The Killing of Crazy Horse

by Thomas Powers

With the Great Sioux War as background and context, and drawing on many new materials, Thomas Powers establishes what really happened in the dramatic final months and days of Crazy Horse’s life.
 
He was the greatest Indian warrior of the nineteenth century, whose victory over General Custer at the battle of Little Bighorn in 1876 was the worst defeat ever inflicted on the frontier army. But after surrendering to federal troops, Crazy Horse was killed in custody for reasons which have been fiercely debated for more than a century. The Killing of Crazy Horse pieces together the story behind this official killing.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Native American, American History, Native Americans, Audiobook

608 pages, Paperback

First published November 2, 2010

About the author

Thomas Powers is an American author and intelligence expert.

He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1971 together with Lucinda Franks for his articles on Weathermen member Diana Oughton (1942-1970). He was also the recipient of the Olive Branch award in 1984 for a cover story on the Cold War that appeared in The Atlantic, a 2007 Berlin Prize, and for his 2010 book on Crazy Horse the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The officer of the guard, Lieutenant Henry Lemly, was inside the building. There were two rooms. Turning Bear, leading the way, entered the first room through the door that had been ajar with the rest close on his heels. To the right was a door into a second room. In the door was a window with bars. The door opened. In the second room were several men. It was said later that these men were wearing chains. Their feet were attached to iron balls. The chains could be heard rattling…Charging First heard a shout from inside the building. Turning Bear shouted out, ‘It’s the jail!’ He shouted, ‘Turn back!’ He rushed back out through the door that had been ajar. Charging First heard the man rushing out say, ‘There are bodies hanging in that room…’ In this instant, Crazy Horse lost his weakness. ‘When the inner door was opened to pass Crazy Horse in,’ Billy Garnett said later, ‘it dawned on him that he was a prisoner…’ With tremendous force Crazy Horse lunged back, pulling away from the door…”
- Thomas Powers, The Killing of Crazy Horse

Mount Rushmore is one of the purest tourist traps yet devised by the hand of man. The four presidential faces carved into the granite prominence have little or no connection at all to South Dakota. Of the three, only Teddy Roosevelt ever set foot on the land, or even knew South Dakota as a State. Still, it serves its purpose, which is to get people to come to South Dakota. And it works, to the tune of three million people a year, all of whom come to see – and be disappointed by – the skulls of four white presidents blasted onto the side of a mountain sacred to the Lakota.

Less than twenty miles away, and quite a bit less finished, is the Crazy Horse Monument. Developed in the same vein as Rushmore (that is, making men out of mountains), it has been under construction for 63 years, and at its present pace, will be completed sometime before the end of the world, but long after our own deaths.

The historical ironist can make quite a day out of the two monuments: the four gleaming heads jutting from sacred rock, representative of 150 years of American history; the steamrolling crush of Anglo-Saxon civilization as it swept westward from the Atlantic; and the unfinished Indian on horseback, the defender of the Black Hills, who was lied to by the Federal Government, betrayed by his own people, and then stabbed in the back by a United States soldier. You got your winner and your loser, right there, just seventeen miles apart.

Reflect, if you will. And don’t forget to take a picture of yourself in which you use perspective to make it seem like you are picking Jefferson’s nose.

In terms of name recognition, Crazy Horse is the most famous Indian in history. Tecumseh and Pontiac had grander visions and commanded more hearts and minds, but the travails of the Eastern woodland tribes have been long eclipsed by the romantic plight of the great horse tribes of the plains. Sitting Bull is widely known, but he was a spiritual leader, and therefore harder to understand than Crazy Horse’s distilled warrior essence. Red Cloud and Spotted Tail were as fierce of fighters in their primes as Crazy Horse was in his, but they are hampered the intertribal politics in which they were snagged, following their surrender to the U.S. Government.

Crazy Horse is the most famous because he was unreconstructed right up to the end. The Indian Wars are complicated. Crazy Horse is simple. He was a warrior and the way of the warrior is death. He fought all his life; he didn’t suffer white men; he didn’t wear white men’s clothes; he didn’t involve himself in white men’s politics; he never allowed his picture to be taken; and in the end, he chose death over a jail cell.

There is something eminently noble about him, so much so that 71 years after we murdered him, we decided to carve him into a mountainside.

Right in the middle of the place he believed the world began.

Just like he would’ve wanted.

Thomas Powers’ The Killing of Crazy Horse purports to tell the story of Crazy Horse’s death, and the wild, swirling, scheming characters and events that brought him to his end. In May 1877, less than a year after the stunning defeat of George Custer at the Little Big Horn, Crazy Horse arrived at Camp Robinson, Nebraska, as a prelude to a formal surrender. For the next few months, Crazy Horse camped near Camp Robinson while poisonous rumors filled the air: rumors that Crazy Horse was going to slip away; rumors that Crazy Horse was going to resume his war against the whites; rumors that Crazy Horse intended to assassinate General George Crook.

Crook ordered Crazy Horse’s arrest, and sent soldiers against his village. The village scattered and Crazy Horse escaped to nearby Spotted Tail Agency. After meeting with a sympathetic officer, Lieutenant Jesse Lee, Crazy Horse agreed to return to Camp Robinson. Unbeknownst to him, Crazy Horse’s arrest had been ordered. When Crazy Horse arrived at Camp Robinson, he was led to the guardhouse. When he saw the iron bars, he tried to escape. His own people, chief among them Little Big Man, tried to hold him down. A soldier stabbed him in the back once, perhaps twice, mortally wounding him.

Powers does a great job with Crazy Horse’s last few months of life. To be sure, it is a controversial period of time. The sheer number of myths, rumors, half-truths and lies orbiting his murder makes any retelling particularly fraught. However, Powers carefully parses all the primary sources, searches for corroborating testimony, and weighs the motivations and competing interests of each witness. The result is a thorough, comprehensive, staggeringly detailed story, one that reads like Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as filtered through the lens of John Ford.

