He was the greatest Indian warrior of the nineteenth century. His victory over General Custer at the battle of Little Bighorn in 1876 was the worst defeat inflicted on the frontier Army. And the death of Crazy Horse in federal custody has remained a controversy for more than a century.
The Killing of Crazy Horse pieces together the many sources of fear and misunderstanding that resulted in an official killing hard to distinguish from a crime. A rich cast of characters, whites and Indians alike, passes through this story, including Red Cloud, the chief who dominated Oglala history for fifty years but saw in Crazy Horse a dangerous rival; No Water and Woman Dress, both of whom hated Crazy Horse and schemed against him; the young interpreter Billy Garnett, son of a fifteen-year-old Oglala woman and a Confederate general killed at Gettysburg; General George Crook, who bitterly resented newspaper reports that he had been whipped by Crazy Horse in battle; Little Big Man, who betrayed Crazy Horse; Lieutenant William Philo Clark, the smart West Point graduate who thought he could “work” Indians to do the Army’s bidding; and Fast Thunder, who called Crazy Horse cousin, held him the moment he was stabbed, and then told his grandson thirty years later, “They tricked me! They tricked me!”
At the center of the story is Crazy Horse himself, the warrior of few words whom the Crow said they knew best among the Sioux, because he always came closest to them in battle. No photograph of him exists today.
The death of Crazy Horse was a traumatic event not only in Sioux but also in American history. With the Great Sioux War as background and context, drawing on many new materials as well as documents in libraries and archives, Thomas Powers recounts the final months and days of Crazy Horse’s life not to lay blame but to establish what happened.
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Less a biography than the study of a lost way of life, Powers’s sprawling chronicle uses the great Lakota warrior as a springboard to examine the history and culture of the Sioux tribes. Simultaneously, Powers rectifies the biased inaccuracies of a historical record that has traditionally treated the murder of Crazy Horse as “something between a footnote and an afterthought.” Drawing on extensive fieldwork and a dizzying amount of firsthand sources, Powers vividly describes the personalities, politics, and conflicts that shaped the era and defined the troubled relationship between Native Americans and the U.S. government. Some readers may be overwhelmed by Powers’s exhaustive research and persistent (if fascinating) digressions, but most will find Crazy Horse “a rich and worthwhile read” (Oregonian).
THOMAS POWERS is a Putlitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of nine books. The most recent book is The Killing of Crazy Horse, published by Alfred Knopf in November 2010.
Previous books include, Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to Al Qaeda (2004) a collection of essays written over the previous 25 years which originally appeared in the New York Times Book Review and the New York Review of Books. Other books by Powers are Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb (Knopf, 1993); The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (Knopf, 1979), and a novel The Confirmation (Knopf, 2000). Heisenberg's War was published simultaneously in four countries - the United States, Germany, France and Britain, where it was widely reviewed and sparked a continuing controversy. More recently, Heisenberg's War inspired British playwright Michael Frayn to write Copenhagen about the 1941 visit of Werner Heisenberg to Niels Bohr, which opened in London in 1998 and on Broadway in 2000, where it won a Tony Award as the year's best play.
Powers won a Pulitzer Prize in National reporting in 1971 for a series of articles later turned into his first book Diana: the Making of a Terrorist (Houghton Mifflin, 1973). He has been a contributing editor of The Atlantic and of The Los Angles Times Opinion Section, and has also published articles and reviews in numerous periodicals, including the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, The Nation, and Rolling Stone.
Other books by Powers are Thinking About the Next War (Knopf, 1982), and The War at Home: Vietnam and the American People (Viking, 1973). Powers has been a freelance writer since 1970. He is graduate of Yale University (1964) and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He lives in Vermont where he is one of the four founding partners and editors of Steerforth Press, a literary trade publishing house.
After reading Bray's Crazy Horse a year ago, I approached Tom Powers' book with some trepidation. I'm pleased to say that Powers did precisely what Bray failed to do: sort through the evidence and parse together a coherent narrative, weighing sources and giving the reader ways to gauge their accuracy and reliability. you will finish the book with a clear sense of what happened and why.
Let me give you just one example of how Powers goes beyond the paper-shuffling in Bray's "biography": Bray reports that Crazy Horse's friend Touch the Clouds said, while looking down at the dying chief, "He got what he deserved." Sorting through the notes, we can discover that this "statement" was recorded by an Army officer responsible for Crazy Horse's death and the officer did not understand Lakota. Powers mentions the same report, and points out that what Touch the Clouds actually said in Lakota was probably "He was looking for death, and it came." It's a trivial point, but Powers uses it to title and end a chapter, and his correction shows a sensitivity to Lakota culture that is absent from Bray's book.
