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AS CRAZY HORSE WAS setting off with his wife and friends at about ten o’clock on that Tuesday morning, Lieutenant Jesse Lee and Spotted Tail arrived at the chief’s agency forty miles east where they found the post commander, Captain Daniel Burke, counting the horses and recording the names of some seventy members of Lame Deer’s band of Miniconjou, just arrived from the north. Lee and Burke called a meeting of the leading men of Spotted Tail’s Brulé and told them what was happening that day at Red Cloud. All expected trouble to follow. To meet it there were two companies of soldiers under Burke’s command, not more than ninety men, supported by several hundred warriors who answered to Spotted Tail. None of the soldiers or Brulé chiefs knew how the northern Indians would respond if fighting broke out.
The military post at Camp Sheridan was built at the same time as Camp Robinson and looked much the same—a collection of wood-frame buildings surrounding a dusty parade ground, with corrals, hayricks, piles of cordwood, and a sutler’s store. Rising beyond the post to the north like a palisade was an escarpment of white clay buttes known as the Beaver Wall. In front of the post was a winding creek, dry in places much of the year, never more than a few feet wide, which had its source in the pine-covered ridges to the south. From the post the creek made its way along the curving arc of the Beaver Wall toward its juncture with the White River a few miles to the north. The course of the stream, one of the many throughout the West known as Beaver Creek, was marked by grassy bottomlands, brushy thickets, and groves of cottonwood trees. Some of the bigger, older trees were traditional sites for scaffold burials of the dead. This was not the Beaver Creek where Crazy Horse hoped to have his agency—that was hundreds of miles north in the Tongue River country—but it had long been a favored camping ground of the Oglala and Brulé Sioux.
The Spotted Tail Agency buildings were a half mile up Beaver Creek, south of the military post. About two and a half miles north along the creek bed, roughly three miles from the military post, was the center of the big camp of the northern Indians who had come in to surrender with Touch the Clouds. The campsites of other bands and family groups continued along the creek bed a good many miles in both directions, both north and south of the agency.
Somewhere along this stream the parents of Black Shawl Woman had raised their lodge, where Crazy Horse hoped his wife might be treated and cured by a medicine man. Since he stopped first at the lodge of Horn Chips it is probable he hoped Chips would cure his wife. Also along the creek were the lodges of Standing Bear, who had remained with Touch the Clouds after coming in, and of Fast Thunder, who called Crazy Horse cousin. Fast Thunder, an Oglala, picked Beaver Creek for his home and lived with Spotted Tail’s Brulé because he knew the site well and had often camped or wintered there before the agency was established in 1873.1
Expecting trouble, Lieutenant Lee and Captain Burke sent some of “the reliable chiefs” in the company of the interpreters Charles Tackett and Joe Merrivale down the creek to the village of Touch the Clouds in the hope they might keep things calm and provide early warning if trouble broke out. At about four o’clock in the afternoon a runner from the Crazy Horse camp arrived in the Miniconjou village with news that there was fighting at Red Cloud. This man “at once set about to stir up excitement,” according to Lee. The Brulé chief Roman Nose tried to calm the people. “There will be no trouble here,” he said.
But almost immediately the excitement flared again with the arrival of Crazy Horse himself. “This came like a thunder clap from a clear sky,” Lee reported later. No other Indian equaled Crazy Horse in his ability to arouse intense excitement. The often-feared stampede was under way in moments. Three hundred lodges in the Miniconjou village came down with “magic swiftness,” said Lee—a sure sign the Indians were all ready to bolt. Black Crow, one of “the reliable chiefs,” raced back down the creek to the post with the news: “Crazy Horse is in the northern camp.” Touch the Clouds soon arrived at the agency as well. He too had heard of Crazy Horse’s approach. Burke and Lee sent him back to his village with a request to bring Crazy Horse in to the military post.