The problem, though, is that the last few months of Crazy Horse’s life is only told in the final quarter of what is a nearly 500 page book. Don’t let the title fool you. This is more than the story of a single man’s death. Rather, it is a sprawling, lumpy, oft-disjointed history of the Great Sioux War of 1876-77. It is both fun and frustrating.

The Killing of Crazy Horse begins, appropriately enough, with a short biography about Crazy Horse. Unfortunately, this mini-biography is terrible. It is riddled with gaps (no mention of Crazy Horse’s presence at the Grattan Massacre, or his fight against General Sumner), marred by falsehoods and factual inaccuracies (Powers claims, like so many others, that Crazy Horse was among the decoys at the Fetterman Fight, despite no primary sources to this end), and is a chronological nightmare, with almost no attempt to place the events of Crazy Horse’s life on some kind of timeline.

As clunky and unhelpful as this introduction was, I was even more disturbed by what happens to Crazy Horse next: he disappears. Yes, in a book in which his name adorns the title, the central character is unseen and unheard for exasperatingly long stretches. Partially this is due to the essential nature of Crazy Horse: he was reclusive, even among his own people. Partially, though, it is a fault of this book’s structure, which is mostly no discernible structure at all. Like the characters on Season 5 of Lost, Powers keeps jumping forward and backward through time. For example, Powers doesn’t deliver a chapter on the Little Big Horn until well after discussing the Battle of Slim Buttes, which occurred several months after Custer’s death. I assume this was done for dramatic purposes, but there are better ways to convey drama than dicing the chronology like a carrot beneath a Ginsu.

The Crazy Horse-free interstices are filled with characters secondary to the ultimate drama of Crazy Horse’s death: Red Cloud; the interpreter William Garnett; the half-breed frontiersman Frank Grouard; Lieutenant Philo Clark; and General Crook, the much maligned but fundamentally decent soldier who helped precipitate Crazy Horse’s murder. The events that are covered include Custer’s 1874 expedition into the Black Hills (which discovered gold, which necessitated our breaking the Laramie Treaty of 1868, which led to the Great Sioux War, which allowed us to dynamite presidential visages into Dakota granite, which allows me to come full circle), the Battle of the Rosebud, the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and the Battle of Slim Buttes.

At its core, my critique is one of focus, not quality. Indeed, I believe this is a case in which the parts are greater than the whole. For instance, I thought the mini-biographies on Red Cloud and General Crook were well-done (I especially liked Powers’ reliance on Crook’s unfinished, unpublished autobiography). The West was full of incredible characters, with ready-made nicknames, and I can’t fault Powers for lingering on as many as possible.

Powers also delivers some great set pieces. Despite a desperately-needed map, his account of the Battle of the Rosebud is judicious in both analysis and conclusion. I also liked his retelling of Slim Buttes, which was an emblematic encounter of the Indian Wars: a small number of participants; a lot of shooting; a small number of casualties; but somehow very brutal, and very ugly. Surprisingly, I even liked Powers’ chapter on the Little Big Horn, despite my doubts (I strongly believe that it is nearly impossible to give a reasoned description of the Little Big Horn in anything less than book-length form). Powers was able to give a dramatic, reasonable reconstruction of the battle that highlights Crazy Horse’s contribution while resisting the temptation to credit him with the Indians’ victory.

(Crazy Horse’s role at the Little Big Horn has always been overhyped. The second time I went to the battlefield, the ranger’s interpretive talk posited that Crazy Horse overwhelmed Custer by executing a massive charge that swept around to the north of Custer’s position and took him from behind. Because that’s how Indians fight. Like the British at Balaclava. Needless to say, while listening to this ranger, I had to count slowly to one-hundred in my head, to keep from interrupting).

The problem, as I see it, is that these parts fail to merge into a coherent narrative. There is a very obvious starting point to this book: Crazy Horse’s birth. And there is a very obvious ending point to this book: Crazy Horse’s death. But somehow, despite the inherent linearity of a man’s life and death, all the skipping around, the chronological rearrangements, and the odd inclusions and elisions create a plot that is harder to follow than the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

My hypothesis is that the confused through-line is the result of too much research. It’s plain to see, both by reading the text, the notes, and the bibliography, that Powers did his homework. It’s also relatively plain that he wanted to show this knowledge off like a new car. His narrative is crammed with long, sometimes repetitive digressions on topics as varied as the contents of a Lakota medicine bag, the trials of the Sun Dance, and the construction of a shield. Oftentimes, these are interesting digressions. Other times, they are just pointless. For instance, Powers spends somewhere in the neighborhood of six pages discussing General Crook’s peevishness with General Sheridan over a perceived slight at the Battle of Winchester during the Civil War. Really? Maybe you could’ve stuffed that little gem into a footnote, while spending a little more time fleshing out Crazy Horse. (Though, I hasten to add, hard evidence on Crazy Horse is hard to find).

There is a taut, rigidly constructed, two-hundred page thriller lost somewhere in this unwieldy, 470-page tome. Disappointment lurks for those who value brevity, conciseness, and clockwork pacing. On the other hand, there are pleasures awaiting for those who don’t mind the work of studied raconteur.

