In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse Page 7

  “Well,” Grandpa Nyles replied, his voice low, “the first thing was probably someone taking something off a fallen soldier—you know, a gun, bullets, maybe boots. Then someone took a knife and cut a soldier’s body. All that anger was hard to hold back. So they began stripping bodies, taking things, and then mutilating them.”

  “ ‘Mutilating’?”

  “Cutting arms and legs.”

  Jimmy didn’t know what to think. “Why?”

  “Like I said—the people were angry because the Long Knives probably would have hurt women and children—shot them, even. And Long Knives had done the same thing to Indians—like at a place called Sand Creek, in Colorado—mutilated people, I mean.”

  He paused for a moment and took a deep breath. “I personally think it’s a bad thing no matter who does it. But that’s the way it was then.”

  Jimmy felt a bit sick to his stomach.

  He could imagine Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho women and children crossing the river and walking onto the battlefield. He could understand why mothers and grandmothers would be worried about their sons and grandsons. That’s the way his mom and his grandmothers were.

  “So, what happened after that, Grandpa?” he asked.

  “Well, the second part of the battle ended here,” Grandpa Nyles replied. “But remember those soldiers on the hill, back there above the river?”

  Jimmy nodded.

  “They were the first part of the battle, and they would be the third part. We’ll talk about it in a bit, but right now let’s go see that monument to our people. How’s that?”

  Jimmy and his grandfather followed the path to the monument to the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho people. It was unlike the tall stone marker for the soldiers. This monument was round and sunk into the ground.

  They entered it from the east opening. It was like an open-air room. Jimmy liked it immediately, even before he looked closer at all the pictures and words on the walls. The first thing that caught his eye was the metal sculptures outlined against the sky. The north wall was lower, and on the stone ledge were three metal figures. Each looked exactly like a pen-and-ink outline sketch of a man on a horse.

  Grandpa Nyles noticed Jimmy looking at the figures. They seemed to be moving from left to right. “Those represent the three tribes who fought here on our side: Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho,” he explained. He indicated the third figure, the last one. That one had a hawk on his head and was reaching to take weapons from a woman on the ground.

  “That’s Crazy Horse,” the old man explained. “Or at least someone’s idea of him.”

  Jimmy pointed to the woman figure. “Who’s that?” he asked.

  “I’m sure that’s his wife,” Grandpa Nyles replied. “It was customary for Lakota wives and mothers to hand weapons to their husbands and sons. And they had a saying that gave them encouragement and reminded them of their duty as warriors.”

  “What was it?”

  “The women would say, ‘Have courage and be the first to charge the enemy, for it is better to lie a warrior naked in death than it is to turn away from the battle.’ ”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It means that courage was a warrior’s best weapon, and that it was the highest honor to give your life for your people.”

  “Oh,” Jimmy said, in a low voice. “That’s kind of scary, I think.”

  Grandpa Nyles put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and nodded. “Yeah, it is, but that’s what being a warrior was all about: facing the scary things no matter how afraid you were. That’s what courage is. And what’s more, it doesn’t happen only on the battlefield. You can have courage and face the tough things that happen to you anywhere.”

  “Oh.”

  “Come on,” Grandpa Nyles said, pulling on Jimmy’s arm and pointing to the polished walls around them. “Let’s go look at those carvings and the inscriptions on the panels.”

  There were twelve thick granite panels on the walls inside the circular monument. All were nearly four feet high and just over seven feet wide. They had images and words connected to the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

  The words were from the warriors who had fought here, from Lakota warriors and the Cheyenne. The words of Wooden Leg, a Cheyenne warrior, were simple: “We had killed soldiers who came to kill us.”

  “That about sums it up,” Grandpa Nyles said quietly.

  The panel devoted to Crazy Horse also had words on it. They were not about fighting or battles. “We did not ask you white men to come here. The Great Spirit gave us this country as a home. You had yours . . . We did not interfere with you. We do not want your civilization!”

  Jimmy was a bit puzzled.