Although Powers most foregrounded source is Bill Garnett, a half-Sioux interpreter who didn't like Crazy Horse, what emerges here seems fair, if painfully sad, and the Indian sources, which Bray scarcely seems aware of, are present on every page. That does not mean a partisan polemic. Powers doesn't paint the players in black and white. Perhaps the saddest thing in the book is the universal prevalence of venality in humans.
There have been some complaints about the digressiveness of the book. I attribute that to our collective ADD.... Powers understands that "we are all related," and like Dennis Banks' autobiography, the story begins before the central figure's birth and extends beyond his immediate surroundings. The book does need a good edit, but primarily because Powers tends to repeat certain telling or evocative details as if mentioning them for the first time. For the leisurely reader, it's a minor quibble.
Buffs and experts will quarrel over details, because the "true" story of Crazy Horse has been revocably lost to myth, lies, and love. But this is the book to measure the other historical accounts against.Read more ›
A Story that Needs to be Told, and Thomas Powers Tells it Well - 5 Stars
At first I did not know if I could trust the book. I have read most of Thomas Powers' works, and was not sure how much expertise he could bring to this topic. Heisenberg's War and Intelligence Wars were both superbly written but far removed from this topic.
My fears were completely put to rest within the first few pages. It became obvious that the author spent years going deeper and deeper into the history of the American Indians, and their confrontations with the spreading of America through the Plains states and territories.
If you have any interest in a true history of the confrontation of our Native Americans, and the rapid expansion of territorial America than this is the book for you. If you think you understand this segment of American history from your school courses, you probably don't. As Americans, as free citizens, we need to understand what Powers is writing about. It is powerful stuff, and it needs to be told.
A book like this is a biography of many people. Allow me to mention two of them to you, to give you some insight into how the book is organized.
Crazy Horse A warrior his entire life, a charismatic leader of his people. Prior to taking on General Custer, he was known for the Fetterman Massacre in December of 1866, when he lured approximately 80 US soldiers into an ambush against 1000 Indians. Up until that time, it was the worst defeat suffered by the US Army at the hands of the Indians. Little Big Horn would follow.
General George Armstrong Custer How he lived, how he died has been molded for decades now by Hollywood's production of "They Died With their Booths On".... The movie is so far removed from reality that they should not be mentioned in the same breath, which is probably true of most Hollywood movies. Custer was arrogant, self-absorbed, great at public relations, and brilliant as a leader. When you read the book, you will realize just how wrong he called it at the Battle of Little Big Horn, in which none of Custer's troops survived to tell the tale.
The purpose of the book is to inform us why Crazy Horse was killed? What were the conditions, what was happening at the time? What was the emotionality of the period? All of this Powers provides us in abundance. The author does this through documents, diaries, letters, official reports, books, newspaper clippings, notes and drawings.
There is urgency in the story; there is a richness in the tale. Was Crazy Horse murdered; was there a plot? If there was a plot than General George Crook, a West Point man was the plot creator. He was a strange man, a non-communicator, silent, very contained. He never drank and was an extraordinary hunter in his own right. He was also a friend of the legendary general, Philip Henry Sheridan.
Powers tells the tale in 35 chapters, and 462 pages. He also employs a very interesting, and original method in organizing the book. His 35 chapter headings are quotes, which in a sense forces you to read the chapter to figure out why you are finding the quote so interesting. Take a look at a few.
I always kept the oaths I made, but Crazy Horse did not (chapter 2)
He is no good and should be killed (chapter 11)
When Spring comes, we are going to kill them like dogs (chapter 18)
They were killed like wolves (chapter 23)
I can have him whenever I want him (chapter 28)
He was looking for death and it has come (chapter 32)
This book will change your entire understanding of America's sweep through the West. You will see the economic forces at work, gold, silver, rail roads. You will witness the endless negotiations between Washington representatives and the Indians, and then the agreements, and then the renegs of the agreements.
I promise you if you read this book, you will love it. The 30 plus page vivid description of the Battle of Little Horn is worth the price of the book alone. Crazy Horse had two thoughts that stuck with me from the battle. One is that war is too dangerous to treat casually. The other is that soldiers always tried to keep an enemy at bay, they wanted to kill Indians at a distance. The Sioux fighters are opposite. They wanted to charge in and touch the enemy with a bow, or a naked hand because no terror in battle is equal to physical contact. As Sitting Bull says, "This was a good day to die." Thank you for reading this review.
When an excellent writer - who is also thoughtful and generous - focuses on a historical event that still holds mystery, the resulting work is often a glory for us all. This one is.