[Thomas Isern · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a fair amount of discussion among professional historians these days as to why works of history by non-professionals are so popular. If the answers are not obvious to you, then here is the book to illustrate them. The Killing of Crazy Horse is everything that professors directing graduate work in my generation said a work of history ought not to be. It does not get right to the point. It perambulates there through hundreds of pages. It is an indulgent book, dwelling on all sorts of details just because they are cool. It names names of people, as though they mattered. It never says, "The thesis of my work is," but rather develops an argument through narrative, yes, narrative, and trusts the reader to understand what the point is. It achieves credibility not through cool distance from the data but rather from utter immersion in it. It combines an old-fashioned preoccupation with the determination of what really happened with a 21st-century recognition that sometimes, what happened was chaos. There now, that's enough to tell the professional historians. As for the so-called nonprofessionals, I'll just say two things. First, annotate your work, the way Powers has. Readers of real history want this. Second, watch out when you venture offline that the misconceptions of others do not creep into your work. I find but one example of this in the work at hand (where Powers repeats the old saw that the massacre at Sand Creek was perpetrated by militia, not real soldiers), but it is common for writers to be assiduous in their research online, that is, on their particular topic, but to rely on shaky work for background and context. Finally, as to the virtues of Powers's work, give credit for artful ambiguity. You have to read to the end to realize that the title has more than one meaning.

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powers's history is about more than the death of one man. Many men and women were killed in the period of the Sioux wars of the 1860s and 70s. In using the death of the iconic warrior chief as a kind of hub, Powers relates the history of those years made up of dispute and open warfare which ended in the death of the old, traditional hunting and raiding life of the Plains Sioux. It's a history written with the aid of the rich resources left by participants of both sides but most interestingly from the point of view of the Indians because it's a portrayal of primitives told with an anthropological precision giving us a detailed picture of every aspect of Indian life, not only warfare but also ceremonial practices, social structure, dress, food, ways of thinking about and dealing with death, and marriage customs. It's as clear a picture of what the Plains peoples were like as I remember reading. We understand the motives of the white men and the westward movement. Powers addresses that but to his credit spends even more time explaining the intellectual disciplines of the Indians and their understanding of the several powers in the nature around them, how they related to and used them. And also to his credit, as a history of the spiritual impulses of the tribes as well as the political, which was a thick stew of shifting fortunes and allegiances, it's told not in the stereotypical way of Indian oral histories but in the modern language in which this history has come down to us. This is probably the best book I've read at describing that seam where the Indians and white men met.

The story itself is full of self-serving motive and misunderstanding. Powers demonstrates the friction caused by the contact of 2 culturally diverse and technologically imbalanced societies. His story is analysis which brilliantly isn't analysis but is comprehensive in its glaringly hostile attitudes these 2 cultures in collision had of each other. Without actually saying so, he shows why they couldn't co-exist.

The prime mover of Powers's story may be Crazy Horse but this is a larger history of the displacement of a people which is human, tragic, and utterly fascinating, and which the author follows well into the twentieth century.

[Gaylord Dold · Rating 5 out of 5]

The great Oglala Sioux warrior Crazy HOrse, leader of the Hunkpatila band comprising some 150 lodges and perhaps 400 men, women, and children---Thunder Dreamer Carrier of the Shield, killer of Custer the Genocidal Buffoon---was murdered by a veteran soldier of the Mormon
wars named William Gentles,who, according to the contemporary evidence offered by He Dog, stabbed Crazy HOrse in the back with a bayonet as he was being shoved into a cell
at Fort Robinson, Nebraska Territory, on September 5, 1877.

Several hundred people were on the parade ground of Robinson that day, agency Indians,
sometimes called Loafers, soldiers, soldiers' wives, officers and scouts, many hostile to
Crazy Horse, some merely confused Indians trying to please the whites. The event is as tragic
as the assassination of Lincoln and Martin Luther King, who were themselves warriors of
another kind, but attacked and finally destroyed by the great awful growling maw of American
history.

There has never been a better book written about these events: the Sioux wars of the 1860s
and 1870s from the time of the Box Elder Fight and the Fetterman Massacres along the Bozeman
trail just after the Civil War, through the final stand of the Sioux in their best and last hunting
country on the Tongue and Powder Rivers just south of the Yellowstone country, now northern
Wyoming. Powers, a historian of the intelligence community with many books to his credit,
explains in the introduction to this magical, authoritative, detailed and moving account that
a "child's sympathies develop early and mine were with the Indians."

And there has never been a better book personalizing the people involved---the Sioux themselves presented
as individuals in all their complexity: the half-Sioux ingterpreter William Garnett, who was present
at all the major events and heard the Indians speak, Lt. William :Philo Clark who in his capacity
as go-between emerges as the only honest man among the American soldiers, including Luther
P. Bradley, commander of Ft. Robinson, and General George Crook, Indian Fighter Deluxe, both
liars and hypocrites.

Crazy Horse was not the last wild Indian. Sitting Bull had gone to Canada with his people, seeking
protection of the Great Mother in England. There were a few small bands of Brule hiding in creek
bottoms somewhere in Wyoming, even after Crazy Horse "came in" during the hungry spring of
1877.

But Crazy HOrse was iconic. According to Powers, Horn Chips said that in preparing for a fight,
Crazy HOrse painted his face red with earth making a zigzag streak from the top of his forehead
down one side of his nose to his chin. He painted his face with hail spots, dipping his fingers
in white paint, touching him self here and there. He wore a medicine bundle around his neck
and sometimes the dried body of a red-tailed hawk attached to his hair at the outside of his
temple, and one or two eagle feathers as well. Sometimes he covered himself with the hide of a
colt. Amos Bad Heart Bull, He Dog and Short Bull, each portrayed Crazy Horse as painted yellow in
battle, with hail spots on his face and body, his horse streaked with lightning bolts and covered
with a soft powder of dust gathered from around gopher holes, dust which rendered the horse
invisible.

Because of his intransigence and power, Crazy Horse became the object of jealousy by agency
Indians, especially chiefs like Red Cloud and Spotted Tail, who had brought their Oglala and Brule
people to the agency a decade earlier. And because Crazy Horse had led the tribes against
Custer, wiping out the famous Seventh Cavalry, the Americans lusted for revenge against him.
They got what they wished. The Oglala in Crazy Horses's band, then camped along Chadron
Creek, about forty miles northeast of Robinson, took his body away and secreted it. It was never
found.

