Finding Crazy Horse: The Nebraska Sandhills

Fort Robinson and Pine Ridge

Originally published at “Old Ones Dream” December 11, 2013 and updated here, the first of a series of four pieces.

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I will not tell you the story of Crazy Horse, no one can, but I will tell you about our search.

Finding Crazy Horse begins with this riveting song:

DEADWOOD

Well, the good times scratched a laugh

From the lungs of the young men

In a Deadwood saloon, South Dakota afternoon

And the old ones by the door with their heads to their chests

They told lies about whiskey on a woman's breath

Yes, and some tell the story of young Mickey Free

Who lost an eye to a buck deer in the Tongue River Valley

Oh and some tell the story of California Joe

Who sent word through the Black Hills

'There was a mountain of gold'

And the gold she lay cold in their pockets

And the sun she sets down on the trees

And they thank the Lord for the land that they live in

Where the white man does as he pleases

Some flat shoed fool from the East comes a runnin'

With some news that he'd read in some St. Joseph paper

And it was "Drinks all around" 'cause the news he was tellin'

Was the one they called Crazy

Had been caught and been dealt with

And the Easterner he read the news from the paper

And the old ones gathered closer so's they could hear better

"And it says here that Crazy Horse was killed

While he was trying to escape

And it was some time last September and it don't give the exact date"

And the gold she lay cold in their pockets

And the sun she sets down on the trees

And they thank the Lord for the land that they live in

Where the white man does as he pleases

Where the white man does as he pleases

Then the talk turned back to whiskey and women

And cold nights on the plains, Lord, and fightin' those Indians

And the Easterner he says he'll have one more 'fore he goes

He gives the paper to the Crow boy

Who sweeps up the floor

And the gold still lay cold in their pockets

And the sun still sets down on their trees

And they thank the Lord for the land that they live in

Where the white man does as he pleases

Where the white man does as he pleases

Where the white man does as he pleases

As he wants to, as he pleases

- Written by Eric Taylor, published by Blue Ruby Music.

"Deadwood" has been recorded by Nanci Griffith and by Eric Taylor.

And it begins with Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, and with Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas by Mari Sandoz - and the search is fruitful in books by Kingsley Bray, Ian Frazier, Thomas Powers and Larry McMurtry.

The search continued in May 2010 when Tanne and Graycey and I headed up west in our Tacoma with R-Pod in tow. We spent several nights of the first week of travel at the Buffalo National River, Buffalo Point Campground, National Park Service in North Western Arkansas.

After our "first night" in Tennessee we held boot camp on how to live in a mini-RV

A beautiful setting for a boot camp

We headed north through the Flint Hills on K-177, the Flint Hills Scenic Byway (above), spent some time near Abilene, and then on up to North Platte, Nebraska.

We followed the Oregon Trail along the North Platte River to Scotts Bluff

Tanne and Graycey and a Reenactor at Scotts Bluff National Historic Site

We ended that day by traveling through the Nebraska Sandhills from Scott's Bluff north to the White River and east past Fort Robinson and Crawford to Chadron, Nebraska. Chadron is south of the Black Hills in South Dakota and southeast of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre. The next day we doubled back to Fort Robinson.

Crazy Horse "came in" to Fort Robinson and surrendered on May 6, 1877, and camped near the Fort. On September 5, 1877, betrayed by some of his own, the U. S. Army decided that Crazy Horse was a threat to go back north to the Powder River country and arrested him and brought him to the Adjutants Office. When it became clear that he was to be placed in a cell he resisted and was bayoneted in the back by a U. S. soldier while his arms were being held by one of his own, Little Big Man.

The restored Adjutants Office and Guardhouses with stone marker.

He died during the night on the dirt floor of the Adjutant's Office, refusing a cot. His father, Worm, and his good friend, Touch the Clouds, were with him. He was, by most accounts, 35 years old. He had eight horses killed beneath him but had never been wounded. He wore just one feather at the back of his head, he had lighter colored skin and brown hair but no photograph or sketch of him was ever accomplished, and his burial site has never been revealed.

We camped for a few nights at Chadron, Nebraska, which is east of Fort Robinson and north of the section of the Niobrara River where Crazy Horse's biographer, Mari Sandoz, was born in 1896 and raised. When we left Chadron we headed east to Gordon where we expected to find the museum and archives devoted to Ms. Sandoz, who has had twenty one books published by the University of Nebraska Press. Her seminal biography of Crazy Horse was originally published by A. A. Knopf in 1942. We had not planned well and had some out dated information and found that the Mari Sandoz room in Gordon had been moved to the Mari Sandoz High Plains Heritage Center at the Community College in Chadron or to the University of Nebraska. We had missed it while in Chadron.

We did find the remarkable Museum of the Fur Trade - well worth the price of admission and several hours of our time.

The weather closed in and so ended our time in the Nebraska Sand Hills - without floating the scenic Niobrara River.

On to the Black Hills!

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Photos by Tom T Traywick