Crazy Horse: The Wild West for Kids (Legends of the Wild West)
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)
have acquired the exaggerations of legend Without anyone to contradict them people have felt free to add or change details In the last two years of his life Crazy Horse led the Lakota in two of the most famous battles of the American West the Rosebud and the Little Bighorn From this period a great deal of white and Native American documentation exists however the U S Army recollections and memoirs often are colored by the cultural assumptions and the racism of the time Army reports sometimes covered up embarrassing incidents or arguments and often tried to glorify minor engagements into victories or explain away defeats Native American testimony from these years while less bi ased is also not reliable Lakota and Cheyenne warriors worried about white revenge and often deliberately distorted the truth Plains Indians accounts of battles were usually centered on in dividuals They are useful in recalling personal incidents but they seldom have much to say about group behavior in warfare There are also problems in the translation of words and phrases In the final four months of Crazy Horse’s life he lived on a reservation For this period there are almost too many witnesses American and Lakota sources all seem to have an argument to make a side to take or a position to prove Stories contradict each other culminating in Crazy Horse’s incredibly contro versial death Historians are unable even to agree whether his death was murder or an accident a planned conspiracy or a huge mistake The wealth of material means that most biographies of Crazy Horse spend more than half of their pages on the last two years of his life from the Battle of the Rosebud to his death Where My Dead Lie Buried Despite the problems with the sources Crazy Horse was con sistent throughout most of his life From youth he associated with those Lakota who rejected negotiations with the United (cid:19)(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)
States As the buffalo herds shrank many Lakota accepted the inevitable and settled on agencies and reservations suppos edly guaranteed by treaty There they would be fed by govern ment-issued rations and educated in the ways of the white world Until the last four months of his life Crazy Horse completely rejected the reservation system John Bourke who fought against him noted in On the Border with Crook Crazy Horse was one of the great soldiers of his day and generation he never could be friends of the whites because he was too bold and warlike in his nature Crazy Horse along with Sitting Bull came to symbolize Lakota military defiance Yet Crazy Horse was loved by his own people as much for his charity as for his courage His generosity with the buffalo he hunted and killed earned him the praise of everyone in the tribe His modesty was noteworthy in a society that emphasized boasting He kept no battle spoils except weapons he distrib uted food horses and other booty to the old and the poor Crazy Horse was a victim of bad timing In 1840 around the time he was born the Great Plains west of the Mississippi River was Indian country to belong forever to Native Americans He watched as the Lakota people dwindled because of war and disease The buffalo died and railroads and fences appeared on the Plains Whenever Lakota rights conflicted with the land hunger of American settlers ranchers mining companies and railroads the tribes came out second best The Lakota Indians repeatedly found themselves cheated and betrayed By the time of Crazy Horse’s death in 1877 there was no longer a free tribe or a wild Native American in all the Great Plains from Can ada to Texas In 37 years the U S government had broken every solemn treaty and promise Yet in an odd sense Crazy Horse’s death was perfectly timed He fought brilliantly in 1876 at the last great battles at the Rosebud and the Little Bighorn He became a symbol of La kota freedom courage and dignity Then he was killed at the (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:20)