Powers uses his considerable skills to highlight the precise political upheavals within the tribes
and bands that led to turmoil at Robinson. Scouts, some Oglala themselves, but most Crow or
Shoshone, traditional enemies of the Sioux, become familiar to the reader. Even Crook himself,
stolid, vain, imperious and ultimately a failed cipher, jumps off Power's pages, as do
many underlings, pages, squires and toadies, as well as the journalists from Chicago and
Philadelphia who were camp followers.

By the end, we feel inclined to treat these characters as living beings. No other book of Western
History achieves so much from the historical record.

Thunder Dreamers like Crazy Horse did not hide form storms that on the prairie often killed
animals and people. They split the storm, explained Kicking Bear.

James Bordeaux, another trader who knew the Indians who knew Crazy Horse, said that inside
the medicine bundle carried by the great warrior was a wild aster mixed with the dried heart
and brain of an eagle. Horn Chips told everyone that Crazy Horse wore a blue painted rock on
a thong around his left ear, symbolic of hail, and that he rallied his comrades by blowing on a
whistle made from the wing bone of an eagle.

There are no photographs of Crazy Horse. He refused to travel to Washington and become a
laughingstock. He never signed a treaty or ever believed a single word the Americans said. He
stayed with the life until his people were starved. Crazy Horse rode at the front in battle,
unlike American generals, who stayed safely at the rear. In life, he prepared himself for
death, and among the Sioux at Pine Ridge he is still mourned.

[Rachel Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title The Killing of Crazy Horse might be a bit inaccurate when trying to sum up the content of this massively dense Thomas Powers book about the great Native American leader. The book is indeed about Crazy Horse, his peers and family and his wartime prowess, but more than that, it's also a tremendous book about the Indian Wars of 1876-77 and beyond, and that's why — surprisingly — I've rated this book only three of five stars here.

In college, I once wrote a paper on a topic that eludes me now, but the gist was something concerning a political concept that I was extremely passionate about at the time, so naturally I was incredibly eager to write the paper about it. However, the professor was apparently less amused than I was, because when I got it back, I had been marked down because I "know too much" about the topic in question. I was confused and annoyed: how could I know too much about a topic, and why would that be something I got marked down for?

But reading Powers' book now, I understand what my professor meant. Powers clearly knows a ton about Crazy Horse's life and death, and did an extensive amount of research to provide primary sources and evidence to explain his knowledge. That's great.

But what isn't so great is that half of this book isn't even about Crazy Horse. It's intended to provide context into the Indian Wars of the time and the U.S. Army leaders who were tracking him, but all the information does in the first 300 pages of this book is confuse and overwhelm the reader — at least, that's what happened to me.

Make no mistake: the entire book is a dense and informative read. Everything in it is interesting and provides a ton of new information about the U.S. government's pursuit of Native American tribes and their famous leaders. But Powers could easily have separated the context part of the book from the Crazy Horse part of the book and still had everything make sense. I read with glossy eyes in many sections because I wasn't understanding a lot of what was going on; there really was just too much information to process in a lot of areas, too many names and places and things that weren't entirely relevant to the story of Crazy Horse himself. (Like, I don't care at all about the relationship between the Army generals and lieutenants, even when it is slightly relevant to them trying to find Crazy Horse. It's still not interesting to me.)

The second half of the book really picked up, though, and I found myself with my knuckles in my mouth, already knowing what was going to happen to Crazy Horse and his allies but still dreading it all the same. Powers writes very matter-of-factly, as a historian trying to present facts, naturally. But his descriptions of the 1877 sun dance or the actual killing of Crazy Horse were so beautiful, so poetic, and so powerful that I couldn't stop reading. In some sections, his writing actually made up for the irrelevant parts of the book I had to skim through earlier. The latter half of the book made the book worth it for me, although I wish it had been easier to make it to that point.

The whole book will make you think. It'll present American history in a new light, obviously in the context of the persecution that Native Americans faced in the 19th century. It's a very in-depth look at history for anyone interested in that era or cultures, and I would recommend it to people who want to read more into what the general public knows. But know that it's definitely a dense book, and one that is difficult to read at some points.

[Elizabeth K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly, I don't know whether I'm getting dumber with each passing year, or if this book was extremely dense, but it took me forever to get through it. It was really good, and it was worth the effort, but boy, I had to be on top of the thing all the time to keep all the information straight. And I even went into it with a reasonable grasp of the issues, events and players, which I thought would help but apparently not.

The author goes back to A LOT of source material to flesh out the events of the Sioux Wars and the factors that ultimately resulted in the killing of Crazy Horse in 1877. Most of it was fascinating, he really assembled a lot of different view points and overall, did a great job of connecting the dots without making any wild leaps or assumptions. It all came together as a really informing study of this era of US history. Of course, in addition to being informing, it was also maddening because, just, urgh, the unfairness of it all was tangible. I mean, at literally every turn. EVERY TURN.

My biggest issue with the book was a choice to break with a roughly chronological structure and give the detailed account of Little Big Horn after Crazy Horse's (and others) eventual acquiescence and agreement to end the war. At this point I thought I was losing my mind, because I knew it happened and was wildly flipping back through the book because I thought I missed it while in some fugue state (it could happen). In retrospect, I see the point - it IS the dramatic part, and I can see the rationale of putting it in the order that the US forces learned of the details of the battle so I guess it works as the big reveal. But still, I needed some sort of clearer framework to let me know this was what was happening.

There were a few other things I would love to ask the author about - on the top of that list, is the fact he used Sioux a lot more than is usual these days (given that it's not the name these people used for themselves). He does mention it, but then continues to casually throw it around a lot, in addition to (understandably) keeping Sioux as it was used in contemporaneous accounts.

