The Killing of Crazy Horse »

Thomas Powers is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and writer best known for his books on the history of intelligence organizations. Among them are Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to al-Qaeda; Heisenberg’s War: The Secret History of the German Bomb; and The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA. For most of the last decade Powers kept a 1984 Volvo at a nephew’s house in Colorado, which he drove on frequent trips to the northern Plains. He lives in Vermont with his wife, Candace.

He was the greatest Indian warrior of the nineteenth century. His victory over General Custer at the battle of Little Bighorn in 1876 was the worst defeat inflicted on the frontier Army. And the death of Crazy Horse in federal custody has remained a controversy for more than a century.

The Killing of Crazy Horse pieces together the many sources of fear and misunderstanding that resulted in an official killing hard to distinguish from a crime. A rich cast of characters, whites and Indians alike, passes through this story, including Red Cloud, the chief who dominated Oglala history for fifty years but saw in Crazy Horse a dangerous rival; No Water and Woman Dress, both of whom hated Crazy Horse and schemed against him; the young interpreter Billy Garnett, son of a fifteen-year-old Oglala woman and a Confederate general killed at Gettysburg; General George Crook, who bitterly resented newspaper reports that he had been whipped by Crazy Horse in battle; Little Big Man, who betrayed Crazy Horse; Lieutenant William Philo Clark, the smart West Point graduate who thought he could “work” Indians to do the Army’s bidding; and Fast Thunder, who called Crazy Horse cousin, held him the moment he was stabbed, and then told his grandson thirty years later, “They tricked me! They tricked me!”

At the center of the story is Crazy Horse himself, the warrior of few words whom the Crow said they knew best among the Sioux, because he always came closest to them in battle. No photograph of him exists today.

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.

The Barnes & Noble Review

Throughout this magisterial work, Powers captures the complexity and contradiction of the world of the Sioux Wars, and its terrible beauty as well.... The Killing of Crazy Horse should stand alongside Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee for the authority and art with which it recounts this moment in a people's shattered history.

List of Maps

Introduction. "We'll come for you another time."

1 "When we were young, all we thought about was going to war." 3

2 "I have always kept the oaths I made then, but Crazy Horse did not." 18

3 "It is better to die young." 30

4 "Crazy Horse was as fine an Indian as he ever knew." 45

5 "A Sandwich Islander appears to exercise great control in the Indian councils." 60

6 "Gold from the grass roots down." 77

7 "We don't want any white men here." 91

8 "The wild devils of the north." 107

9 "This whole business was exceedingly distasteful to me." 122

10 "I knew this village by the horses." 137

11 "He is no good and should be killed." 147

12 "Crook was bristling for a fight." 162

13 "I give you these because they have no ears." 172

14 "I found it a more serious engagement than I thought." 182

15 "I am in constant dread of an attack." 192

16 "General Crook ought to be hung." 203

17 "You won't get anything to eat! You won't get anything to eat!" 217

18 "When spring comes, we are going to kill them like dogs." 226

19 "All the people here are in rags." 242

20 "I want this peace to last forever." 257

21 "I cannot decide these things for myself." 266

22 "It made his heart heavy and sad to think of these things." 281

23 "They were killed like wolves." 289

24 "The soldiers could not go any further, and they knew that they had to die." 302

25 "It is impossible to work him through reasoning or kindness." 331

26 "If you go to Washington they are going to kill you." 346

27 "We washed the blood from our faces." 357

28 "I can have him whenever I want him." 367

29 "I am Crazy Horse! Don't touch me!" 382

30 "He feels too weak to die today." 389

31 "I heard him using the brave word." 399

32 "He has looked for death, and it has come." 414

33 "He still mourns the loss of his son." 427

34 "When I tell these things I have a pain in my heart." 442

35 "I'm not telling anyone what I know about the killing of Crazy Horse." 454

Afterword. "No man is held in more veneration here than Crazy Horse." 462

Methods, Sources, and Acknowledgments 469

Notes 473

Bibliography 539

Index 545