Crazy Horse: The Wild West for Kids (Legends of the Wild West)
Contents 1 The Mysterious Warrior 1 2 Growing Up on the Plains 8 3 The Americans Appear 19 4 The Powder River Wars 34 5 The Losses Add Up 51 6 The Revolt of the Lakota 65 7 The Last Campaign 79 8 He Has Looked for Death 97 9 End of the Old Life 111 Chronology 122 Timeline 124 Glossary 126 Bibliography 131 Further Resources 138 Picture Credits 141 Index 143 About the Author 147
1 the Mysterious Warrior Deep in the heart of the Black Hills of South Dakota the Crazy Horse Memorial rises out of Thunderhead Moun tain Under construction since 1948 it is a dramatic monument in the form of Crazy Horse a Lakota Sioux warrior riding a horse and pointing into the distance If completed the sculpture’s final dimensions will be 641 feet 195 meters wide and 563 feet 172 m high making it the world’s largest statue The memorial to Crazy Horse will dwarf one of the most popular monuments in the country Mount Rushmore located only eight miles 12 km away The heads of the presidents at Mount Rush more are each 60 feet 18 m high but the head of Crazy Horse will be 87 feet 26 5 m high Some wonder however if it will ever be finished The carv ing was inspired by a letter to sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski who had worked for a short time on Mount Rushmore In 1939 Chief Henry Standing Bear wrote to Ziolkowski My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes too Ziolkowski began carving in 1948 and the work has been going on ever since Ziolkowski died in 1982 but his wife and several children remain closely involved with the work
Although the face of Crazy Horse was completed and dedicated in 1998 the entire work is far from completion Yet the monument to Crazy Horse is not without its critics many of them Lakota It is being carved out of land considered sacred by some Native Americans Lame Deer a Lakota medi cine man remarked The whole idea of making a beautiful wild mountain into a statue of him is a pollution of the landscape It is against the spirit of Crazy Horse Russell Means a famous Na tive American activist also criticized the creation of the sculp ture Crazy Horse’s story continues to relegate us as a people to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries said Means People think Indian people are relics we do not exist in the present That makes it easy for non-Indians to say Oh lo the poor In dian and we love his romantic image and we are sorry for what our ancestors did to him but we can continue to do it to these Indian people today with impunity The Crazy Horse Memorial located in the Black Hills of South Dakota is being carved out of Thunderhead Moun tain It has been under construction since 1948 If fin ished it will be the world’s largest sculpture (cid:17)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:100)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:30)(cid:45)(cid:28)(cid:53)(cid:52)(cid:1)(cid:35)(cid:42)(cid:45)(cid:46)(cid:32)
So even in death Crazy Horse continues to inspire people and excite argument Who was this Lakota warrior and why does he still capture the imagination of twenty-first-century America A Mysterious Warrior Crazy Horse is one of the greatest of Native American heroes but much about his life is a mystery It is not easy to write his biography Crazy Horse was quiet and shy He rarely spoke in public or participated in public ceremonies He almost never took part in councils treaty sessions or any kind of meetings with whites or Native Americans He was a feared and respected warrior but he did not brag about his war deeds He did not leave behind any letters diaries speeches or account books to tell his side of the story The longest recorded statement by him is barely 200 words For almost his whole life Crazy Horse avoided whites He lived the life of a Lakota warrior raiding and hunting on the Northern Plains For about the first 35 years of his life it is dif ficult to determine what he said or felt His biography can only be assembled from the memories and oral tradition of the La kota people Truth telling and the oral historical tradition are important in Native American cultures Storytellers had fantas tic memories for remembering minute details Yet many times they related their stories of Crazy Horse 25 to 50 years after the events they described Their descriptions and recollections are crucial but they are not always accurate Sometimes reliable Native American eyewitnesses even contradict each other The mid-nineteenth-century Lakota like most preindus trial people were not obsessed with dates and statistics It is almost impossible to determine the year of Crazy Horse’s birth The chronology of the events of his life is often jumbled People have told some stories so many times that the stories (cid:47)(cid:35)(cid:32)(cid:1)(cid:40)(cid:52)(cid:46)(cid:47)(cid:32)(cid:45)(cid:36)(cid:42)(cid:48)(cid:46)(cid:1)(cid:50)(cid:28)(cid:45)(cid:45)(cid:36)(cid:42)(cid:45)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:100)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:18)