I thought this was a terrific book, but it is a commitment. I would recommend to folks who are already fairly familiar with this topic and looking for a deeper perspective.

[Patricia Kitto · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to (all 21 hours of) this book.
This was an incredibly detailed account of waaaay more than the killing of Crazy Horse! It also covered many of the people associated with and the events that lead up to that fateful day in 1877. There were times when I would lose track of the thread of the story as the author recounted the background of a related person or event but fortunately the author did a fairly good job of reminding the reader what precipitated the detour. I found myself saying, “Oh! That’s what was happening!” I learned a ton - some of it not pretty - and I definitely came away with an appreciation for why there is a Crazy Horse Monument in progress in the Black Hills. A good way to learn some Native American history.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powers' account of the Battle of the Little Big Horn is one of the clearest I have ever read.
And his account of Crazy Horse's death makes one want to weep.

[SouthWestZippy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Taken from Goodreads synopsis. 'The death of Crazy Horse was a traumatic event not only in Sioux but also in American history. With the Great Sioux War as background and context, drawing on many new materials as well as documents in libraries and archives, Thomas Powers recounts the final months and days of Crazy Horse’s life not to lay blame but to establish what happened."

I learned a lot from the book, but I must say it is information overload. Thomas Powers did years of research, and it shows throughout the whole book. This is problem number one for me, again information overload. Thomas Powers lacks flow in his chapters, feels disjointed and jumps way too often into unrelated events for subjects.
The story of Crazy Horse is lesser known than many of the other historical people from his era. After reading this book, I still don't believe the whole story has been told, nor have I felt I know Crazy Horse and his family better than any other book I have read about him. I am still giving the book three stars because this book was worth reading and I encourage others to read it.

[Michael Heyman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thomas Powers uses the mystery of the killing of Native American leader Crazy Horse to recreate the complex interactions between colonisers and indigenous people on the plains of the United States during the period known as the Sioux Wars. The reader is drawn in by a methodological introduction in which the author creates a generational link through old people he interviewed to their memories of their grandparents, some of whom were actors in or witnesses of the dramatic events leading to the killing.

From there, Powers proceeds through vivid descriptions of major actors and their part in events, carefully grading the reliability of conflicting accounts, gradually centring on the elusive Mr Horse himself, who flashes through the narrative like his own mirror-signals. In the process, Powers opens up the many-layered world of indigenous and colonial people at various levels of assimilation with each other - from the cultural separateness of independent, traditional Native Americans and colonial military commanders, to the mixed milieu of Native Americans on reservations and mixed-descent or mixed-culture scouts, spies and other military freelancers, who provide a cultural and evidential bridge between the two worlds.

Historical contexts and events are filled in with, for example, a detailed foray into Sioux spirituality and source-critical reconstructions of important battles. Resonant names like Red Cloud and Sitting Bull hover on the horizon.

The reader is left with a powerful and nuanced impression of the various reactions of individuals and groups in a traditional culture under relentless assault by Modernity, as the Native American leaders struggle with increasing desperation to choose strategies for the physical and cultural survival of their people: to lead their group of followers into assimilation at an early stage; to escape to Canada with Sitting Bull, who foresaw the inevitable total loss of ancestral lands; or to stay and fight, like Crazy Horse. At the same time, each actor is revealed as an individual with their own ethical code and basis of assumptions and motives.

Powers's style is both entertaining and professional and, as often with the best of popular historical writing, the book is at least as readable as a novel.

[Rich Flanders · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this unflinching look at our history, there’s not an uninteresting sentence. The writing is alive, fully immersing us in the life of the Lakota and the legendary Crazy Horse. We ride freely across the plains in the days before the white man; we experience the ferocious battles, the hardships, treachery and betrayals, and the harrowing years of destruction of a way of life. Like no other writer about Crazy Horse I’ve ever read, this author knows the man, and in the light he shines, we glimpse the soul of Crazy Horse. We grow to know and love the visionary warrior whose charged presence and purity of heart ignited the tribes, and whose dark end still troubles the soul of a nation.

What you look for but don’t always get in a book - an enriching, enlightening life experience.


richflandersmusic.com

[Bookmarks Magazine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Less a biography than the study of a lost way of life, Powers's sprawling chronicle uses the great Lakota warrior as a springboard to examine the history and culture of the Sioux tribes. Simultaneously, Powers rectifies the biased inaccuracies of a historical record that has traditionally treated the murder of Crazy Horse as "something between a footnote and an afterthought." Drawing on extensive fieldwork and a dizzying amount of firsthand sources, Powers vividly describes the personalities, politics, and conflicts that shaped the era and defined the troubled relationship between Native Americans and the U.S. government. Some readers may be overwhelmed by Powers's exhaustive research and persistent (if fascinating) digressions, but most will find Crazy Horse "a rich and worthwhile read" (Oregonian). This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.

[Kenneth Barber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crazy Horse was one of the great figures in the Indian Wars of the 19th century. He is generally credited with engineering the victories at the Rosebud and Little Bighorn. The book follows him from birth through his coming of age and acquiring his name to his leadership in war. The author does a god job of relating the Indian culture, tribal relationships. And the clan or family groups which made up the tribe. He explains about their religion and how it influenced their lives. The author uses Native American sources as well as those of military officers and traders,etc. He traces the politics and rivalries that lead to the death of Crazy Horse at Fort Robinson in 1877. He shows how the murder was as much to blame on tribal politics as the white desire to have him out of the way.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well researched and well told. Crazy Horse himself, unfortunately, remains a bit of a mystery... and as happens with many histories, everyone has a story to tell, often contradictory. But Powers does a great job of trying to keep the story straight and relatively objective. Plus he seems to make a specific effort to mention all the awesome Indian names that have a part in the story... Woman Dress, He Dog, American Horse, Respects Nothing, White Buffalo Woman, Walks as She Thinks, Fool Bear, Young Man Afraid of His Horses, Good Weasel... so many, so colourful. What a sad, brave story.

