Crazy Horse
Tashunca-uitco
(1849-1877)
(click on the picture for a larger
image)
 Celebrated
for his ferocity in battle, Crazy Horse was recognized among his own
people as a visionary leader committed to preserving the traditions
and values of the Lakota way of life.
Even as a young man, Crazy Horse was
a legendary warrior. He stole horses from the Crow Indians before he
was thirteen, and led his first war party before turning twenty.
Crazy Horse fought in the 1865-68 war led by the Oglala chief Red
Cloud against American settlers in Wyoming, and played a key role in
destroying William J. Fetterman's brigade at Fort Phil Kearny in
1867.
Crazy Horse earned his reputation
among the Lakota not only by his skill and daring in battle but also
by his fierce determination to preserve his people's traditional way
of life. He refused, for example, to allow any photographs to be
taken of him. And he fought to prevent American encroachment on
Lakota lands following the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, helping to
attack a surveying party sent into the Black Hills by General George
Armstrong Custer in 1873.
When the War Department ordered all
Lakota bands onto their reservations in 1876, Crazy Horse became a
leader of the resistance. Closely allied to the Cheyenne through his
first marriage to a Cheyenne woman, he gathered a force of 1,200
Oglala and Cheyenne at his village and turned back General George
Crook on June 17, 1876, as Crook tried to advance up Rosebud Creek
toward Sitting Bull's encampment on the Little Bighorn. After this
victory, Crazy Horse joined forces with Sitting Bull and on June 25
led his band in the counterattack that destroyed Custer's Seventh
Cavalry, flanking the Americans from the north and west as Hunkpapa
warriors led by chief Gall charged from the south and east.
Following the Lakota victory at the
Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull and Gall retreated to Canada, but Crazy
Horse remained to battle General Nelson Miles as he pursued the
Lakota and their allies relentlessly throughout the winter of
1876-77. This constant military harassment and the decline of the
buffalo population eventually forced Crazy Horse to surrender on May
6, 1877; except for Gall and Sitting Bull, he was the last important
chief to yield.
Even in defeat, Crazy Horse remained
an independent spirit, and in September 1877, when he left the
reservation without authorization, to take his sick wife to her
parents, General George Crook ordered him arrested, fearing that he
was plotting a return to battle. Crazy Horse did not resist arrest
at first, but when he realized that he was being led to a
guardhouse, he began to struggle, and while his arms were held by
one of the arresting officers, a soldier ran him through with a
bayonet.
from PBS.org
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