  “I think that explains why he fought so hard, why he didn’t want to surrender,” Grandpa Nyles said. “He was fighting just as hard for those who had lived before as he was for those living at the time and those who would be born later.”

  “Like us?”

  “Exactly.”

  Some of the other panels were about the enemies of the Lakota and Cheyenne: the Crow and Arikara scouts who were with the Long Knives that day.

  “They fought bravely, too,” asserted Grandpa Nyles.

  They finished looking at the granite panels, lingering reverently at the panel devoted to Crazy Horse. They walked slowly out the west entrance and followed the stone-covered path. Crossing the road, they walked east of the visitor center and paused on the path leading to a long, sloping meadow.

  Jimmy looked toward the meadow and then turned to look down the slope toward the river. “Why did the Long Knives attack our people?” he asked.

  “Well,” said Grandpa Nyles, “there were a lot of reasons. The big reason was they wanted our land. So they had to get us out of the way, put us on reservations. In 1876, two groups of Lakota were still not on reservations. One was Crazy Horse’s band, and the other was Sitting Bull’s. The other Lakota bands were at Fort Robinson, in Nebraska, including the Sicangu, Mniconju, and Oglala. Their leaders, like Spotted Tail, Touch the Clouds, and Red Cloud, had already surrendered to the whites.”

  “Why did they surrender?” Jimmy wanted to know.

  Grandpa Nyles sighed deeply. “Oh, the main reason was because they were afraid of the power of the whites. The whites had more guns, more bullets. They had big cannons. Spotted Tail and Red Cloud had traveled east to Washington, D.C. They saw the big cities of the whites. But the one thing that scared them most of all was how many whites there were.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There weren’t many of our people left by 1876,” Grandpa Nyles explained, “compared to the sheer numbers of whites. There were probably twenty thousand Lakota. At the same time, there were twenty-five million white people.”

  Jimmy’s eyes grew wide.

  “So the Lakota leaders, like Spotted Tail, knew the odds were against us. It was like one cricket trying to fight off a thousand hungry ants.”

  Jimmy could actually see that, a thousand ants against one cricket. He knew about ants. He knew how strong they could be just because there were always thousands, even tens of thousands, in one colony.

  “What about Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull?” he asked. “Did they know the odds?”

  Grandpa Nyles nodded. “They did, but they also knew what surrendering would mean. It would mean giving up being free. It would mean giving up living the old way. It would mean Lakota people would be forced to accept the ways of the white man. So they believed it was better to resist them. That’s why this battle happened, here along this river.

  “The whites knew they were a symbol to other Lakota,” Grandpa Nyles continued. “As long as Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull stayed free, they were dangerous. The whites were afraid they might inspire other Lakota to leave Fort Robinson and fight. Many of them did that. They left and joined Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse here.”

  Jimmy looked down the slope toward the trees. Beyond them was the river, which they could not see.

  Grandpa Nyle
s saw that he was confused. “Hey, let me finish the story of this battle, and then we’ll go inside and grab a cold drink.”

  Jimmy nodded.

  The last engagement—soldiers on a hill

  For the first time today, Crazy Horse felt tired. He lay on his belly and looked through his binoculars at the soldiers in the meadow. After the soldiers running toward the north had all been wiped out, he hurried back toward the soldiers who had been left surrounded. Through the glasses he saw the barricades that had been hurriedly built.

  Another column of soldiers had ridden in to join those already on the hill. As far as anyone could tell, there were over a hundred soldiers behind the barricades. Now and then, one or more would moan or scream in pain. Those were the wounded.

  “They’ve been digging holes, too,” Black Moon told him. Black Moon was a battle leader. His face was dusty, his clothes soiled, and dried blood spotted his arms. “They tried to charge out,” he went on, “but we beat them back. What do you think we should do?”

  Crazy Horse lowered the binoculars and looked around. The air was hot, and he was sweating. Though hundreds of warriors lay hidden all around them, none could be seen.

  “All we have to do is wait,” Crazy Horse replied. “Let the sun and the heat get to them, make them do something stupid. We can rest and wait.”

  Black Moon nodded. That seemed like a wise approach. He had seen much death today and was not ready to see more.

