Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

448 Pages·2014·4.92 MB·English

by  Stephen Ambrose

Crazy Horse and Custer
The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors
Stephen E. Ambrose
For Moira, who took me to Wounded Knee,
and for Stephenie, Barry, Andrew, Grace,
Hugh, Bib, and Blackness, who came along.
A WORD OF SPECIAL THANKS
To the Oglala Sioux at Pine Ridge and Wounded Knee, South Dakota; to the
Brulé Sioux at Rosebud, South Dakota; to the Shoshonis and Arapahoes at Wind
River, Wyoming; to the Crows at Crow Agency, Montana; and to the northern
Cheyennes at Lame Deer, Montana, for allowing me and my family to camp
with them on their land; and to the National Park Service officials at Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania; Fort Laramie and Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming; and Custer
Battlefield, Montana, for their many kindnesses; and to the state officials at
Custer State Park in the Black Hills of South Dakota and at Camp Robinson,
Nebraska, for their excellent campgrounds and generous assistance; and to all
the people of the Great Plains, red and white, for their hospitality.
CONTENTS
LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS
LIST OF MAPS
INTRODUCTION
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1: The Setting and the People: The Great Plains
CHAPTER 2: The Setting and the People: Ohio
CHAPTER 3: “Curly”
CHAPTER 4: Curly’s Vision
CHAPTER 5: Autie
CHAPTER 6: Custer at West Point
CHAPTER 7: Custer and Crazy Horse on the Eve of Manhood
PART TWO
CHAPTER 8: War and Love Among the Oglalas
CHAPTER 9: Guerrilla Warfare, Indian Style
CHAPTER 10: War and Love Among the Americans
CHAPTER 11: The Boy General and the Glorious War
CHAPTER 12: Crazy Horse and Custer as Young Warriors
PART THREE
CHAPTER 13: Crazy Horse and the Fort Phil Kearny Battle
CHAPTER 14: Custer Comes to the Plains
CHAPTER 15: A Summer on the Plains: 1867
CHAPTER 16: The Treaty of 1868 and the Battle of the Washita
CHAPTER 17: Truce on the High Plains, 1869–73
PART FOUR
CHAPTER 18: Crazy Horse and Custer on the Yellowstone, 1873
CHAPTER 19: The Panic of 1873 and the Black Hills Expedition of 1874
CHAPTER 20: Politics: Red and White
CHAPTER 21: Crazy Horse Fights on the Rosebud While Custer Closes In
CHAPTER 22: The Battle of the Little Bighorn
CHAPTER 23: The Death of Crazy Horse
CHAPTER 24: What Happened to the Others
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS
(following page 240)
1. One of Crazy Horse’s “dress” shirts.
2. He Dog, a life-long friend of Crazy Horse.
3. Custer in his 1861 West Point graduation photograph.
4. A Sioux encampment along the Platte River.
5. Custer, the boy general of the Civil War, dressed in a typical fashion.
6. Pawnee Killer, the Sioux warrior who led Custer on a wild chase.
7. Custer, the leader of the Washita campaign.
8. Elizabeth Bacon Custer in the late 1860s.
9. Custer in 1874, after the Black Hills expedition.
10. Touch-the-Clouds, the seven-foot-tall war chief of the Miniconjous.
11. Tom Custer, devoted brother and gallant soldier.
12. Young-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses, probably the most intelligent Sioux
leader of the period.
(following page 272)
13. Custer and his Indian scouts during the Yellowstone River expedition of
1873.
14. Spotted Tail, Crazy Horse’s uncle, fearless Brulé warrior.
15. Crater’s camp in the Black Hills, 1874, near the spot where gold was first
discovered in South Dakota.
16. Custer and Libbie at Fort Abraham Lincoln, 1875.
17. Little Big Man, one of Crazy Horse’s wildest warriors.
18. Elizabeth Bacon Custer in 1874.
19. Red Cloud, an Oglala leader, a champion of peace, an able and
unscrupulous politician.
20. The famous Hunkpapa leader Sitting Bull.
21. Libbie Custer at the turn of the century.
22. He Dog in old age.
LIST OF MAPS
The Crazy Horse Country (page 153)
Fort Phil Kearny and Vicinity (page 230)
Custer in Kansas (page 268)
Custer at the Washita (page 314)
The Little Bighorn and Vicinity (page 429)
INTRODUCTION
This is the story of two men who died as they lived—violently. They were both
war lovers, men of aggression with a deeply rooted instinct to charge the enemy,
rout him, kill him. Men of supreme courage, they were natural-born leaders in a
combat crisis, the type to whom others instinctively looked for guidance and
inspiration. They were always the first to charge the enemy, and the last to
retreat.
Just as they shared broadly similar instincts, so did they have roughly
parallel careers. Born at about the same time, they died within a year of each
other. Both had happy childhoods, both had become recognized and honored
leaders in their societies at an astonishingly young age (Custer at twenty-three,
Crazy Horse at twenty-four), both were humiliated and punished at the height of
their careers for violating the fundamental laws of their societies in an attempt to
be with the women they loved, both recovered from the blows and re-established
their claims to leadership roles, both had younger brothers who were even more
daredevil risk takers than they were, and both were in a position when they died
that, with a little luck, could have given them the supreme political direction of
their people.
There were other parallels. Neither man drank. Both were avid hunters, for
whom only the excitement of combat exceeded the joy of the chase. Each man
loved horses, and riding at full gallop across the unfenced Great Plains of North
America, day after day, was a source of never-ending delight for both of them.
Yet Crazy Horse and Custer, like their societies, were as different as life and
death.
Crazy Horse and Custer spent their adult lives on the Great Plains, riding,
hunting, fighting. They met only twice, on the battlefield, the first time on the
banks of the Yellowstone in 1873, the second time on the banks of the Little
Bighorn in 1876. The trail each man followed to the Little Bighorn is the subject
of the following story.
Stephen E. Ambrose Started in June