Leonard Crow Dog is a fourth-generation Sicangu Lakota (Sioux) spiritual leader and healer. As a practitioner of traditional herbal medicine and a leader of Sun Dance and Ghost Dance ceremonies, Leonard Crow Dog has devoted his life to keeping Lakota traditions alive. Crow Dog is best known through his autobiography, Crow Dog: Four Generations of Sioux Medicine Men (co-written with Richard Erdoes). Since Crow Dog does not read or write English, he dictated his memories and experiences for that book. He is also famous for his involvement in the American Indian Movement (AIM) takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington, D.C. in 1972 and, more famously, AIM’s occupation of the town of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1973. Ultimately Crow Dog would serve two years in various federal prisons for events that occurred in the aftermath of these two episodes.
American Indian Movement (AIM) leader Russell Means (left; 1939–2012) gets an application of war paint from Sioux medicine man Leonard Crow Dog (1942– ) just prior to a cease-fire agreement between federal forces and AIM leaders occupying Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1973. AIM’s occupation of Wounded Knee, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, both evoked the memory of the massacre of some 200 Sioux men, women, and children by U.S. troops in 1890 and brought attention to the plight of contemporary Native Americans. (Bettmann/Corbis)
Crow Dog recounts the story of his family name, which should actually be Crow Coyote, but for the mistranslation of a nineteenth-century census taker. In a battle against some Indians of a rival tribe, Leonard’s great-grandfather was shot by two arrows. One pierced his chest just under the collarbone. Left to die by the warriors, the first Crow Dog crawled under some bushes and passed out, still with one arrowhead inside him. As he lay there, too weak to move, he was visited by a coyote vision; the animal warmed him and told him he was there to heal him. Three more coyotes arrived, bringing medicinal sage. One instructed Crow Dog to roll some sage into a ball, which the coyote then repeatedly soaked with water from a nearby creek, preventing the man from dying of thirst. Another coyote taught Crow Dog how to use other herbs to heal his wounds, and eventually instructed him to walk and follow them. Above, a crow joined in to show the path to follow, and soon Crow Dog had returned safely to his people. To honor these sacred animals, he changed his name to Kangi Shunka Manitou (Crow Coyote), which was later mistranslated as Crow Dog.
Three generations later, Crow Dog’s great-grandson was marked as a medicine man. Leonard Crow Dog had one of his first visions at five years old; walking with some other boys, he saw his shadow as different, that of a grown man. Not wanting Leonard to be acculturated into the ways of the white man, his parents did not send him to school, and his father once chased off the school truant officer with a shotgun. Leonard was instead trained for his role as a medicine man, including sweat lodge purification ceremonies and vision quests at the unusually young age of thirteen. As a boy, he also performed and won competitions for sacred dances such as the eagle dance, hoop dance, and rope dance. As Leonard came of age, he stopped dancing and also stopped working at menial jobs, so as to concentrate on his vocation as shown to him in his visions: that of a spiritual man. He took on the name “Defends His Medicine,” a reference to the controversial use of peyote in Native American religion (Crow Dog’s father, Henry, introduced peyote to the Sioux).
In 1970 AIM co-founder Dennis Banks appeared at the Crow Dog family home, known as “Crow Dog’s Paradise.” He spoke with Leonard’s father, Henry, who steered the conversation away from politics and activism, insisting through his words and actions that there must be a spiritual grounding for the nascent Indian rights movement. The men talked of the peace pipe and took a sweat together. With little convincing, Leonard committed himself to becoming the spiritual leader of AIM. In 1972, the AIM leaders (including Crow Dog) organized a march to Washington, D.C., titled “Trail of Broken Treaties.” About 500 participants, representing dozens of tribes from all over the country, descended on Washington armed with a list of twenty demands, including a meeting with President Nixon, which was not forthcoming. Crow Dog and his compatriots ended up occupying the Bureau of Indian Affairs building for a week, drawing national attention to their cause.
In 1973, AIM organized another occupation, this time with about 200 men and women taking over the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee, South Dakota, massacre of more than 150 Lakota men, women, and children by U.S. Cavalry soldiers. This occupation, commonly known as the “Wounded Knee Incident,” lasted seventy-one days, with Crow Dog serving as spiritual leader, medicine man, surgeon, and even as engineer, ordering and organizing the production of bombs and trenches.
The Wounded Knee site had great significance for all the occupiers, especially Crow Dog, whose great-grandfather had been nearby at the time of the 1890 massacre; he had a vision of destruction and led hundreds of ghost dancers away from the site prior to the killings. Speaking of arriving at Wounded Knee in 1973, Leonard Crow Dog said, “Standing on that hill where so many people were buried in a common grave, standing there in that cold darkness under the stars, I felt tears running down my face. I can’t describe what I felt. I heard the voices of the long-dead ghost dancers crying out to us. … They had been waiting for us for a long time” (Crow Dog, 1995).
Douglas J. King
See also Culture Heroes of the Native Americans; Folk Medicine; Geronimo; Shamans; Vision Quest
Further Reading
Crow Dog, Leonard, and Richard Erdoes. 1995. Crow Dog: Four Generations of Sioux Medicine Men. New York: HarperCollins.
Lyon, William S. 1996. Encyclopedia of Native American Healing. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Versluis, Arthur. 1992. Sacred Earth: The Spiritual Landscape of Native America. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International.
Vogel, Virgil J. 1970. American Indian Medicine. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Young, William A. 2002. Quest for Harmony: Native American Spiritual Traditions. New York: Seven Bridges Press.