Crazy Horse, RIP.

We stopped over at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. It happened to be the 133rd anniversary of the death of Crazy Horse, who was killed while being held prisoner by Frontier Army soldiers on the Fort Robinson grounds.

Despite a lot of information about the Frontier Army, Fort Robinson (which is a historical site run by the state of Nebraska) offered almost nothing about Crazy Horse except a small plaque (see below). When we asked whether the Fort planned any memorial in honor of the great Oglala Sioux warrior, the docent shrugged and gestured in the direction of a teepee (see above).

Turned out this was a gathering of folks from the nearby Pine Ridge Reservation who had come the night before to honor Crazy Horse. We walked over and spoke with them. We were glad someone was correcting the lame historical narrative offered by Fort Robinson, which still refers to Native Americans as "hostiles" in some of its literature. Ugh.

We left, depressed, but in hope that the Pine Ridge gathering we'd seen was a harbinger of memorials to come.

Ian Frazier's essay about why he loves Crazy Horse is one of the best things I've ever read about the Sioux legend. Here's an excerpt, from Frazier's wonderful book, GREAT PLAINS (1989):

Personally, I love Crazy Horse because even the most basic outline of his life shows how great he was; because he remained himself from the moment of his birth to the moment he died; because he knew exactly where he wanted to live, and never left; because he may have surrendered, but he was never defeated in battle; because, although he was killed, even the Army admitted he was never captured; because he was so free that he didn't know what a jail looked like; because at the most desperate moment of his life he only cut Little Big Man on the hand; because, unlike many people all over the world, when he met white men he was not diminished by the encounter; because his dislike of the oncoming civilization was prophetic; because the idea of becoming a farmer apparently never crossed his mind; because he didn't end up in the Dry Tortugas; because he never met the President; because he never rode on a train, slept in a boardinghouse, ate at a table; because he never wore a medal or a top hat or any other thing that white men gave him; because he made sure that his wife was safe before going to where he expected to die; because although Indian agents, among themselves, sometimes referred to Red Cloud as "red" and Spotted Tail as "spot," they never used a diminutive for him; because, deprived of freedom, power, occupation, culture, trapped in a situation where bravery was invisible, he was still brave; because he fought in self-defense, and took no one with him when he died; because, like the rings of Saturn, the carbon atom, and the underwater reef, he belonged to a category of phenomena which our technology had not then advanced far enough to photograph; because no photograph or painting or even sketch of him exists; because he is not the Indian on the nickel, the tobacco pouch, or the apple crate. Crazy Horse was a slim man of medium height with brown hair hanging below his waist and a scar above his lip. Now, in the mind of each person who imagines him, he looks different.