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Authors: Larry McMurtry
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thing lapsed.
Black Buffalo Womanâs fourth child, a daughter, was notably light-skinned; perhaps the child of Crazy Horse, she lived into the 1940s.
Not long after this the tribe saw to it that Crazy Horsetook a wife, an agreeable woman named Black Shawl, whom he accepted and, it would seem, came to love. Rather like Yeats, who after his failure with Maud Gonne came to be happy with his kind wife George, Crazy Horse seems to have achieved domestic content with Black Shawl, who, unfortunately, was afflicted with tuberculosis. One of the reasons Crazy Horse developed a friendship with Dr. Valentine McGillycuddy was that the doctor was so steadfast in his efforts to cure Black Shawl.
Later, Crazy Horse took a second wife, a half-Cheyenne, half-French girl named Nellie Larrabee (sometimes spelled Laverie); there is a picture of her in Ian Frazierâs Great Plains. Very probably he never quite got over Black Buffalo Woman, about whose later life nothing is known.
Thus the great passion of Crazy Horseâs life failed and brought serious disorder to his people. It was not long after this that he also suffered the loss of his reckless brother Little Hawk, who was killed when he foolishly attacked some well-armed miners.
Meanwhile, though the Sioux had their treaty, the railroads were coming and with them the whites. There was no serious attempt made to police the area that was then, by law, off-limits to the whites. Who was supposed to have policed an area that vast, anyway? By 1872 the railroads had come so far that Custer, Sheridan, Buffalo Bill Cody, and other dignitaries could take Grand Duke Alexis of Russia on a buffalo hunt, with the grand duke traveling well into Kansas in the comfort of his railroad car.
To the north, things were still quiet. The Northern Pacific was only just edging into North Dakota. It would be a while before it threatened the Sioux sanctuary.
But no quiet, no peace, really lasted long; the endgame was now about to begin. In late summer of 1872 a force of several hundred soldiers pushed up the Yellowstone River into eastern Montana, precipitating the first major conflict between the wild, mainly undisturbed northern Sioux, including Sitting Bullâs people, the Hunkpapas.
Crazy Horse had perhaps drifted north by then; he may have been dissatisfied with the more and more passive conditions to the south, where both Red Cloud and Spotted Tail were now firmly (and permanently) committed to peace. Both had been given agencies of their own; they made no more war on the whites. Spotted Tail was criticized in some quarters for being, in a manner of speaking, a kind of Vichy Indianâbut this is quite unfair. Spotted Tail was never a toady, and never sycophantic in his dealings with the whites. Given a choice, probably he would have been happy just to get out of the way; but the Brulés, whom he led, really couldnât get out of the way. So Spotted Tail negotiated, for the most part effectively. He survived his two-year imprisonment with his dignity intact, and it was to remain intact until the end, when, like Sitting Bull, he was killed by one of his own people, a rival named Crow Dog.
But agency life, with its endless compromising and itsconstant haggling with the white agents, would never have appealed to Crazy Horse, any more than it appealed to Sitting Bull.
The engagement that Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse fought in August of 1872 came near to being a disaster for the Indians. The force against them, some four hundred soldiers, was well armed and could not be tempted into any rashness. Crazy Horse had learned at the Wagon Box Fight how ineffective bows and arrows were against soldiers who were both well armed and competently led. In this fight in the north the Sioux were very daring, but simply could not get close enough to the soldiers to inflict any damage without paying a huge price in lives. As it was, several of the unrestrainable young Sioux were killed early on. It was in
Black Buffalo Womanâs fourth child, a daughter, was notably light-skinned; perhaps the child of Crazy Horse, she lived into the 1940s.
Not long after this the tribe saw to it that Crazy Horsetook a wife, an agreeable woman named Black Shawl, whom he accepted and, it would seem, came to love. Rather like Yeats, who after his failure with Maud Gonne came to be happy with his kind wife George, Crazy Horse seems to have achieved domestic content with Black Shawl, who, unfortunately, was afflicted with tuberculosis. One of the reasons Crazy Horse developed a friendship with Dr. Valentine McGillycuddy was that the doctor was so steadfast in his efforts to cure Black Shawl.
Later, Crazy Horse took a second wife, a half-Cheyenne, half-French girl named Nellie Larrabee (sometimes spelled Laverie); there is a picture of her in Ian Frazierâs Great Plains. Very probably he never quite got over Black Buffalo Woman, about whose later life nothing is known.
Thus the great passion of Crazy Horseâs life failed and brought serious disorder to his people. It was not long after this that he also suffered the loss of his reckless brother Little Hawk, who was killed when he foolishly attacked some well-armed miners.
Meanwhile, though the Sioux had their treaty, the railroads were coming and with them the whites. There was no serious attempt made to police the area that was then, by law, off-limits to the whites. Who was supposed to have policed an area that vast, anyway? By 1872 the railroads had come so far that Custer, Sheridan, Buffalo Bill Cody, and other dignitaries could take Grand Duke Alexis of Russia on a buffalo hunt, with the grand duke traveling well into Kansas in the comfort of his railroad car.
To the north, things were still quiet. The Northern Pacific was only just edging into North Dakota. It would be a while before it threatened the Sioux sanctuary.
But no quiet, no peace, really lasted long; the endgame was now about to begin. In late summer of 1872 a force of several hundred soldiers pushed up the Yellowstone River into eastern Montana, precipitating the first major conflict between the wild, mainly undisturbed northern Sioux, including Sitting Bullâs people, the Hunkpapas.
Crazy Horse had perhaps drifted north by then; he may have been dissatisfied with the more and more passive conditions to the south, where both Red Cloud and Spotted Tail were now firmly (and permanently) committed to peace. Both had been given agencies of their own; they made no more war on the whites. Spotted Tail was criticized in some quarters for being, in a manner of speaking, a kind of Vichy Indianâbut this is quite unfair. Spotted Tail was never a toady, and never sycophantic in his dealings with the whites. Given a choice, probably he would have been happy just to get out of the way; but the Brulés, whom he led, really couldnât get out of the way. So Spotted Tail negotiated, for the most part effectively. He survived his two-year imprisonment with his dignity intact, and it was to remain intact until the end, when, like Sitting Bull, he was killed by one of his own people, a rival named Crow Dog.
But agency life, with its endless compromising and itsconstant haggling with the white agents, would never have appealed to Crazy Horse, any more than it appealed to Sitting Bull.
The engagement that Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse fought in August of 1872 came near to being a disaster for the Indians. The force against them, some four hundred soldiers, was well armed and could not be tempted into any rashness. Crazy Horse had learned at the Wagon Box Fight how ineffective bows and arrows were against soldiers who were both well armed and competently led. In this fight in the north the Sioux were very daring, but simply could not get close enough to the soldiers to inflict any damage without paying a huge price in lives. As it was, several of the unrestrainable young Sioux were killed early on. It was in
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