Powers's book is rich in detail and deep in research. And it's personal. You are with Powers and his brother in 1994 in Crow Agency, Montana, and you are with him again on the Pine Ridge when he visits "people who knew people who knew Crazy Horse." He tells you why he was attracted to this story after a lifetime of being a grownup. The finest work by this Pulitzer Prize winner may turn out to have been conceived when he was 12 years old.
A full appreciation of Power's book would probably benefit from at least some advance knowledge of the Plains Indian Wars, but readers don't really need it. If you do want to warm up to Powers, though, Ian Frazier's "Great Plains" would be a good and quick introduction - Frazier's description of the death of Crazy Horse could make anyone weep. Evan Connell's "Son of the Morning Star" is another instance of an excellent writer turning to an old but incomplete story and making a masterpiece of it. After you've finished Power's "Crazy Horse," set it on your bookshelf alongside Connell's "Morning Star." They're two of a piece.
Late in the evening of September 5, 1877, a mortally wounded Crazy Horse struggled to sing his death song. His father Worm and friend Touch the Clouds remained vigilant while reminding him that he was not alone. As Crazy Horse sang the last verse and took his last breath, so went the great Lakota nation as it reached the end of a way of life that forever remains a memory to its entire people. The beginning of that end was the previous May when Crazy Horse and his followers surrendered to a young Army officer somewhere along Hat Creek. It can be argued that the Battle of the Little Bighorn or the surrender of Sitting Bull marked that beginning; however, there were many battles in 1876-1877, and Sitting Bull fled to Canada. It is Crazy Horse who continued the fight and who symbolizes the defiance of the Lakota nation; he continues to inspire his people even today. Yet, the world still struggles to understand why Crazy Horse was killed. That is the question Thomas Powers answers in his book, "The Killing of Crazy Horse".
Somewhat like Evan Connell's Son of the Morning Star: Custer and The Little Bighorn, Mr. Powers' narrative follows a unique structure that some critics have unfairly deemed confusing. I find it refreshing and invigorating. The opening chapter alone takes us on a whirlwind journey that includes the Fetterman Battle, Red Cloud's killing of Bull Bear, Crazy Horse's birth, how he got his name, and his becoming a shirt wearer. We are lucky that Mr. Powers chose the death of Crazy Horse as the subject for his book; otherwise we would not experience his vivid description of a tragic episode from the American West.... The extensive bibliography of the final days of Crazy Horse includes many fine books - even Thomas Buecker's one chapter "The Final Days of Crazy Horse" from his book Fort Robinson and the American West, 1874-1899 outshines most -- but Mr. Powers, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, applies his mastery of storytelling that sets a new barometer for others to reach.
These final days are brought to life in extensive detail that grants us the chance to experience Crazy Horse's world to its absolute fullest. Like a tragic play, its well developed characters enter stage right as they did in real life. The key actors besides Crazy Horse include interpreter Billy Garnett, George Crook, Little Big Man, Jesse Lee, Woman Dress, and Lt. William Philo Clark. Their understanding of the world, their culture, and their flawed beliefs become comprehensible: how and why whites did not like the smell of Indians and vice versa; the meaning of whipping; and why a warrior sang his death song. This stage's backdrop is painted in bold colors as in the late-night light on the field of carnage at the Fetterman Battlefield. Scenes are recognizable - some not as much as with the killing of John Richard and Yellow Horse ("It wasn't solely his own close shave that struck him; it was being trapped for two hours in smelling distance of a man looking to die."). However, the episodes of the Black Hills commission with the defiance of Little Big Man and the 24 hours leading up to Crazy Horse's death are told in a fresh and dramatic way. These scenes and others are complete and the tension is palpable.
The reader will be challenged to find the chapter on the Battle of the Little Bighorn. It doesn't fall into its place chronologically but the narrative flow works well. Once you reach the battle, the experience is fresh while told from the Indian point of view. It is apparent that Mr. Powers wishes to tell us the reasons why Crazy Horse was killed, and not why Custer was rubbed out.
Over time Crazy Horse was buried and then reburied by his parents for privacy and to protect their son's remains. As he was known in life he is known in death. Crazy Horse was a complex man. He lies somewhere on the vast plains of America's west, but his spirit forever soars. Even though an imagined likeness of him is being carved from a mountaintop in the Black Hills, and a purported photo of him recently came to light, we still will never know for sure who Crazy Horse was. But thanks to Mr. Powers, we now know the reasons why he was killed.
You can learn more about this book by reading an interview with the author at the Friends of the Little Bighorn Battlefield website.Read more ›
