The Journey of Crazy Horse: a Lakota History by Joseph M. Marshall III

Author:Joseph M. Marshall III [Marshall, Joseph M. III]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Crazy Horse, Indian Wars
ISBN: 9780143036210
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2004-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

In spite of the cruelty of the soldier leaders at Fort Laramie (Fouts and Moonlight), new Loafer camps were pitched around the fort. And it was a Loafer that brought word from the peace talkers. They had come with more presents, kettles, blankets, knives, and now guns. And they were asking for Red Cloud to come and sign the paper so that all the Lakota could share in these gifts—so there could be peace in the Powder River country. The peace talkers had come with a new offer as well. All the country from the Great Muddy River to the Shining Mountains would be Lakota land, so long as the rivers shall flow and the grass grows.

Where did the whites get the power to give the Lakota lands they already control, Crazy Horse heard many old men ask.

Summer came and passed into autumn. The things of life went on. The people gathered at Bear Butte so the old men leaders could decide that Red Cloud should touch the pen on the peace paper for all the Oglala. Crazy Horse rode north to raid the Crows.

He returned with new horses, and to news that his uncle Spotted Tail had his own lands to live on, given to him by the whites. Agency, it was called. Perhaps he was influenced by the kindness one soldier leader gave him when his daughter had sickened and died. Nevertheless, the Sicangu was advising that Red Cloud should touch the pen. From the north came different news. Sitting Bull was still defiant, and his Hunkpapa were still fighting the soldiers in the north and chasing buffalo. But there was a new worry, he had warned. The whites were making new kinds of roads, strips of iron laid across rows of wood so that a new kind of wagon could travel on it—an iron wagon that breathed smoke like the houseboats on the Great Muddy and dragged houses on iron wheels. The “iron horse,” he called it.

Crazy Horse pondered this news even as Red Cloud rode south to Fort Laramie with a new power of his own. The old headmen had given him the power to sign the peace paper for the Oglala. Late in the Moon When Leaves Fall, he made a mark next to his name on the white man’s peace paper.6

Life in the Powder River country was rather like the pale shadow made by a thin cloud. Something had changed, but the whites were still telling the Lakota what to do. Some of the younger men wondered if Red Cloud knew all the things written on the paper he had marked on behalf of all the Oglala.

Spotted Tail, meanwhile, had been arguing to move his - people to a different agency even as Red Cloud was told he would have to move to one. Crazy Horse and He Dog stayed north, close to the Tongue, and raided into Crow country. More and more Lakota were moving south closer to the Holy Road, wanting to

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