“I saw before me a man who looked quite young, not over thirty years old, five feet eight inches high, lithe and sinewy, with a scar in the face. The expression of his countenance was one of quiet dignity, but morose, dogged, tenacious, and melancholy. He behaved with stolidity, like a man who realized that he had to give in to Fate, but would do so as sullenly as possible.... All Indians gave him a high reputation for courage and generosity. In advancing upon an enemy, none of his warriors were allowed to pass him. He had made himself hundreds of friends by his charity toward the poor, as it was a point of honor with him never to keep anything for himself, excepting weapons of war. I never heard an Indian mention his name save in terms of respect. In the Custer Massacre, the attack by Reno had first caused a panic among the women and children and some of the warriors, who started to flee; but Crazy Horse, throwing away his rifle, brained one of the incoming soldiers with his stone war-club, and jumped upon his horse.”
Crazy Horse was a born soldier, whose talents for warfare and leadership were of the highest order. He had repulsed Reynolds on the Powder River, wresting a victory from apparent defeat. He had thrown himself in succession upon the columns of Crook on the Rosebud and of Custer on the Little Big Horn; and it must be admitted that he had not only checked, but had driven back, Crook by a crushing attack upon him, while he had annihilated half of Custer’s command. He had fought a desperate, and, from a military point of view, highly creditable, action with Crook’s vastly superior forces at Slim Buttes. The only man who had fairly and squarely defeated him was Miles at Wolf Mountain, and even there Crazy Horse managed to keep his force well in hand as he withdrew from the field.
He would probably never have surrendered, had it not been for the defections around him, and for the disastrous defeat of the Cheyennes by Mackenzie, and the destruction of so much of his camp equipage at Wolf Mountain. As it was, he might have continued the fighting, had not his warriors been freezing and starving, and almost entirely out of ammunition. There was nothing left for the Indians but surrender. As one of them said to Miles:
“We are poor compared with you and your force. We cannot make a rifle, a round of ammunition, or a knife. In fact, we are at the mercy of those who are taking possession of our country. Your terms are harsh and cruel, but we are going to accept them, and place ourselves at your mercy.”
That summed up the situation, although the terms granted the Indians were very far from being harsh or cruel.
So passed out of history the great war chief of the Sioux, one of the bravest of the brave, and one of the most capable and sagacious of captains in spite of his absurd name. He had many of the vices, perhaps all the vices, of his race; but he had all their rude virtues, too, and great abilities, which most of them lacked. Sitting Bull, wise, crafty, indomitable as he was, was not to be compared with him for a moment.
It was a tragedy any way you look at it. You cannot but feel much admiration for those Sioux and Cheyennes—cruel, ruthless though they were. I bid good-by to them with a certain regret.
Some one has said, as the Rosebud and the Little Big Horn marked the high-water of Indian supremacy in the Northwest, so the forgotten grave of Crazy Horse marks an ebb from which no tide has ever risen.
As he passes to the happy hunting-ground in the land of the Great Spirit, I stand and salute him with a feeling of respect which I have gathered not only from a study of his career, but from the statements and writings of men who could best judge of his qualities—for they were the soldiers who fought him.