[Emelie · Rating 1 out of 5]

After trying to read it for most of spring and summer I have put it aside for the time being with hopes of once complete to read it.

I am fascinated with the subject, but I didn't get drawn in. It was boring, or something I can't put my finger on why I didn't had the urge to read it. The writing is easy to understand, and it has lots of information. Maybe too much that isn't connected with Crazy Horse or the killing of him? I don't know. Something just made me bored.

[Abbey Harlow · Rating 4 out of 5]

A detailed recounting of crazy horse's life and the events leading up to his death. Did a much more comprehensive job explaining the battle of Little Bighorn to a layman than Philbrick. My only complaint is that sometimes the timeline jumped around and it could be hard to keep track of what was going on when, but this only happened occasionally.

[Ken · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absorbing history of a warrior, couldn't put it down, and when I did couldn't wait to pick it up again. Learnt so much more about this man. Great read if you get a chance and love American native history try it out.

[Alana Cash · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title of this book was misleading for me. First of all, Crazy Horse was not simply "killed" like he had an accident or fell in some battle. He was murdered. Second, he hardly appears in the first 75% of the book. In some chapters the name Crazy Horse does not appear even once. The author, I guess, intended to mention anyone and everyone peripherally involved in the murder of Crazy Horse. This made the book dense and read like a school history book, altho still somewhat interesting. I became much more interested the last 100 pages, when Crazy Horse finally "surrendered" and moved his people to one of the agencies.

This is an incredibly well-researched book and has a lot of detail about US Army soldiers during the mid-to-late 19th Century in the area of Nebraska/So Dakota/Wyoming/Montana. There is an over-abundance of names, some of importance, others not so much. The author digresses into stories of the Army officers to include irrelevant material about the Civil War and other areas of the country where they were campaigning [i.e. Arizona], their upbringing, etc. There is just too much detail - for example one lieutenant is mentioned along with his wife who is pregnant. TMI. But very little about William Gentles who actually murdered Crazy Horse.

The author also includes many names of Native people as well as their bands. After a while it was easier to remember those names than all the various agents and military people.

The author included statements made by various chiefs and members of the tribes made in the Lakota language and translated into English. From those interpretations, I came to grasp that the Lakota language is more conceptual than literal. For example "waken" can mean holy, sacred, spirit, power, mysterious and more. And that Thasunke Witco [translated "Crazy Horse"] is not conceptually correct. Witco is "horse." But Thasunke does not mean "crazy" as it's defined in English. It was not clear to me from the author's explanation what the word actually means.

Reading about the behaviors and experiences of the tribes at the agency compared to the tribes that had not "surrendered," I understood how the men changed psychologically when they surrendered. The US government agents and Army created a dependence on rations [as the men could longer hunt]. The families lined up like beggars to get the food. The Army and scouts also started rumors about who would be "head chief" and that created jealousy. For men who were used to roaming and hunting and being physically active, they were reduced basically to feeling trapped

While there was a lot that I learned, again the book was dense, and didn't spend enough time on Crazy Horse. Also, the author was a bit lopsided regards the Lakota culture. First, he does not explain that the word "Sioux" is an Ojibwe word meaning "enemy." The Lakota would not have used that word and he could have explained that. But more important, the author states that a Lakota man could just leave his wife if he felt like [akin to divorce] just by saying he want to go. What he left out is that the woman owned the lodge and everything in it and if the man left, he took only his hunting tools. Then one of her brothers or uncles might move in until she took another husband. Relationships were more about sexual choice and not about sexual ownership.

Also, the author quoted white men using the term "squaw." The author did not point out that "Skwa" is an Algonquin word and not a word used in Lakota or other Native languages. Nor did he point out that "squaw" is a derogatory word the way these white men used it.

The index is not good.

[Zharel Anger · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a disjointed and often inaccurate history of the Great Sioux War of 1865-77 where the reporter cannot settle on weaving a tale or reporting history. Frequently, the timeline is lost to narrative strains, and they are long strains with no discernible structure. This is partly due to the erratic appearance of Crazy Horse in primary sources. Being out of the larger society, information on him is sporadic. The best sources being Ohiyesa and Black Elk are already fine books. With primary sources close to Crazy Horse being sparse, 43 pages were taken from Black Elk. This demonstrates that Black Elk Speaks is the book to read. All of the interviews of chieftains that met Crazy Horse, done by Ohiyesa, were used but uncredited, most likely because they were the source of information gathered by the reference books Powers used to make his book. The reports of captains and generals that were used in this book are from an opposing look that is all too common.

The book begins with an awkward and long introduction that promises a story about Crazy Horse only to launch into the first chapter admitting that all we know about Crazy Horse’s early years were reported inconsistently by He Dog. The book then launches into a long retelling of Red Cloud’s war that is surprisingly thin on facts for the amount of space it occupies in the text. The primary subject of the book, Crazy Horse, is conspicuously absent for long stretches of the book.

In terms of narrative or academic, the book has no discernible structure. It jumps around in time for little reason other than to pepper drama and action into the stretch of years between Red Cloud’s War and the battle at Little Big Horn.

The most striking inaccuracy in the book is the refusal of the so-called Northern tribes to surrender the Black Hills when the tribes of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Gall were actually forced to occupy those lands under the treaty that resulted from Red Cloud’s war and the Ft Laramie Treaty of 1851. He further talks about the rumors of gold that started the chain of events that led to the battle of the Little Bighorn when in fact it was no rumor. The US Government established the Bozeman Trail in 1864. This was in direct violation of treaty lands from the Bighorn mountains to the Bozeman Pass. This act was not merely the part of gold seekers and immigrants as evidenced by the continued presence of Fort Reno, Kearney, Smith, and Ellis in the defense of the route.

