Finding Crazy Horse: The Valley of the Little Big Horn

The Story of a Dark Day in the History of the American West

Originally Posted at “Old Ones Dream” January 29, 2014 and updated here.

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Leaving Spearfish, South Dakota in June, 2010 we drove west on US 212 from Belle Fourche, South Dakota to camp at Hardin, Montana. We passed through the Northern Cheyenne Reservation at Lame Deer, Montana and onto the Crow Indian Reservation. We passed the entrance to the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and the Crow Agency on our way into Hardin. The next morning we drove back south 15 miles up the river and entered the battlefield from the north — the Seventh Cavalry had entered the battlefield from the South.

On June 25, 1876, when Major Marcus Reno, with 3 Companies of the Seventh Cavalry, obeyed Custer's orders to attack the village on the Greasy Grass Creek (the Little Big Horn River), it was a continuation of the tradition of attacking peaceful settlement's of Native Americans accompanied by the massacre of women and children; and stories of U. S. Army soldiers playing ball with female body parts. From the slaughter at Sand Creek, Colorado in 1864 to the massacre at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota, in 1890; this scenario had played out a dozen or more times; and seemed to be U. S. War Department policy. Custer was already notorious and despised among the Native Americans for his attack on a peaceful Cheyenne village on the Washita River in 1868.

Major Reno's foray into the village on the Greasy Grass encountered a rally of Hunkpapa warriors led by their War Chief Gall who was the Chief Lieutenant of the Hunkpapa Chief Sitting Bull. Gall turned Reno's flank and a charging counterattack by Crazy Horse and his warriors put Reno's column to rout, with heavy casualties, and into a defensive position back to the South end of the battlefield. Custer's attack orders had thrust Reno into the southern edge of what is considered by European American historians to be the largest gathering of Native Americans in history. After the rout of Reno, Gall and several hundred of his warriors were diverted from the pursuit of Reno to join the action led by Crazy Horse that attacked, pursued, surrounded and annihilated the other attacking column comprised of Companies C, E, I, F and L of the Seventh Cavalry led by Pahuska, "the Long Hair" Custer, that they so despised.

"The smoke of the shooting and the dust of the horses shut out the hill," Pte-San-Waste-Win said, "and the soldiers fired many shots, but the Sioux shot straight and the soldiers fell dead. The women crossed the river after the men of our village, and when we came to the hill there were no soldiers living and Long Hair lay dead among the rest…. The blood of the people was hot and their hearts bad, and they took no prisoners that day."

- McLaughlin, James. My Friend the Indian. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1910, pp. 168-69

The tactics of Crazy Horse, and Gall, marginalized the superior fire power of the U. S. Army and led to the panic and the gruesome death of many soldiers.

See Last Stand Hill above, where Custer's body was found June 27, 1876. His body and those of his men were buried in shallow graves nearby. His remains, and those of many of his officers, were recovered later and re-interred elsewhere. Custer was buried again with full military honors at West Point Cemetery on October 10, 1877. The battle site was designated a National Cemetery in 1876.

The victory won nihilistic retribution for the victors. Retribution that was immediate and lasted for more than a century. The forced and illegal seizure of the Black HIlls by the U. S. was already underway at that time and had, indeed, provoked the chain of events that led to the U. S. disaster at the Little Big Horn. The U. S. government then declared that the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie was null and void because of the warlike behavior of the Indians and that the "Sioux" had thereby relinquished all claims to the Black Hills. On July 7 it was reported in the New York Times that officials in the U. S. War Department were advocating a "policy of extermination of the Indians". In September, 1876, Red Cloud (Chief of the Oglala) was forced to sign a document that abrogated the Treaty of Fort Laramie which had secured the Black Hills "in perpetuity". But that was before European American trespassers had discovered "gold in them thar hills".

According to historians: "...268 soldiers, including Lt. Col. George A. Custer and attached personnel (Native American Scouts) of the U.S. Army, died fighting, …against an estimated 1500 to 1800 Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors".

According to Wikipedia: "Native American casualties have never been determined and estimates vary widely, from as few as 36 dead (from Native American listings of the dead by name) to as many as 300. The Sioux chief Red Horse told Col. W. H. Wood in 1877 that the Native Americans suffered 136 dead and 160 wounded during the battle". It is not made clear whether these counts include women and children killed in Major Reno's attack on the village, which count would include 2 wives and 3 children of Gall (before his eyes).

Modern Crow Ponies near the hill position defended by Major Marcus Reno, June 25-27, 1876.

Photos by Tom T Traywick

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For the background knowledge required to develop the foregoing summary account of the battle, I acknowledge the works of Peter Matthiessen, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse; Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee; and, Kingsley Bray, Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life.