Crazy Horse Read Online Free PDF Page B

part in a particular attack or not.
    Thus the fate of the wise and considerate Cheyenne leader Black Kettle, a peace Indian from the start. Black Kettle first had his village riddled by Chivington at Sand Creek, and then had it riddled again by Custer on theWashita, in 1868, even though up at Fort Laramie Red Cloud had just signed a major peace treaty.
    At this juncture the two military systems, white and Sioux, suffered from similar elements of unpredictability, especially where their young warriors were concerned. Though Black Kettle was for peace, his young men could not always be restrained, and neither could young white men such as Custer. No Plains Indian ever completely controlled the young warriors, except briefly, nor did any white leader long control George Armstrong Custer.
    About a year after the Grattan massacre near Fort Laramie (1854), the army finally got up a punitive expedition against the Sioux, although the Sioux involved in the massacre—Brulés, mainly—were by then scattered here and there across the prairies. An expedition of about six hundred men under General W. S. Harney (the Sioux were to call him Mad Bear) set out to avenge Grattan. At first they found no Sioux to punish. Six hundred men was a huge force; nothing like Harney’s army had yet been seen on the northern plains. Nobody was expecting it—many Sioux bands were unaware that a large body of white men were marching across the prairie, out for their blood. Some did know, because runners had gone out to the tribes, telling them that the U.S. government wanted them south of the Platte River; those who didn’t go would be considered hostile. Many Sioux bands were south of the Platte, but the Brulés weren’t, and neither were the Minniconjous.
    General Harney, after considerable frustration, finally located the village of Little Thunder, a Brulé headman then camped on the banks of the Bluewater River. There had been a good hunt; the women of the village were busy working the buffalo hides.
    Little Thunder knew the soldiers were coming—it would have been hard not to know it—but he seemed to have disregarded whatever warning he received. When the soldiers arrived, there was some parleying, but only because General Harney wanted to get his troops into position. When he had them in position, he proceeded to destroy Little Thunder’s village, killing nearly ninety Indians in a few minutes and taking many captives. Spotted Tail fought in this battle and never forgot the carnage he witnessed that day.
    It is thought that Crazy Horse was living with Little Thunder that summer, but was out hunting when the terrible attack came. This may be the sort of rumor that makes Crazy Horse a kind of Zelig, turning up wherever the action is. Spotted Tail was so awed by the power of white weaponry that he later came to Fort Laramie and turned himself in; he served two years in jail and was probably the first of the major Sioux leaders to conclude that the Sioux could not hope to win in sustained conflict with the whites.
    Most authorities think that Crazy Horse came back to what had been Little Thunder’s village, saw the carnage, and rescued a young Cheyenne maiden called YellowWoman; he took her back to her people and began what was to be a long and friendly association with the Cheyennes.
    With his easy victory on the Bluewater, General Harney, Mad Bear, had essentially won control of the Platte River and the Oregon Trail. The war for the northern plains was just beginning, but this was a significant victory nonetheless. That the whites were willing, almost casually, to destroy a whole village was a new fact that the Sioux would have to come to terms with. In the warfare between tribes such a thing did not happen; there was no such imbalance of weaponry. The scorched-earth policy that General Sherman was to pursue so effectively a few years later—warfare as terror—hadn’t come to the west, or anywhere