It was at about this moment that a courier reached Camp Sheridan bearing a written message from Clark, who had promised to keep Lee informed. As Lee remembered it, Clark’s note was all calm reassurance:
There has been no fight. Crazy Horse’s band is just going into camp and will give up their guns without trouble in all probability. Crazy Horse has skipped out for your place. Have sent after him. Should he reach your agency, have Spotted Tail arrest him, and I will give any Indian who does this $200.2
Hard on the heels of the courier with Clark’s note came fifteen or twenty scouts on lathered horses to tell Lee and Burke what the officers already knew—that Crazy Horse was heading their way. These scouts were evidently the men the chief told not to touch him. The soldiers instructed them to turn their horses loose in the post corral and to conceal themselves in the soldiers’ barracks. Lee and Burke now climbed into a military ambulance with the interpreter Louis Bordeaux and the post doctor Egon Koerper to head down Beaver Creek in the direction of the northern camp. About ten or fifteen minutes later, not more than a mile down the creek, the ambulance came in sight of a mass of mounted Indians, at least three hundred in all, dressed for war, carrying weapons, shouting and singing. What they intended, Lieutenant Lee did not know. In the front rank was a knot of four men: Touch the Clouds and White Thunder on either side of a man Lee did not recognize, and just behind them Black Crow. Charging First, the son of Touch the Clouds, said that Crazy Horse had agreed to abide by the advice of his friend, and was coming with him to the post voluntarily. In that moment as they approached the post Lee saw for the first time the man who had been the object of so much white anger and fear: the light-haired, unarmed, silent, “rather sad-faced” figure of Crazy Horse.3
Lee and Burke got a good look at the chief as they shook hands with him. He was surprisingly slight—not over five feet six inches in height, was Lee’s guess. But it was the sorrow of Crazy Horse’s expression that struck Lee most. After that, Lee noted the chief’s inner agitation—fear, doubt, hope, confusion; he couldn’t settle later on a single word to describe it. The excited mass of Indians now accompanied Lee back toward the military post with Crazy Horse and his companions following closely behind the ambulance, where Lee and Burke were exchanging their first impressions of the chief.
To Lee, Crazy Horse seemed “very much distressed.” Black Crow and White Thunder, riding within arm’s reach of Crazy Horse, had agreed to shoot and kill the chief at the first sign of any effort to escape. That the chief knew he was trapped seemed evident. “He had been under a severe nervous strain all day, and it plainly showed,” Lee said. Burke and Lee were both impressed by the chief. Listening from his seat in the ambulance, Louis Bordeaux was surprised to hear the high opinion Lee and Burke held of Crazy Horse, who had not yet spoken.
They agreed that he was an able young man, destined, if no ill fortune prevented, to become great among his people; that he was not trained like the old chiefs in speaking and in diplomacy; he was not spoiled by any acts to gain advantage, but was straightforward and meant what he declared and could be depended on to perform what he promised.4
It did not occur to Lee and Burke that it was Crazy Horse’s promises that best explained his agitation. The record of unfolding events speaks clearly. He had promised peace but was met repeatedly by anger, demands, and threats. His friends all gave him conflicting advice. The Army seemed to understand nothing he said. That morning the man whose name was a byword for courage had run away from a fight, leaving Black Fox to confront the whites with a knife in his teeth, and now Crazy Horse was being hurried along by a chaotic mass of angry Indians, some his friends, others eager to kill him. But still he did not resist. He merely rode along with the others to the military post because the white officers had asked him to.
As the large group made its way toward the parade ground in front of the adjutant’s office at Camp Sheridan everybody feared a big fight. This was the second time in a single day that a major bloodletting seemed to hang in the balance as rival bands of armed men struggled for possession of Crazy Horse. Spotted Tail now joined the group in front of the adjutant’s office, bringing more armed men and swelling the crowd to six hundred or more, all constantly in motion, calling out, tense, carrying loaded weapons. They halted in front of the adjutant’s office, where Captain Burke and Lieutenant Lee tried to talk to Crazy Horse, who remained on his horse. The officers told Crazy Horse he must go back to Camp Robinson. They tried to reassure him, Bordeaux remembered, “that he would not be hurt; that he should be protected, etc., but he refused to speak.”5 The chief had uttered not a word during the ride up to the military post, not a word as the crowd swelled in front of the adjutant’s office, not a word as Burke and Lee told him what he must do.
Now Spotted Tail took center stage and made a speech to Crazy Horse, saying plainly how things were. Lee had heard many Indian speeches but few struck him with the force of this one, with “its telling points and pauses, emphasized and punctuated by the click of loaded rifles.” Spotted Tail was wearing a blanket in the Indian fashion; no feathers or staff or weapon signaled his status. He was standing close enough to Crazy Horse almost to touch him. His words were few but clear and ringing.
