Crazy Horse

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Crazy Horse bigraphy, stories - Oglala Sioux (Lakota) chief

Crazy Horse : biography

c. 1842 – September 5, 1877

Crazy Horse (Lakota: ””’ in Standard Lakota Orthography,Lakota Language Consortium (2008). New Lakota Dictionary IPA:), literally "His-Horse-Is-Crazy" or "His-Horse-Is-Spirited";Bright, William (2004). Native American Place Names in the United States. Normandy: University of Oklahoma Press, p. 125 ca. 1840 – September 5, 1877) was a Native American war leader of the Oglala Lakota. He took up arms against the U.S. Federal government to fight against encroachments on the territories and way of life of the Lakota people, including leading a war party to victory at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876.

After surrendering to U.S. troops under General Crook in 1877, Crazy Horse was fatally wounded by a military guard while allegedly resisting imprisonment at Camp Robinson in present-day Nebraska. He ranks among the most notable and iconic of Native American tribal members and has been honored by the U.S. Postal Service with a 13¢ Great Americans series postage stamp.

Early life

Sources differ on the precise year of Crazy Horse’s birth, but they agree he was born between 1840 and 1845. According to a close friend, he and Crazy Horse "were both born in the same year at the same season of the year", which census records and other interviews place at about 1845.He Dog interview, July 7, 1930, in: Eleanor H. Hinman (ed.), "Oglala Sources on the Life of Crazy Horse", Nebraska History 57 (Spring 1976) p. 9. Encouraging Bear, an Oglala medicine man and spiritual adviser to the Oglala war leader, reported that Crazy Horse was born "in the year in which the band to which he belonged, the Oglala, stole One Hundred Horses, and in the fall of the year", a reference to the annual Lakota calendar or winter count.Chips Interview, February 14, 1907, in: Richard E. Jensen (ed.), The Indian Interviews of Eli S. Ricker, 1903–1919 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005) p. 273. Among the Oglala winter counts, the stealing of 100 horses is noted by Cloud Shield, and possibly by American Horse and Red Horse owner, as equivalent to the year 1840-41.Cloud Shield count, in: Garrick Mallery, Pictographs of the North American Indians, 4th Annual Report, Bureau of American Ethnology (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1886) p. 140. Richard G. Hardorff, "Stole-One-Hundred-Horses Winter: The Year the Oglala Crazy Horse was Born", Research Review, vol. 1 no. 1 (June 1987) pp. 44–47. Oral history accounts from relatives on the Cheyenne River Reservation place his birth in the spring of 1840.The Authorized Biography of Crazy Horse and His Family Part One: Creation, Spirituality, and the Family Tree, DVD William Matson and Mark Frethem, Producers.(Reelcontact.com Productions, 2006). On the evening of his son’s death, the elder Crazy Horse told Lieutenant H. R. Lemly that his son "would soon have been thirty-seven, having been born on the South Cheyenne river in the fall of 1840".Lemly, "The Death of Crazy Horse", New York Sun, September 14, 1877.

Crazy Horse was named at birth Cha-O-Ha ("In the Wilderness" or "Among the Trees", meaning he was one with nature.) His mother’s nickname for him was "Curly" or "Light Hair"; as his light curly hair resembled that of his mother.

Family

Crazy Horse was born to parents from two tribes of the Lakota division of the Sioux, his father was an Oglala and his mother was a Miniconjou. His father, born in 1810, was also named Crazy Horse. One account said that after the son had reached maturity and shown his strength, his father gave him his name and took a new one, Waglula (Worm). (Another version of how the son Crazy Horse acquired his name was that he took it after having a vision.) His mother was Rattling Blanket Woman (born 1814). Crazy Horse’s cousin (son of Lone Horn) was Touch the Clouds. He saved Crazy Horse’s life at least once and was with him when he died.