Great Plains (13 page)

In the midst of these events, General Crook arrived at Fort Robinson. Clark had conveyed his fears to General Bradley, who had telegraphed General Sheridan, who ordered Crook to look into the situation. All the Indians at the Red Cloud Agency were told to move their camps to a central spot for a big council. Crazy Horse did not want to go to the council. He was afraid that there would be trouble there. General Bradley and another man had that afternoon given him presents of a knife and two cigars in a way that made him nervous. All the Indians at the Crazy Horse camp who wanted to go to the council were told to move from one side of Little Cottonwood Creek to the other. He Dog, a childhood friend of Crazy Horse who lived to be a hundred years old, told the other Crazy Horse Indians, “All who love their wife and children, let them come across the creek with me. All who want their wife and children to be killed by the soldiers, let them stay where they are.” Later, in Crazy Horse's tipi, He Dog asked if moving across the creek would make him Crazy Horse's enemy. Crazy Horse laughed in his face and said, “I am no white man! They are the only people that make rules for other people, that say, ‘If you stay on one side of this line it is peace, but if you go on the other side I will kill you all.' I don't hold with deadlines. There is plenty of room; camp where you please.”

Soon after, as General Crook and Lieutenant Clark were on their way to the council, a Sioux named Woman Dress came up to their interpreters and said that Crazy Horse planned to kill Crook at the council. Woman Dress told the interpreters that a man named Lone Bear had said that a man named Little Wolf had said that Crazy Horse was going to grab Crook when he shook his hand, and that sixty of his followers would then kill Crook and all the people with him. Crook asked the interpreters, William Garnett and Baptiste Pourier, if Woman Dress was reliable, and Pourier, whose wife was Woman Dress's wife's first cousin, said he was. Crook said, “I never start any place but what I like to get there.” Clark said the Army had already lost one irreplaceable man in General Custer. Crook said what excuse could he make. Clark said he'd take care of it.

Crook turned back, and Clark sent William Garnett to the council to tell the Indians that a message had come for Crook and he had to leave. Neither Crazy Horse nor his followers were at the council. Clark also gave Garnett a list of Indians to summon to the fort. Then, in General Bradley's apartments at the fort (Bradley himself being absent), Crook, Clark, Grouard, Pourier, Garnett, and thirteen Sioux, including chiefs Red Cloud and American Horse, plotted to kill Crazy Horse that night in his camp. Clark offered $300 and his fast sorrel horse as a reward to the man who did it.

In the conductive atmosphere around the fort, General Bradley immediately found out about the plot. He said that he would not countenance such an attack, and ordered Clark to call it off. Crook outranked Bradley, but since Crook's participation in the plot—and the plot itself—was unofficial, Clark obeyed. Crazy Horse found out almost as quickly as Bradley did. He had given his gun and gun case to Red Feather, and so awaited the attack in his camp armed only with a knife.

Sometime the same day, Crook gave Bradley orders to capture Crazy Horse, jail him, and send him east under guard on the railroad. Crook then left. Before sunup the next morning, eight companies of cavalry and 250 Indian scouts—about 850 men in all—assembled at the fort and then rode in two columns to Crazy Horse's camp to make the arrest. When they got there, they found that Crazy Horse, his wife Black Shawl, and others of his band had left for the Spotted Tail Agency. (Crazy Horse's second wife, the eighteen-year-old Nellie Larrabee, stayed behind.) Clark offered a reward of $200 to the man who caught Crazy Horse, and fifteen or twenty Indian scouts rode fast in the direction of Spotted Tail. Crazy Horse and Black Shawl arrived at Spotted Tail in the afternoon, just ahead of their pursuers. The scouts finally caught up and asked Crazy Horse to return with them, and he said, “I am Crazy Horse! Don't touch me! I'm not running away!”

Agent Lee had warned Clark not to let Crazy Horse get away from the Red Cloud Agency, and Clark, who had many spies among the Indians, had said that Crazy Horse couldn't make a move without his knowing. The sudden arrival of Crazy Horse at Spotted Tail struck Agent Lee “like a clap of thunder.” It also caused near-panic among Crazy Horse's many friends there. In the camp of the Miniconjou—most of whom, like Crazy Horse, had only recently come into the agency—all three hundred tipis came down in an instant as the people prepared for flight. If more experienced agency Indians hadn't talked them out of it, they and Crazy Horse might have taken off across the prairie, with a new Indian war the likely result.

