probably revert to the story of the hatchet and the cherry tree; or perhaps the signing of some state paper or the farewell address, and are satisfied.

It is of George Washington, the man, we are going to think tonight. Just plain George, the human; and in doing so, it need not detract from our admiration for him as man, soldier and statesman, for he was at once the king of all these, and yet, only human.

The story books say that George simply could not tell a lie and they cite the hatchet incident as proof; this is legend. George was like all boys; the old man simply caught him in the act and a lie, in this case, wouldn't help him out. I once had a similar experience, with the five year old twins. On their first visit to the kindergarten, they heard the story of the cherry tree from the teacher; to show how they appreciated it, they came home, secured the big meat knife from the kitchen cabinet and proceeded ceremoniously to hack down a prize apple tree in the back yard. When I made the discovery and charged them with it, do you think they hung their heads and confessed? No! They waited until they were convicted; they waited until I had submitted all the evidence and cross-examined them; each blaming it on the other and on the teacher who told them how George cut his papa's cherry tree. When I argued to the jury and used the cherry tree story to convince them that while George was naughty and cut his papa's cherry tree, he was a good boy and told his papa the truth, and they should do likewise. Do you think they confessed? No! They floored the court and jury with this knockout reply, "B-b-but en he--'s was a chewwy twee." The cherry tree story didn't apply at all. And the case was dropped.

It was Mark Twain who first claimed superiority to George Washington, on the ground that George couldn't tell a lie, while he could but wouldn't.

George went to school to a teacher called Hobby; we have his own word for it that Hobby wasn't much of a teacher; he let George do as he pleased when he should have been thrashed. George rode to school on horseback with a slave called Pete; he became a good horseman through this practice as a boy. Once his father proposed to George, who was breaking a colt, to try a stone fence near the house; his mother yelled objection which George disregarded and the old man grinned while, after making several attempts, the colt and rider went over, but landed in a heap with the pony on top; George picked himself up and remounted while the old lady screamed, "Murder!"

During these school days the story books tell us that George played the soldier and they show us a troop of boys marching with George at the lead, carrying a wooden sword. The facts do not bear out this picture. The boys did play the "scout and scalp hunter" and threw stones or snowballs at the skulking redskins who dodged from behind trees. Young Fat Bustle played chief to the Indians while George headed the militia. During one of these campaigns, Bustle hit George with a snowball in the eye and as the snowball had a stone wrapped up in the middle of it George considered it wasn't fair, went home and told his mother, who tore on at a great rate and was for having Bustle expelled. His dad told George he must take care of his own troubles. George was ten and pretty husky and had the worst temper that was ever in any boy; he went back to school, watched his chance, jumped onto Bustle and pounded him long after he yelled, "Enough!"

George had a mother who was like some other mothers in her over-fondness and lack of discipline; she permitted George to do about as he pleased and interfered if his father tried to correct him; she smoked a pipe and was called a common scold. She was like most overworked stepmothers, not over- pleasant for either George or his father. The father died when George was eleven and being headstrong was given to gadding about. He spent most of his time with his older half-brothers who had some education and stood better in the neighborhood.

George's folks were not considered among the best just then. While the evidence shows good antecedents for the family generally, his great-great grandfather was charged with being a worthless drunk. His son John ran off, joined a sailing ship for Virginia, took up land, became a burgess, was colonel of militia and fought Indians. This run-away John had a son Lawrence and Lawrence had a son named Augustine who had received some education; he was twice married and the father of ten children. George was number five in that lot of ten children, and the first to the second wife, Mary Ball.

It was this same Mary Ball who, probably. because she was step-mother to five other children always prevented George from getting the spanking he deserved and which resulted in his being a spoiled child until, through the influence of his big half-brothers, he outgrew it to some extent. George never forgave his mother for his bad training in childhood. There existed between them a spirit of semi-hostility until her death. She persisted in objecting to nearly everything he did; was constantly complaining to him of her poverty, borrowed from her neighbors and seemed to take delight in humiliating George after he became prominent. George was always considerate and kind to her; he gave her his share in the estate, bought her a home in Fredericksburg, sent her a phaeton and money to keep her bills paid, but he declined to have her come to Mt. Vernon to live unless she would agree not to come to his parlor in her night clothes when he had company. This she would not agree to and remained away. When she was afflicted with the cancer, the doctor had a fight every time he dressed it for her.

