THE INCIDENT that speaks most decisively to the climate of suspicion surrounding Crazy Horse occurred at the beginning of September 1877, when General Crook was coming to Fort Robinson to a council about the Nez Percé problem. On the way to the council Crook was met by an Indian named Woman’s Dress, who warned him that Crazy Horse meant to shake his hand and then stab him to death. Crook may possibly have known about the famous mistranslation by then, in which Crazy Horse had reportedly said that he would kill all the whites to the last man; but George Crook was not a man who liked to turn aside. Once he started for a place—as he often said—he liked to get there. Crook surely know enough by then to disregard most Indian gossip. Had there not been such a climate of suspicion surrounding Crazy Horse, it is not likely he would have paid Woman’s Dress much mind. For all Crook knew, Crazy Horse didn’t even plan to show up at the council, and very likely Crazy Horse wouldn’t have. But Crook took this wild threat seriously and for once made an excuse and turned aside.
Shortly after this, Crook ordered Crazy Horse’s arrest, a move he surely knew would be touchy. Crazy Horse, after all, had come in as a great military hero; he had beaten Crook himself, helped destroy Custer, checked Miles. He was a hero to the young men—the first generation of young Sioux men, it should be remembered, who were not allowed to establish their bravery as warriors in the normal way. These young men were looking for a leader, and Crazy Horse was the natural—in fact, the only—choice.
Crook, though, had no real grounds for arresting Crazy Horse, who had been behaving correctly. But Red Cloud and Spotted Tail were wild to be rid of him, and he made the white military men nervous. Crook had plans to send him to Florida—some say to Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, the prison-atoll for incorrigibles. (Even Geronimo, who, for a period, killed every white he ran into, only got sent to Fort Marion, a palace by comparison.)
Early in September, though, a huge force of soldiers and Indian policemen went to Crazy Horse’s camp to arrest him, only to find that he had just left for the Spotted Tail agency, forty miles away. The pursuers followed him all day but could not catch up; the scout Billy Garnett says this was because Crazy Horse had a method for keeping his horses fresh: he walked them going uphill, loped them when he was going down. No Water, still jealous because Crazy Horse had briefly made off with Black Buffalo Woman, is said to have ruined two horses in this pursuit (and then billed the government for them), but the arresting force never quite caught up.
When Crazy Horse arrived, his uncle Spotted Tail was anything but happy to see him. He told Crazy Horse unequivocally that he was the boss at his agency: if Crazy Horse expected to stay, he would have to toe the line and obey all orders. Spotted Tail wanted no trouble and Crazy Horse was a magnet for it—a magnet so powerful that as many as a thousand Indians may have joined or at least watched the arresting party.
Crazy Horse considered that he had been behaving well; he was at a loss to understand why so many of his own people would show up to help arrest him. Agent Jesse Lee, whom he liked and trusted, came to speak to him. Crazy Horse explained, again, that he had offered to fight the Nez Percé, that he hadn’t said anything about killing the whites to the last man, that he had never had the slightest intention of stabbing Crook in a council, etc. So why was there all this fuss?
Agent Lee, who got on well with Crazy Horse, accepted his explanations. But he said that, nonetheless, it would be necessary for Crazy Horse to come back to Fort Robinson and explain all this to General Bradley, the fort’s commander.
The next day, September 6, 1877, Crazy Horse went back, followed, if not surrounded, by a huge mass of warriors and soldiers. He was by then desperate—and justly so. Why did so many Indians—among them several of his oldest allies—so obviously hate him and want his blood? He was now not the hunter; he was the hunted. This man who had once had the whole of the Great Plains as his home suddenly had no place to be.
No one really knows how many Indians rode with him from the Spotted Tail agency that day, or how many were waiting at Fort Robinson when, near dusk, he rode in. There were so many that the mere mass must have stressed him more. He was a man who had always liked to be alone, and now, suddenly, most of the nation he had been born into was massed around him. No doubt he would far rather have been living in a cave or a hole—but for that it was too late.
As Crazy Horse understood matters, he had made no threat and committed no offense. How could he have understood that he had become an intolerable symbol of resistance, even though he wasn’t resisting? But he was, for white and Indian alike, a symbol of resistance so potent that neither could afford to leave him alive and free.
On the ride back to Fort Robinson, according to Agent Jesse Lee, Crazy Horse was hopeful one moment and desperately worried the next, a natural alternation of mood under the circumstances. Spotted Tail and Touch-the-Clouds rode back with him, along with many of Spotted Tail’s warriors. Perhaps Crazy Horse knew, as Malcolm X did toward the end, that very soon his own people were going to have his blood.
Near dusk the great party came into the valley of the White River and rode onto the parade ground of the fort. Many Indians were waiting, but a path opened for Crazy Horse. He had time to say a few words to his old friend He Dog before walking with Agent Lee to what he supposed would be his promised interview with General Bradley.
As he approached the official quarters his old friend Little Big Man, now an ambitious Indian policeman, stepped close beside him, ready to fulfill, possibly for the second time, the old prophecy Crazy Horse had dreamed as a boy. What Crazy Horse thought about Little Big Man’s metamorphosis into Indian policeman we don’t know, but Little Big Man was hardly the only one of his former allies to take that route to preferment. Young Man Afraid was an Indian policeman, and no one thought the worse of him for it.
General Bradley had no intention of seeing Crazy Horse and no interest in hearing his side of the story, a painful discovery not only for Crazy Horse but for Agent Lee also. Bradley’s orders were clear: Crazy Horse was to be arrested and shipped immediately to Omaha and thence to Florida. Agent Lee, whether knowingly or unknowingly, had made a major false promise, one that was to haunt him for years. (For some weeks after that night he expected to be killed by Crazy Horse partisans.)
Crazy Horse surely thought he was going to see the camp commander when Little Big Man and Lieutenant Kenningston (the officer of the day) led him past the adjutant’s office toward the guardhouse. But the moment he saw, or smelled, the filthy cells where the chained Indians were kept, he sensed betrayal and whirled, attempting to run back into the parade ground. He was scarcely clear of the doorway when Little Big Man jumped on his back and tried to hold his arms. Little Big Man was stout—Crazy Horse could not immediately shake him, but they were not struggling alone anymore; they were in full view of the many, many Indians on the parade ground, most but not all of whom were, at this moment, hostile to Crazy Horse. He had managed to conceal a knife under his blanket and he finally got one arm free and cut Little Big Man, causing him to loosen his hold.
When it looked for a brief few seconds as if Crazy Horse might break free and make a fight of it, even though he had only a knife (some say he had two knives; Billy Garnett thought he even had a pistol), there was a short, bitter spew of epithets from those Sioux who wanted him dead: “Shoot him!” “Stab him!” “Shoot the son-of-a-bitch!” Frank Grouard remembered a moment of silence, and then the sound of hammers being cocked and shells being chambered in many rifles. Billy Garnett thought some of the chained prisoners ran out; he remembered the clanking of chains. Some say that several rifles were raised but that the officer of the day knocked them down. A white private, William Gentles, who was to die of asthma about six months later, ran forward and bayoneted Crazy Horse twice (some say only once; Little Big Man says not at all) as he struggled to free himself. One of Private Gentles’s thrusts missed—the bayonet stuck in the wood of the doorjamb. There is disagreement about the bayoneting, but what is certain is that one thrust pierced the kidneys, causing Crazy Horse to sink down, a mortally wounded man.