In an effort to cover the life of a man who we know little about, this book takes on more than it can handle. It is too much preparation with insufficient editing and focus.

[Socraticgadfly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who killed Crazy Horse? Ultimately and directly, a white soldier's bayonet did so at Camp Robinson.

Really, though, "Three Stars" — Gen. George Crook — lies behind the scene.

Crook, just a day earlier, had issued orders to kill him, before changing them to simply capturing him. There was no effective difference. Crazy Horse, had it been clear to him in advance that he was going to be thrown into the camp guardhouse, would have fought to the death, certainly. And, in one way or another Crook — and above him, Sheridan, then Sherman, wanted Crazy Horse, like other Indian chiefs, "broken," then neutralized.

Powers' magisterial book shows how this all went down. The death move appears to be all Crook's. Powers research show nothing that Sheridan or Sherman suggested Crazy Horse needed to be killed, let alone ordered it.

To some degree, this book becomes, if not a bio of Crook, at least a bit of myth-busting.

In Powers' hands, he comes off as no better in his attitudes toward Indians than most frontier generals. Ditto in his attitude to O.O. Howard in his pursuit of Joseph and his band of Nez Perce.

Reality? First, as noted, Crook was just like other generals in thinking many chiefs were insolent, or might we say, "uppity," and needed to be humiliated and broken.

Second, in his dealings with the Sioux and with Crazy Horse and other northern Oglala in particular, it was the second time that he made promises he couldn't keep.

The first time had been in his first fights with the Apache. That's acceptable. Here, he should have couched his language more. But, not only did he not, he went on to ... let's just call him a liar with Geronimo and other Apaches in the 1880s.

That said, while Crook was the driving force for Crazy Horse's death, he wasn't alone.

Including detailing the scene during the arrest-and-death melee and afterward, Powers shows in detail how a number of fellow Sioux leaders, especially southern Oglala with ties to Red Cloud, were at least as glad as white soldiers to see Crazy Horse die. After all, Crook found willing takers the day before on the plan to kill him.

Also, while not a true biography of Crazy Horse, because such a thing isn't really possible, this book does serve to some degree as that. It also serves as a careful explainer of Sioux life at the time of the last Plains wars.

[Ricardo · Rating 3 out of 5]

A curiously written, but ultimately powerful accounting of a landmark moment during the American war against the Lakota. The intro promised an analysis of the division among natives; independent-minded warriors against white incursions like Crazy Horse, and the mixed-blood men who joined the military for steady income and stable home life. But the book then launches headlong into the Wars of Expansion, with intricately detailed accounts of some of the major players among the US Army. The personal accounts makes this work pop, but the steady drumbeat of facts threatened to drag everything down.
The narrative truly shines during the last quarter, where a blow-by-blow account of Crazy Horse's death is told with tension and compassion. Powers makes a smart observation: when Crazy Horse agreed to lay down his arms for negotiations with the US government, a ceremonial Sun Dance was performed for US troops. When accounts of the fierce ritual (which featured the ripping off of bone shards inserted underneath the skin) were related to superiors, it became clear that the unflappable determination from these killers of Custer, would not be coaxed into negotiation but needed to be violently forced into submission. Powers then does an exemplary job at breaking down the conflicting accounts of the soldiers, Indian enemies and close relations of Crazy Horse to paint an altogether tragic setting for his end.
Powers also paints sympathetic portraits of those surrounding Crazy Horse's death. The sadness of his father, who buried his son in an unknown location, is palpable. We track the bewilderment of his third wife and relations as they faced an uncertain future without their anchor. The lieutenant who brought Crazy Horse in for negotiations, only to see him dragged into imprisonment and death, was haunted by this for many years. And more powerfully, He Dog, Crazy Horse's closest friend, lived to his 90's, but at an enfeebled physical state which served as a reminder of the struggles of the Lakota in the Pine Ridge Reservation. He never forgot the betrayal against his friend, saying that Crazy Horse should of “bent more” in his life, at least then the two would be with each other at the end of a long life.

[Bob Lundquist · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crazy Horse was the Lakota’s last gasp to keep the whites at bay. American Indian culture was based on warrior principles and a deep belief in help from nature. Like all Indians, Crazy Horse had a rough upbringing learning how to fight and survive within the tribe and in nature. He became an exceptional fighter due to his planning and preparations before a battle. Indian tribes fought other Indians tribes for resources and land. However, fighting against the white man was a completely different challenge. The white man had technology, but more importantly, whites had a demographic advantage. They were populating the land much faster than the Indians through birth and migration from Europe. They had gained military experience with the Civil War and exercised their technology with the transcontinental railroads. Another large problem for the Indians was their own internal cohesion and infighting. They were not united in the ways that bound the whites together.

This book is an excellent story of how Indians were defeated and imprisoned. Through this narrative of the life and times of Crazy Horse, the reader gets a panoramic view of the Indian culture and life when it clashed with the white man. Many personalities are introduced and explained how they affected Crazy Horse and Indian culture. The subtle relationships between and within tribes is well explicated as they show how they led to misunderstandings and death. The addition of white expansionism complicates this to such a degree that spelled the doom for independent Indian nations. Mixed-blood interpreters were indispensable in communications between societies. There were many of them and they realized their importance and took advantage of their positions, either for their own gain, or the gain of the culture they favored at any one time. Allegiances were fluid and unpredictable. This book makes a good companion to Hämäläinen's Lakota America.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Especially the end of the book from about chapter 25 - which specifically brings up the murder and the events leading upp to it - really engages. I found it hard to put the book down and would actually love to read this part again! This could have taken up more space in the book, as the title suggests it´s about Crazy horse and how he was killed.
Furthermore it would be interesting to have more of the authors own reflections on what he thinks about the responsibility for the killing. But he lets us readers draw our own conclusions, which in a way I appreciate too.