George had a sister Betsy who looked so much like him that when she dressed in his clothes they could hardly be distinguished from one another. Betsy married Fielding Lewis who later got into debt, for inventing the Lewis machine gun for the government, and borrowed money from George. After his bankruptcy and death, the note was cancelled and George furnished Betsy the money for her expenses for a long time.

George's brother Sam didn't stand in so well. He was a shiftless cuss, was married five times, and like his many other relations, was constantly borrowing money from George; one debt of $2,000 being cancelled besides $5,000, spent in educating two of the boys. Sam's daughter Harriet was taken to Mt. Vernon and cared for her until she was married; one of the "happiest moments of my life", George wrote in his diary, was when he wrote his check to her for $100, to pay for the wedding dress.

George's next brother, John, was sort of independent and got along better; he had a son, Bushrod, who George took to and later left to him the principal part of his Mt. Vernon estate. George's next brother, Charley, managed to get on fairly well, and his son, George, came in for a share from his uncle at death after being made manager of the Mt. Vernon farms.

George's wife's folks were borrowers too, for we find a debt from the brother-in-law, which had to be forgiven, and when the sheriff cleaned him out, George bought in thirty-three slaves and gave them back to the wife.

It was the half-brother Lawrence who gave George his start. He had been a sort of god-father to George and when he died in 1752, he gave George Mt. Vernon as a sort of keepsake for looking after his wants while he was slowly dying with consumption in the West Indies.

As a young man, George wasn't a shining light. He didn't stand in with the elite to any great extent. There was nothing attractive about him. He was awkward, shy, homely and had an ungovernable temper. It was not until after he returned from carrying the message to Franklin, Waterford and his return trip to Franklin via Meadville and the scrap with the French down at Braddock, that he became popular. Then he could show the bullet holes in his hunting shirt and told of having the horse shot from under him, and how they buried Sir Edward in the middle of the road, on the retreat.

Then the girls and women took an interest in him. He learned to dance, went to parties and got acquainted. He became popular with the women largely because of his ungainliness and modesty and it was not until he, with their aid, got elected to the legislature where they gave him a speech of welcome. George tried to respond to the pleasing introduction. He got up, stammered and blushed, got weak in the knees and sat down without uttering a word. This was considered one of the best speeches George ever made.

Soon thereafter, George had another message to carry. This time to Boston. On the way he stayed over a few days in New York to see the town. He got severely struck on Mary Phillipse and wanted to marry her then and there. Mary wasn't used to this impulsive sort of loving. It was so sudden that she turned George down and married a smart chap by the name of Roger Morris. George didn't forget this rebuff from Mary, and when he needed a headquarters during the revolution, he told Mary and Roger to kindly move out of the mansion and leave the upholstered furniture and silverware as he needed it in his business, and actually occupied it, as a convenient headquarters.

George went home mad after Mary thus cut him, and when young Custis died, George made a trip to Williamsburg to see the doctor and on the way stopped to call on the Custis widow, and before he left, got engaged to her. She was good looking, had two out of four children living, was twenty-six and rich, and she was all this. She was also "overfond, hot-tempered and obstinate, not possessing much sense, though a lady". After their marriage, in society, she was counted quite ordinary. George ordered her clothes for her which would indicate she wasn't a flirt at least.

Widow Mary had 15,000 acres of land and a lot of slaves besides some $15,000 invested at interest, so that with Mt. Vernon as a gift and the several hundred thousand of his wife's property, George -- with his military record, blossomed out into quite a fellow. He was good enough to associate with the best of the neighbors after that and he proceeded to show them he was about the leading farmer in that section.

He added to Mt. Vernon until he had 8,000 acres, 3,200 of which was under cultivation. He raised as high as 5,000 bushels of wheat, besides the corn and tobacco and other crops. George was a great believer in manure and preached it to his overseers. He was constantly advocating improvement and spent money lavishly on making things convenient.

George was a crank on forestry and never permitted a tree to be cut except he first examined and marked it for cutting. He had the same trouble then that we have now. He wrote to his overseer about fencing the woods, that "no hedge would do for an outer enclosure where two or four-footed hogs find it convenient to open passage."