Instead, a force of three hundred armed Miniconjou then rode with Crazy Horse to the office of the post commander. Crazy Horse had come to the Spotted Tail Agency to get away from the danger and intrigue at Red Cloud, and he wanted permission to stay. At the post's parade ground, they were met by an equal number of armed Brulé Sioux loyal to their chief, Spotted Tail. Before this multitude, an Indian named Buffalo Chips called Crazy Horse a coward and demanded that the authorities hang him in his place. The commanding officer laughed and said, “We don't want to hang you; we don't want to hang anybody.” Then Spotted Tail made a speech to Crazy Horse about how peaceful this place was and how great the power of Spotted Tail. He concluded, “If you stay here, you must listen to me! That is all!” Crazy Horse then went in the office and met with Agent Lee. “He seemed like a frightened, trembling wild animal brought to bay,” Lee said later.

By messenger, Clark had asked Lee to have Crazy Horse arrested when he arrived. Saying nothing about the arrest order, Lee told Crazy Horse that he must return to Fort Robinson to talk with General Bradley. Crazy Horse was ready to agree to anything at that point. Lee told Crazy Horse to come back at nine the next morning to leave for Fort Robinson, and the post commander made Touch the Clouds responsible for his safekeeping during the night.

Black Shawl was sick with a swollen arm, and Crazy Horse left her in the care of her mother, who was camped with Spotted Tail's band. When he met Lee the next morning at nine, he said he had changed his mind about going back. He said he “was afraid something would happen.” Lee said that no one would hurt him, that he owed it to his band at Red Cloud, and that he should return peaceably. Crazy Horse finally agreed to go if Lee accompanied him on the journey. He also asked that neither of them take arms, that he be allowed to explain the interpreter's mistake to Bradley, and that he be transferred to Spotted Tail. Lee promised everything except the transfer, and they and an interpreter set out with an escort of Indians—some friends to Crazy Horse, some not. Lee asked him to ride in the ambulance (a closed wagon for carrying troops), but Crazy Horse said he preferred to ride horseback. He said riding in the ambulance made him sick. By the time they were about halfway, over forty Indian scouts from Spotted Tail had joined them. Crazy Horse may have realized then that he was a prisoner. At one point he suddenly galloped away over a ridge, and in the next valley met an Indian family. He stopped and talked with them, and they may have given him a knife. The Spotted Tail scouts quickly overtook him. Lee then told him to stay behind the ambulance. The rest of the way, Crazy Horse was closely watched, and seemed “nervous and bewildered,” Lee said.

When they reached Fort Robinson, Lee left Crazy Horse in the adjutant's office and went to ask General Bradley that Crazy Horse be allowed to speak to him. Lee and his interpreter were afraid that when Crazy Horse was jailed, the Crazy Horse Indians would kill them for bringing Crazy Horse here. On the parade ground, Lee met Dr. Mc-Gillycuddy, and said, “I'm not going to be made a goat of in this affair.” But General Bradley told Lee that Crazy Horse must be locked up, and that not even General Crook himself could change the order. Bradley knew, because he had wired Crook asking to have the order revoked before Crazy Horse arrived. Crazy Horse's fate had been decided by someone further up. According to the
Times,
“It was the intention of General Sheridan to send him to the Dry Tortugas and keep him there.” The Dry Tortugas are a small atoll in the Gulf of Mexico, about seventy miles due west of Key West, Florida. The Army had a fort and a prison there, with cells which were holes dug in the coral with bars across the top.

Agent Lee came back and told Crazy Horse that it was too late in the day for General Bradley to talk to him. He said that he would have a chance to talk tomorrow. Then he repeated the only order that Bradley had given: Crazy Horse was to go with the officer of the day, and “not a hair of his head should be harmed.” Crazy Horse's face lighted up at this, and he warmly shook the hand of the officer of the day, Captain Kennington. Little Big Man, an old friend who had ridden next to Crazy Horse at the surrender, walked by his side. Agent Lee then went to join his wife, who was staying with friends at the post.

Frank Grouard, the interpreter who had helped create this mess, watched as Crazy Horse crossed from the adjutant's office to the jail. “I could tell by the way he walked into the guard house that he did not know that he was to be placed in confinement,” Grouard said later. Noticing Dr. McGillycuddy, Crazy Horse half nodded. In front of the guardhouse, a sentry was marching up and down. Crazy Horse, Captain Kennington, Little Big Man, and several Indians passed the sentry and went through the door. Crazy Horse had never seen the inside of a jail before. When the Indians with him saw the bars, several shouted “It's the jail!” and came running out. From under his blanket, Crazy Horse drew a knife and began slashing back and forth in an attempt to get out. As he came through the door, his friend Little Big Man pinned his arms behind him. Crazy Horse cut Little Big Man across the base of the thumb and base of the forefinger, and tried to stab Kennington. Little Big Man began to howl, an eyewitness said, “as though he was half killed.” Hundreds of Indians on horseback and on foot were now all around the outside of the jail. They were yelling. Some were trying to grab Crazy Horse. The leg irons of the white prisoners inside were clattering. Kennington was shouting, “Stab the son of a bitch! Kill him! Kill him!” The sentry, possibly a forty-seven-year-old private from County Tyrone, Ireland, named William Gentles, unshouldered his rifle and stabbed Crazy Horse twice through the abdomen with his bayonet. A third thrust missed and stuck in the doorsill. Crazy Horse turned completely around on his left foot and fell over backward. He said, “He has killed me now.”