  A young warrior scurried on hands and knees through the grass and found Crazy Horse. “Some of the old men want to know what is happening,” he said. “They sent me to find you. They want to know what you plan to do.”

  “What’s your name?” Crazy Horse asked the young man.

  “My name is Good Weasel, Uncle,” the warrior replied. “My mother is Grass Shawl—she’s a Blue Sky. My father is No Horse, Mniconju Lakota.”

  “Ah, yes.” Crazy Horse nodded. “I know your family. Tell the old men we have these soldiers surrounded. Most of our men came back from the second fight. I think the soldiers might try to break out, but we’re ready.”

  Good Weasel nodded. “I will tell them that, Uncle,” he said, and crawled away.

  The afternoon passed slowly on the ridge above the Greasy Grass River. Unseen warriors on a high hill to the south fired a few long-range shots at the soldiers behind the barricades. A group of soldiers tried a mounted charge. They were forced to retreat, unable to break past the fierce Lakota and Cheyenne firing.

  Good Weasel returned as the sun was dipping toward the western horizon.

  “The old men are talking,” he reported to Crazy Horse. “Many of them say we should not risk any more of our men. They say the heat and lack of water and food will defeat the Long Knives here.”

  Crazy Horse nodded thoughtfully.

  Black Moon’s eyes flashed, and he tried to catch the war leader’s attention. “Many of our men are ready to attack,” he reminded Crazy Horse. “We are ready to die in defense of our people. I think it would take just one or two well-planned attacks to wipe out all those Long Knives.”

  Again Crazy Horse nodded.

  Grandpa Nyles led Jimmy to the visitor center. In a room just off the small museum stood a topographic diorama. It was a miniature model of the Greasy Grass River, the hills to the east of the village site, and the flood plain where the village had stood.

  He pointed to a high point west of and above the river. “Here is where the Lakota snipers were,” he said. Then he indicated the location of the soldier barricades. “That’s a few hundred yards. A long shot for those snipers. Soldiers behind the barricades say they fired back and hit the snipers on that hill. That’s very far-fetched, in my opinion. My great-grandfather—your great-great-grandfather—who was there, said the snipers ran out of bullets. That’s the reason they stopped firing.”

  “So what happened to those soldiers on the hill?” asked Jimmy impatiently.

  “Well, they lived,” Grandpa Nyles told him.

  “They did?”

  “Yeah, for two reasons. First, the warrior leaders couldn’t decide exactly what to do, and Crazy Horse was being cautious. He didn’t want any more warriors wounded or killed. Then, secondly, scouts came back from the north and reported more soldiers coming. More soldiers than they had already fought.”

  “Wow!” Jimmy exclaimed. “How many men did we have?”

  “A lot less than the white historians say we did,” Grandpa Nyles explained. “I’d be surprised if we had fifteen hundred. Probably more like twelve hundred.”

  “So then what happened?”

  “Sitting Bull and the other old men decided that the people should take down their lodges and go south. Remember, most of the people there were women, children, and elders. So they wanted to keep them safe.”

  “So the village was taken down?”

  “It sure was. The warriors on the hill, those surrounding the soldiers, really wanted to wipe the soldiers out,” Grandpa Nyles said. “But they saw it was even more important to take care of their families. So Crazy Horse left warriors there, probably less than a hundred, to make sure the soldiers stayed behind the barricades. So all that those surrounded Long Knives could do was watch thousands of men, women, and children leave and go south. They were lucky. If the new soldiers had not been so close, their fate would have been different. The barricaded soldiers probably would have all been wiped out.”

  Jimmy stared at the diorama, imagining a long column of people and horses. A column made up of Lakota, a few Dakota and Nakota, Cheyenne, and a few Arapaho. He wished he had been there.

  “That was the end of the third engagement,” Grandpa Nyles told him. “That was the afternoon of June twenty-sixth, 1876. That was how the Greasy Grass Fight ended, also known as the Battle of the Little Bighorn.”

  Somewhere in his mind Jimmy could hear people shouting and guns firing.