George had about three hundred people, including his slaves, to do his work; he told them they must buy nothing that they could make and so he maintained a blacksmith shop, a charcoal plant, a brickyard and a stone quarry. He kept a gang of gardeners and operated a fishery and packing house. He had a cooper-shop and carpenter shop, a grist mill and a woolen mill. He had a stock barn of fancy stud horses and a shoe and harness shop and kept them all full and busy.

Another important branch of business was the operation of his distillery. George made whiskey out of corn and rye and sold it to the trade. His profit for one year being 344 pounds, 12 shillings, 7� pence, besides a stock of 755� gallons carried over. George wasn't a temperance man but he was temperate; he permitted the use of liquor at all times even among his slaves and always had his cellars well stocked with the choicest brands. He had little trouble with drunkenness -- people did not get drunk then like they do now-- liquor was not then legally denied men, for they could be trusted to exercise common sense in drinking as in eating. It was cheap and humans seldom care much for anything that is cheap.

Part of George's farming consisted of breeding cattle and horses. He had large herds of cattle, horses, sheep and hogs. He ran a dairy but wasn't a success in making butter for with a hundred and one cows in his herd, he still had to buy butter for the family. He had 634 sheep at this time and made the wool into cloth at his weavers.

He stood his stallions at so much per, and he got a lot of rundown army mares for breeding purposes. It was about this time that the king of Spain heard of George's livestock and he sent George a pair of jackasses so that he might go to raising mules. The jacks evidently lost their "manhood" in the ocean voyage for they would have nothing to do with a mare and George wrote a friend that these jacks seemed too full of royalty to have anything to do with the plebean race, but he hoped that when they became better acquainted with Republican enjoyment, they would amend their their manners and fall into a more expeditious manner of doing business. The jacks afterwards did come to an understanding and made a profit for George, of $678, in one season according to his own books.

George wasn't stuck up, and like our Teddy Roosevelt, he often went with the men to the field and worked with them. He made a trip once a day around the farm on horseback and kept close tab on his men, nearly all of whom he knew by name. When one of them got unruly or too lazy, George would send him to the West Indies and trade him for a cask of rum.

When George had to go to carry on the campaigns in the revolution, he tried renting his farm on shares, but he never got any share. He said that "ten thousand pounds would not cover the losses he sustained at his farm during the time he was away in the army and serving as president." After he came back, he wrote, "The more I am acquainted with agricultural affairs the better I am pleased with them; I am led to reflect how much more delightful to an undebauched mind the task of making improvements on the earth than all the vainglory which can be acquired from ravaging it by the uninterrupted career of conquest."

George, if now living, would be called a grafter. He was in most of the big land schemes and promotions, and they were real speculations. He got nearly ten thousand acres for surveying and military service, and he bought more. At his death he left, besides his wife's holdings, and Mt. Vernon, a total of 51,395 acres exclusive of town lots.

George dealt a good deal in slaves and was a good judge of them. Besides his landed property he was a heavy holder of bank stocks and drew much of his ready income from this source. At his death he was regarded worth half a million dollars -- the richest man of the times.

While we all admit that George was truthful, and it is well established that he was instinctively honest and always stood for a square deal -- he crawled out of some mighty narrow places in maintaining that reputation. Down in Fayette County I once had the pleasure of seeing the site of Fort Necessity where George got his first trouncing. George had been sent on to investigate the French who then held possession of the Point Bridge district at Pittsburgh , and he had with him a bunch of green farmhands with squirrel guns -- and as they had not been out in society much they considered it good sport to take a potshot at the French boys who were encamped in a tent along the creek and were just frying some bacon for breakfast. One of the bullets hit young Jumonville and he croaked, but his pals got after George and chased him and his boys back across the hill and into his little fort down in the meadow calf pasture, and locked the front door, and refused to let them out until George agreed to sign up on the dotted line. The capitulation paper was written in French and it contained an acknowledgement that George's troops has assassinated a Frenchman. This was the "shot that was heard around the world", and it made about as much trouble relatively as the one was later to do at Sarejavo. The paper was read to George and translated into English by Van Braam before he signed it --but he was willing to sign anything to get away just then, that would let him get his boys back to their homes and mothers. When Old Governor Dinwiddie read what George had signed, he had a purple fit and discharged George and called him all the vile names he could think of. George tried to explain that he didn't understand French, but when the old governor showed him that the word "assassinated" was in plain English, George was all in. He tried to put the blame on poor Van Braam, the interpreter who had been held as hostage by the French and couldn't defend himself.