A guard of twenty soldiers made a ring around Crazy Horse. His father was one of the first to get to him. “I felt awful sorry for the old man for he loved that son,” a member of the guard said later. On either side, pro- and anti-Crazy Horse Indians shouted and sang war chants, “bending and swaying like crouched tigers ready to spring at each other's throats,” according to one eyewitness. The sound of shells being chambered and hammers being cocked was everywhere. Another member of the guard later said that it was lucky Crazy Horse was stabbed and not shot, because a single shot would certainly have started a fight. Dr. McGillycuddy said, “I wedged my way in between the guard and found Crazy Horse on his back, grinding his teeth and frothing at the mouth, blood trickling from a bayonet wound above the hip, and the pulse weak and missing beats, and I saw that he was done for.” Captain Kennington tried to lift Crazy Horse by the shoulders and return him to the guardhouse. Unanimously, the Indians stopped him.

Touch the Clouds, Crazy Horse's seven-foot Miniconjou friend, asked that Crazy Horse be allowed to die in an Indian lodge. Dr. McGillycuddy carried the request to General Bradley, adding that violence might result from putting Crazy Horse in the jail. Bradley said, “Please give my compliments to the officer of the day, and he is to carry out his original orders, and put Crazy Horse in the guard house.” Dr. McGillycuddy relayed this to Kennington, who tried again. American Horse, who had recently conspired against Crazy Horse's life, protested that Crazy Horse was a chief, and could not be put in prison. Dr. McGillycuddy returned to Bradley and told him it would be death to try a third time. Bradley finally agreed to compromise and allow Crazy Horse to be taken to the adjutant's office, a small room with a desk, a kerosene lamp, and a cot. Several Indians carried him in a blanket and set him on the floor. He refused to lie on the cot.

It was then about five o'clock in the afternoon. Dr. McGillycuddy gave him a shot of morphine. Also present in the adjutant's office were Captain Kennington, another officer, an interpreter, Touch the Clouds, and Crazy Horse's father. All other Indians were ordered to leave the fort by sunset. The only light in the adjutant's office came from the kerosene lamp, which smoked. About ten o'clock in the evening, Crazy Horse asked to see Agent Lee. Still thinking that he might be killed, Lee looked at his wife for advice. She nodded yes. Over the protest of their friends, he went. Crazy Horse told Lee that he did not blame him. The first shot of morphine wore off, and Dr. McGillycuddy gave him another. Crazy Horse said that his people preferred hunting buffalo to living at the agencies, that they fought the soldiers because they were attacked, that he only wanted to be let alone, that he had come here just to talk. He was conscious and unconscious again. His father said, “Son, I am here.” Crazy Horse said, “Father, it is no use to depend upon me; I am going to die.” His father and Touch the Clouds both cried. Crazy Horse tossed back and forth. At 11:30, after a final struggle, he died. Touch the Clouds went over to the body lying on the floor and pulled the blanket over the face. He pointed to the blanket and said, “That is the lodge of Crazy Horse.” Then he said, “The chief has gone above.”

Almost instantly, news of the death spread to the Indian camps. The sleepless people at the fort, and the eight-hundred-man garrison which had been ordered to stay on the alert all night, heard the death wail rise all at once from the darkness for miles around. Frank Grouard, William Garnett, and another interpreter went to wake Lieutenant Clark, who had asked to be told if anything happened during the night. Clark was sleeping so soundly that they had to take him by the arms and legs and swing him; Garnett suspected he had taken something to make him sleep. When Clark heard the news, he said, “You go to bed. You are all played out. You are all afraid of him.” Garnett answered that the soldiers were all afraid of him. In his diary, Agent Lee wrote the next day, “My part in this transaction is to me a source of torture.” He also wrote that when he talked to General Bradley, “He did most of the talking. I felt so miserable that I could scarcely say anything…” Lieutenant Clark filed an official report stating that in the opinion of the physicians Crazy Horse must have stabbed himself with his own knife—which opinion Dr. McGillycuddy, for one, certainly did not have. The report filed by General Bradley gave a similar impression. No one ever received the $200 reward offered for Crazy Horse's capture; the Army ruled that Crazy Horse had not been captured.