  Grandpa Nyles touched his grandson on the shoulder. “Hey,” he said, “there’s a tipi out back. Let’s go see it, maybe rest a bit before we head on.”

  As it happened, the tipi was a real one. That is, it was made from buffalo hide. It did not rattle in the soft breeze, like canvas lodges did. They sat inside it, leaning against the replica Lakota chairs, also called “backrests.”

  “Can we come back here next year?” Jimmy asked hopefully.

  “My thoughts exactly,” his grandfather responded. “Maybe we can make it a family trip. We can bring your parents and your grandma.”

  Jimmy nodded and smiled.

  Looking through the door, they saw other people walking around and cars driving into and out of the parking lot.

  “A lot of people come here, huh?” Jimmy asked.

  “Yeah. I think I read somewhere about six hundred thousand a year,” Grandpa Nyles told him.

  “Wow! For reals? That’s a lot of people.”

  “For sure. But you know what? I’ll bet, except for a few Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, and Arikara people who come here, no one has the connection to this place that you do.”

  “Because your great-grandpa was here?”

  “Yeah, but also because the Indian people here were our ancestors. Because Sitting Bull was here, and Crazy Horse.”

  Jimmy stared out the door, deep in thought.

  “You’ve walked a lot of places in the past few days,” Grandpa Nyles reminded him. “Places where Crazy Horse and our ancestors also walked. We occupied the same space they did, saw the same kinds of plants, heard the same kinds of birds. The only thing separating us is time.”

  He waved his hand. “Crazy Horse led a charge through here, maybe right where we’re sitting,” he pointed out. “A Cheyenne warrior later said it was the bravest thing he had ever seen. That charge took out an entire company of soldiers—probably a big reason Custer’s five companies were defeated.”

  Jimmy nodded, again hearing shouts and gunfire in his mind.

  “The Greasy Grass Fight happened a hundred and thirty-eight years ago,”
Grandpa Nyles said. “Crazy Horse and the warriors were not the only courageous ones that day. The mothers, the grandmothers, and the old people in the camp had to be brave, too. You know what the message is that they left for us?”

  Jimmy shook his head.

  “The message is ‘Do not forget what happened here.’ ”

  Jimmy nodded. “I won’t forget,” he promised resolutely.

  In a strange way, Jimmy felt like he was leaving a part of himself behind when they drove out of the gates. He was determined to come back as often as he could.

  They ate lunch at the trading post café across the road from the battlefield. It was full of tourists. Jimmy paid little attention to them. As he ate his buffalo burger, he relived the stories Grandpa Nyles had told.

  “We have one more official tour stop to make,” Grandpa Nyles said.

  “Where?”

  “Fort Robinson,” his grandfather said.

  7

  Fort RobinSon

  AFTER A NIGHT IN A MOTEL IN CASPER, WYOMING, Jimmy and his grandfather drove east. They turned off Interstate 25 onto Highway 20. Sixty some miles later they were back in Nebraska.

  Grandpa Nyles slowed down a few miles from Fort Robinson and turned onto a road. There was a scenic overlook. The view was of hills and ridges toward the east, and prairies all around. Below them to the east was the broad valley on either side of the White River. Grandpa Nyles stepped down from the truck with binoculars in hand and waved for Jimmy to follow him.

  He looked briefly through the glasses, aiming them a bit to the northeast. After a moment he handed them to Jimmy.

  “Look at those bare ridges,” he said, pointing.

  Jimmy took the glasses. He immediately saw the ridges.

  “In May of 1877, after weeks of travel, they came that far,” Grandpa Nyles said. “I imagine from there they could look down into the valley and see Fort Robinson. That moment, when they were looking down, was a critical time.”

  “What does that mean, Grandpa?” Jimmy asked, still looking through the binoculars.

  “Well, the winter after the Greasy Grass Fight was very hard,” his grandpa said. “No game, little food, and it was hard to find ammunition. The soldiers attacked them once. Lakota people from Fort Robinson were sent up to talk to Crazy Horse and his elders. They were urged to surrender.