This was one of the closest shaves that George ever had to keep from being convicted as a trifler with the truth -- and it was a mighty sight more serious thing than cutting a cherry tree and taking a licking for it. George redeemed himself the next year while with Braddock, by getting his horse shot and a bullet hole in his shirt, in spite of which the French boys licked them worse than the first time. On the way back home George helped bury Braddock in the middle of the road just in sight of the little fort he had surrendered the year before and made all this trouble about.

George was a quiet fellow in company and couldn't talk worth hearing. He couldn't tell a story and didn't smoke, but he did know how to eat and drink. He enjoyed having company and liked his friends although he didn't show it, and he disliked his enemies just as vigorously, and sometimes tried not to show it. He was not a literary man, had little taste for books and less yet for newspapers.

While president he complained that editors "stuffed their papers with scurrility and nonsensical declamation instead of the debates in congress and the great questions of the day." Of course he might not say that of the present day newspaper.

When serving as president he was unmercifully hounded by the newspapers just as every man who ever tried to serve the public was and is unto this day, and it made George "sore and warm." Now it would make him "boil and hot." One day he broke out in one of his furious passions and this is what he said, "I never repented but once having slipped the moment of resigning and that was every moment since! By God, I would rather be in my grave that in my present situation. I would rather be on my farm than to be made the emperor of the world, yet I am being charged with trying to make myself a king."

George had many sporting proclivities. He sometimes took a flyer on the races; bought tickets in and attended the lottery drawings. He bought tickets regularly and attended the raffling matches. He was a crank on theatres and attended regularly shows and the concerts. He went to the circuses and to the cock-fights. Also he played cards around the jackpot. Since we have been reformed, we classify these past-times as gambling. George liked the fox hunt with hounds but he never permitted outsiders to hunt on his lands.

George came near being what we today would call a "dude". He wore lace ruffled shirts, marble silk stockings and the best shoes made. He had superfine broadcloth coats and full-laced scarlet waistcoats with all the gold and silver buckles and buttons that went with them and all of the latest fashion. He was exceedingly fond of the women and had a record amongst them that would be hard to beat. One of his overshadowing passions was dancing. He got the habit, like some present day bald-heads, when he was old enough to know better, and didn't quit until the year before he died. He danced gracefully when 64 years of age. During the Revolution he joined all the dancing academies, and while in winter quarters at Morristown subscribed four hundred dollars to keep up the dances. He danced with General Greene's wife one night for over three hours without a rest, and more than once danced all night.

George was a good liver. At dinner he ate heartily; was not particular of his diet except that he was very fond of fish but partook sparingly of desserts. He drank "mint juleps" and four or five glasses of Madeira wine at a meal. One observer says, "He dines commonly on a single dish and drinks from a half to a pint of Madeira wine. This with a glass of punch, a draught of beer and two dishes of tea just before sunset does until the next day."

George was pale and thin skinned, with long legs and big hands and feet, brown and gray hair done up in a net. Blue-gray eyes, deep set and wide apart. Thick neck and small head; big nose and mouth and bad teeth. If he were to walk down Long Avenue in modern clothes h might be mistaken for Mr. H.E.Ginter or Rem Peale.

He was six feet two dead and weighed 175 pounds. Hid countenance was ad and often stern. He often fell into a melancholy mood which he could not avoid. He seldom laughed and when he got angry he was a veritable cyclone.

He was a character one cannot tire of with all his manly characteristics and the frailties that go with every human. He was truly the Father of his Country and is still first in the hearts of his countrymen. It was my privilege to have seen every part of his working ground; his various headquarters and many of his battlegrounds, as well as to have had many visits to his childhood home and Mt. Vernon; see his personal effects, his books and papers, and to stand head-bare as most of you have and gazed reverently upon his tomb. Once I stood where he made his farewell address at the same chair and table in the long room in Fraunce's Tavern; looked wise and said nothing. It was perhaps the best speech I ever made.