We never have trouble here. The sky is clear, the air is still and free from dust. You have come here and you must listen to me and my people. I am chief here. We keep the peace. We, the Brules, do this. They obey me, and every Indian who comes here must listen to me. You say you want to come to this agency and live peaceably. If you stay here you must listen to me. That is all.6
At the conclusion of Spotted Tail’s speech, his followers, three hundred or more in number, all shouted assent and approval—“Hau! Hau!” Still Crazy Horse said nothing. While this standoff persisted there suddenly appeared on horseback a well-known figure from the band of Brulé known as the Wajajes. Louis Bordeaux immediately recognized the medicine man Horn Chips. Bordeaux noted that his hair hung down the middle of his back in a single braid. Horn Chips jumped down from his horse and approached the two chiefs in front of the adjutant’s office. Excited and passionate, Horn Chips spoke directly to Crazy Horse, Bordeaux remembered, “saying that he was afraid to die, that he was a coward.” Then he turned to Spotted Tail and denounced him with the same spirit: “You are a coward!” Horn Chips took firm hold of the arm of Captain Burke and spoke to him with force and passion: “Crazy Horse is brave, but he feels too weak to die today. Kill me! Kill me!”
Horn Chips commanded the soldiers to hang him and let Crazy Horse live a hundred years—to hang him and let Spotted Tail live a hundred years. They were cowards!
Burke laughed. “We don’t want to hang you,” he said to Horn Chips. “We don’t want to hang anybody.”7
Crazy Horse feels too weak to die today. This extraordinary statement came from a man who had talked with him earlier that afternoon, and who had shared an intimate history with him all their adult lives. Few men knew Crazy Horse better than Horn Chips. Why did he call the bravest man of the Oglala a coward? What did he mean when he said that Crazy Horse feels too weak to die today?
The answer appears to lie in the word “weak.” It will be recalled that one of the earliest reports of the Custer fight came from the Oglala Horned Horse, whose son White Eagle had been killed early in the fight. Horned Horse immediately left the fight and went up onto a hill overlooking the field to mourn his dead son “as he was too weak to fight.” Whites might say that the fight had been knocked out of him. He did not have the moral energy or clarity of mind to fight. Horn Chips had spoken to Crazy Horse earlier that afternoon, and he understood his mood. Something internal blocked Crazy Horse from readiness to fight. He was not looking to die.8
With the approach of darkness Horn Chips fell quiet. The big crowd of Indians began to break up at the edges and drift away. Spotted Tail told Crazy Horse that he did not want any disturbance at his agency. He asked Crazy Horse if he would go into the adjutant’s office and have a talk with Captain Burke and Lieutenant Lee. Crazy Horse then uttered his first words since meeting the officers up along Beaver Creek. He said, “I will.”9
It was a small group that entered the adjutant’s office along with Crazy Horse: Spotted Tail, Touch the Clouds, the two officers, Louis Bordeaux and Joe Merrivale, and Egon Koerper. To Lee, Crazy Horse as he entered the adjutant’s office seemed to be trembling with inner tension. Away from the excitement of the standoff on the parade ground, Crazy Horse was asked why he had come to the Spotted Tail Agency. “He said he had come away from Red Cloud with his sick wife,” Lee wrote the commissioner of Indian affairs three weeks later, “and to get away from trouble there.” At Red Cloud, Crazy Horse added, “there were bad winds blowing. He did not understand why but it was so.”10
This simple and direct reply marked a new tone. As Bordeaux interpreted Crazy Horse’s words, he was struck by the chief’s intelligence and calm good sense. “He was evidently not a talkative man,” Bordeaux recalled later, “but on the occasion he made quite a long speech and his remarks showed him to be a silent man of careful thought and good judgement, and accustomed to councils on important affairs, a man of more than ordinary mental ability.”
It seemed to Bordeaux that Lee and Burke were equally impressed. Crazy Horse explained himself at length and with care. He disputed in detail much that had been said about him, and especially the threatening interpretation of his words by Frank Grouard. He told the officers what he had told He Dog and others: he had come to the agency for peace.