In the book there is a a lot of events and many people around Crazy Horse. I am guessing that a reader who already has read a lot about this subject and time period can find it distracting, but for me it was pretty educating. The personal portraits that the author paints is in a way relevant since a lot of the sources that we have about Crazy Horse, are from other observers. The portrait of Garnett is especially compelling and interesting in itself.

There are plenty of references, which is excellent for anybody who wants to continue reading. I also like how the author brings up several perspectives and versions of the same event, instead of chosing one over the other. Because people can remember, or choose to remember, different things.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

p.469 Powers defines his goal: “ This book attempts many things, but first among them is the attempt to explain why Crazy Horse was killed. What the various characters in the story wanted, in addition to things that angered, alarmed, and frightened them, further confused by bad luck and misunderstanding.” While I think he did that, I think he erred on the side of including every piece of information that he knew that was remotely related to this goal. He mentions that this final version of the book is 100 pages shorter than the original due to suggestions of those who read it first. I think he could have excluded more, and the book would have been easier to follow. The dense facts often lead nowhere, and didn’t contribute to his goals.

In general it was hard to read about the horrible treatment of indigenous natives. The quotes attributed to whites were especially hard to read.

I was unfamiliar with the subject matter of this book, and want to note a few random things I learned that I found interesting.

P.162 “George Crook learned a stern lesson during the Civil War: men get credit for what appears in the newspapers.” As a result, Crook always took journalists along on his expeditions. His journalists were definitely anti-Indian, and tended to give Crook more credit than he deserved. This would cause him some grief when his journalist reported Crook had beaten the Indians when in reality they regrouped and handed Custer a disastrous defeat.

A leading cause of Crazy Horses’ death was the jealousy of the other chiefs at the same Indian agency.

Ulysses S. Grant pretty much decided there would be no more “wild Indians roaming the plains.” That outlook coupled with the alleged discovery of gold in the Black Hills triggered a change in sentiment that justified a policy of reneging on treaties that had been signed with natives, and punishing them for protecting land that was legally theirs.

[Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't usually read this kind of thing, but Powers' account of frontier life drew me in. He presents a rich, variegated portrait of what happened to the Sioux from just after the American Civil War up to the killing of the chief and the loss of an entire way of life. So much of this story is heartbreaking; the post-war militarization of peaceful trading posts stirred up trouble. Restless Civil War commanders campaigned against those they deemed "hostile tribes." A hostile tribe was pretty much any group of Native Americans who didn't embrace white culture when it was offered to them. Treaties were made and broken, bison herds were nearly wiped out, and the culminating event -- the killing of Crazy Horse -- came about because of multiple blunders. I like that Powers drew from a multitude of sources: military records, diaries and letters of frontiersmen, accounts from the English-Lakota translators, and oral histories passed down trough Sioux families. All of this is meticulously documented in footnotes, yet the final narrative reads almost like an adventure novel or a political thriller.

[Forrest Rosser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this was a very dense and sometimes challenging read, the author's in-depth detailed analysis of the 18th century treatment of the American Indians was fascinating and tragic. I picked up this book after visiting the Crazy Horse Museum in South Dakota a few summers ago. The experience of visiting the sacred Black Hills and learning tidbits about how the US government essentially stole this area from the native tribes and then proceeded to desecrate the area while searching for gold was humbling. This book filled in many details of the US government and US Army's plots to remove the tribes from native lands and to avenge the death of General Custer.
This book was well-researched and definitely worth the effort.

[Donald Paulsrud · Rating 5 out of 5]

Avery good book about the powerful Oglalla leader Crazy Horse. This is a historical read so at times it drags a little.He also repeats himself a lot. The book takes you through the early days of Crazy Horse and his rise to being the most powerful war leader of the Lakota Nation. It takes you the Great Sioux War (including the Battle at the Little Big Horn). After Crazy Horse surrenders it covers the political jealousy of the other Sioux Leaders (Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, Little Big Man, etc...) and how they conspire with General Crook and the Agency Heads to eliminate Crazy Horse. Crazy Horse was betrayed by his own people due to their wanting to become more powerful with the agency heads. Overall a very solid book.

[doug.whatzup · Rating 3 out of 5]

Based on the author’s introduction, I felt certain that The Killing of Crazy Horse was going to be a terrific read. Instead, within a chapter or two, I realized it was going to be a long, grueling slog.

Thomas Powers is a good writer and an historian of considerable merit, but he crams The Killing of Crazy Horse with so much detail, so many threads leading away from the narrative into a morass of inconsequential and meaningless minutiae, that the book would have been a lot more compelling had at least a third of it, and maybe half, had been edited out.

That said, those chapters leading up to and including the actual killing of Crazy Horse are taut and heart-wrenching, making this a worthwhile read even for those who are familiar with the story.

[Sonja Coull · Rating 5 out of 5]

After visiting Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota, I wanted to know more about the American Indians and what they were going through when the white man came into the land and started settling. Very telling story and excellent audio narration! I could really picture what was happening and learned so much. Crazy Horse as a person led a very interesting life. I do recommend this book as you will learn so much too. I listened to some on audio and read some from the physical book. It’s packed with so much detail I will probably read it again.

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best and most informative read not just on Crazy Horse but how life was lived and the struggles of frontier life. Powers pens a powerful story, others may disagree and take pot shots, but face it writing historical events is a tough assignment. Word of mouth and research made this an enjoyable read. Crazy Horse like many Native Americans wanted their land and peace with the white man. He was an incredible Native American only to be faced by lies from the white man and his own beloved race. Peace to Crazy Horse.