It is a satisfaction to know that an ancestor led the first troops out of Lancaster County for the aid of George at the opening of the war and commanded them throughout the revolution; and to know that another commanded the troops at Kings Bridge when General Howe occupied New York, holding him bottled up while George campaigned on the Hudson. I believe however that we all think enough of him that if he were to come back now and enter another Revolution, we would all raise troops to go to his rescue for I think we may still regard George Washington, though merely human, the greatest of all Americans.

A RED MAN'S LINCOLN

A Talk at Kiwanis Club Dinner, "Lincoln Day", February, 1940, by M. I. McCreight, Member by Adoption, of the Great Chief's Tribe, The Sioux.

With an inexhaustible supply of men and money, equipped with every facility for communication, travel, camping, arms and ammunition -- our armies had followed and fought him for ten long years with the best of every battle and hundreds of lives and millions of wasted public money -- and then promised the red chief food, clothing and care, for himself and his warriors and their weary families, if he would cease a natural mode of life and adopt the white man's rule. He had a right to, and did, accept these official pledges in good faith; he led his followers to the Agency, and there VOLUNTARILY handde over their arms in token of surrender, and to make good his word; when almost immediately army officialdom, in malice and fear, invented an excuse for his arrest and imprisonment. The brave and honest Chief, trusting to the good faith of army generals, was led into a trap, caught and held by the arms by troopers in their effort to force him into the cell of the guard-house, and when he attempted to resist the hideous violation of the government's pledge, a trooper ran his bayonet through his kidney from behind his back.

His aged father and mother watched over him, while he sufered untold agony from afternoon to midnight, on the floor of the agency office; when he had breated his last, they announced that they would take charge of the body so that it might not be further polluted by the touch of any white man. They roped his body to a pony-travois and during the afternoon dragged it along while they sang the death song, to hide it where white men and wolves might not discover it; years later , they went to see if it had been disturbed, and found the bones were petrified. An old chief, who was present at this disgraceful affair told the writer that no one knew where they had placed the body as the parents never told.

It was Crazy Horse who, the week before, had met and whipped General Crook's army at the Rosebud and drove him back to Goose Creek, where he stayed in camp, afraid to proceed to a junction with Terry's Division on the Yellowstone, as was planned he would do. After this success, Crazy Horse led his band over the hills to join Sitting Bull at his camp on the Little Big Horn. Hardly had they settled when Custer attacked the camp, when, as the white man's history invariably states -- Custer and his troops were MASSACRED by overwhelming numbers of blood thirsty savages.

Yet, this was Indian country; it was the homeland of the Sioux and the Cheyennes, where they had every right to be. There they had no right to be molested in their domestic pursuits by white men.

Stretched along the valley of this little river lay the picturesque vari-clan villages; at the extreme southern edge were the tipis of Crazy Horse and other Oglala families, which, after noon lunch, were occupied by the old men, women and children, because nearly all the men were absent on the daily hunt -- food for the families.

Suddenly, and without warning, came volleys of musketry into the defenseless tipis, splintering their supporting poles, and killing and wounding everyone in and about them. Including sleeping babes in their swinging hammocks and happy little children at play all about the camp grounds. This was the "Massacre of the Little Big Horn" -- it was a heartless murder of innocent and helpless women and children, wholly unjust, and cowardly.

Who are we to questin the right or doubt the fury of Crazy Horse for war-painting his face with the blood of his family and friends as he uttered the war-cry and led his warriors to the slaughter? With war clubs, bows and arrows, a few carbines and pistols, they mounted their ponies and charged the Reno troops to a hasty and chaotic retreat, bent only on escape. Frantic from witnessing the outrage upon the loved ones and spurred by screams of stricken wives and mothers these red fathers and brothers rode down the fleeing soldiers, dragged from their mounts, knocked them senseless with stone war clubs, shot them from the saddle with bow and arrow and revolver when they struggled to clamber the steeps of the river bank. Those who escaped, made all haste to their supply train on the hill, barricaded and entrenched themselves -- and there they stayed. There Reno's battalion, like the Crook's Division, remained unnerved and impotent, almost within sight and hearing of the smoke and battle-din from Custer's "Last Stand,"

Reno's forces having been eliminated, Crazy Horse turned to follow Custer, now enroute along the crest of the hill to attack the lower village; Crazy Horse led his artful followers along the slope, out of Custer's view. Crossing a ravine, the chief dismounted, handed his pony's trail rope to Flying Hawk to hold and stand guard while he crept to a position in range of the passing troopers, where he picked off a dozen, Hawk said, as fast as shells could be inserted in breech-loader carbine; the same strategy was carried out along the way, until Custer turned for the final attack in the valley; there he was quickly surrounded by the united bands of Gall, Lame Deer, and Two Moon, led by Crazy Horse, in the encircling Grand March of Death, and in a few minutes, all was over.