He said that when he came in from the north and met the officers and others on Hat Creek, he presented the pipe of peace to the Great Spirit there and said he wanted peace and wanted no more war and promised that he would not fight against any nation anymore, and that he wants to be at peace now.11
But what the whites desired was not clear. At first they wanted him to go to Washington and then they wanted him to turn the other way and go out to fight the Nez Percé. He did not want to fight the Nez Percé, although he had been willing to do it. “He did not want trouble.” But trouble seemed to be looking for him. That morning when he saw a great force of soldiers and Indian scouts approaching his camp he rode away with his sick wife “to avoid disturbance.” According to Lucy Lee Crazy Horse told Spotted Tail he had been pulled in so many directions that “for twenty-seven nights he had neither rest nor sleep.” Lieutenant Lee summarized the warring impressions in the chief’s mind that made him seem “like a frightened, trembling, wild animal brought to bay”:
I want no trouble. I came here because it is peace here. I want to get away from the trouble at Red Cloud. They have misunderstood and misinterpreted me there. I brought my sick wife up here to an Indian doctor. I would like to be transferred to this agency. They gave me no rest at Red Cloud. I was talked to night and day and my brain is in a whirl. I want to do what is right.12
In the course of this serious talk, Lee and Burke both reassured the chief they meant him no harm, that he would be welcome at the Spotted Tail Agency if he meant what he said, but that he had to return to Camp Robinson first and explain himself to the commander there, Colonel Bradley. Crazy Horse agreed to do this. The officers told him to return with Touch the Clouds to the latter’s camp and in the morning they would go together to Camp Robinson. Lee felt safe in promising the chief he would get a fair hearing and not be harmed.
But behind this apparent understanding suspicions lingered. The whites had orders. They were expected to return Crazy Horse to Camp Robinson. As the Indians were preparing to depart for the night, Burke quietly took Touch the Clouds aside to say that Crazy Horse was now in his charge—“he must not let him escape in the night.” Touch the Clouds promised that “he would not let him get away.” Burke took one additional precaution. With the Indians he sent two trusted scouts from Spotted Tail’s camp, Good Voice and Horned Antelope, to keep watch through the night. Of these two Good Voice was the leader, recently promoted to sergeant of scouts, and a man close to High Bear and Fast Thunder. Louis Bordeaux reports the instructions given to Good Voice and Horned Antelope; since he had translated everything else that afternoon and evening it is likely he translated these instructions as well. If Crazy Horse tried to escape, the two scouts were told, they were to shoot his horse; and if he resisted they were to kill him.13
From Camp Robinson Clark and Bradley both sent off telegrams to Crook expressing more confidence than they probably felt. In midafternoon, Clark reported that Crazy Horse’s village had “scattered like a frightened covey of quail” but that the chief himself left only with his own lodge—a gentle way of confessing that he got away. Clark assured Crook that No Water and others had been sent after Crazy Horse with a promise of two hundred dollars for success. “I have great hopes that they will get him.” A little later Clark sent a second telegram. “Not more than 20 lodges got away.”
At about two o’clock in the morning, Bradley cabled Crook to say that a courier from Camp Sheridan reported that Crazy Horse had been “captured.” Clark dispatched a third telegram reporting Burke’s plan to bring Crazy Horse back to Camp Robinson later in the day. Clark’s recommendation: put the chief in the guardhouse on arrival, send him on to Fort Laramie immediately, and keep him moving to Omaha with two or three of his own people “so that they can assure people on return that he has not been killed.” Clark was beginning to feel genuine confidence. “Everything quiet and working first rate.”
From Cheyenne, where he was about to board the Western Express, Crook cabled General Sheridan in Chicago, in effect treating Clark’s plan as already accomplished. “The successful breaking up of Crazy Horse’s band has removed a heavy weight off my mind,” Crook added, “and I leave here feeling perfectly easy.”
But this confidence was writ on water. Crazy Horse was not really captured, and despite Clark’s claim his people had not been rounded up. Lucy Lee said it was a case of herding cats. The soldiers and scouts sent out to capture Crazy Horse in the morning started his people back toward the agency, and some got there, but the greater part evaporated in the rough country, disappearing a few at a time among rocks and cottonwood thickets. One of the officers told Lucy, “They brought in only the tail-end of the village.” By morning, almost all had disappeared again, heading east for the Spotted Tail Agency, hurrying after Crazy Horse.14