Flying Hawk was with Crazy Horse from the first to the last shot, and relates, that when the smoke lifted a little from the gory battle ground, a lone trooper was observed trying to make his escape on the hillside a mile away. Crazy Horse mounted a pony, galloped to within range, raised his gun and got the "last" man. (When the same Flying Hawk, sixty years later, and a noted chief, presented the battle-scarred carbine to the writer, he said he saw it kill the last man, in the hands of Crazy Horse.

Crazy Horse's father was an Oglala Sioux of Red Cloud's band; his mother, a Minneconjou Sioux of Touch-the-Cloud's following; he was well trained for the strenuous life which lay before him; as a youth the celebrated chief Hump took him along on the war-party against the Crows; in the Fight which followed, Hump was critically wounded, but by quick and daring action of the boy, his scalp was saved, and both escaped on the boy's pony.

Flying Hawk and Crazy Hotse were cousins, raised as neigbors in the same region, and were constant companions until the latter's unholy assassination in 1877. Because of their intimate association Flying Hwk was possessed of much personal knowledge of the great war-chief of which the others were unaware. He told the writer of Crazy Horse's young brother; of this brother he was very proud. A passing covered wagon train of emigrants on the way west, as such people seemed to feel was their right,shot and killed without excuse or provocation, this young brother of Crazy Horse. This so incensed the elder one that he followed the trail to their place of settlement far to the west of his homeland; there he camped in a forest close to the new settlement. In the course of a few weeks he had nine notches in his rifle butt, then feeling that he had exacted full penalty for the killing of his brother, he returned home, but made no explanation of where he had been or what he had done.

Another trait of this noted chief was his deep religious faith and his belief in dreams. One of his youthful dreams affected his actions throughout his life; this dream, had while sitting on the bank of a stream, was to the effect that he had become a great chief with eagle quills in his hair; on waking he found a bit of grass in his hair. All through his romantic years thereafter, he refused to wear feather ornament or bead work; he never boasted of his successes, as was a common Indian custom, he did not join in war dances, never took a scalp or made a speech; and never permitted a photograph to be taken.

Crazy Horse was just short of six feet tall; less dark skin and hair than the average, weight about 180 pounds and his figure a perfect one; his word was never violated, as is fully attested by all who knew him, whether red or white, and he detested as a rattlesnake the hypocritical government agents, the sycophancy of government army officials and the perfidy of those of his own race who accepted governmet pay for acting as spies, in the name of police. Crazy Horse was married and had but one child, a daughter, who at four years, took fever and died while the chief was away on a campaign. On his return he first learned of his child's death, seventy miles to the south. Frank Gruard accompanied the chief on the long journey to the place of sepulchre; there he climbed to the raised platform beside the loved one's robe-encased body; there he remained three days and three nights mourning for his departed one, during the whole time not a bite of food or drop of water passed his lips. On the morning of the fourth day he notified Gruard that he was ready to leave, and with a heavy heart, returned, but made no staement of where he had been or why he was so long away. Fair test of the chief's heart and soul.

Flying Hawk said that Crazy Horse was thirty-three when murdered on September 7, 1877. Some writers say that his age was 36, but in either case, no young man of like age ever held a more important part in modern western history.

To help quiet a guilty conscience, the granite marker was placed on the site of the great chief's couchless death-chamber, a sort of dry crust thrown to the chief's friends and relatives, after most of them had passed away from neglect and starvation -- its cost, we suspect, might be deducted from the three-quarter billion dollar debt then owed and still owing to the great chief's tribe. Among the great war chiefs, statesmen and orators of the red race, it would have been more appropriate if his statue had been erected in the Hall of Fame.

Offered March 2007