In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse: Chapters 5–6

Jimmy was intrigued. He thought for a moment and then said, “I can do that.”

South of the stone building was a cemetery with rows and rows of white headstones.

The Seventh was the regiment defeated by the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho on June 25,1876.

The encampment filled the river bottom for two miles along the meandering river.

They were responding to Sitting Bull’s message to gather and talk about the encroachment of the white people.

Most of the horses were bays (brown) or blacks, but there were buckskins (tan) and sorrels (reddish) as well; only a very few were white or gray.

Most of the horses were bays (brown) or blacks, but there were buckskins (tan) and sorrels (reddish) as well; only a very few were white or gray.

Major Reno ordered a withdrawal, into the trees along the river.

“About there,” he said, “the soldiers tried to take cover, in trees like that. But our men were relentless. They fired guns and bows and started fires. They forced the Long Knives out of the trees. They fled this way, across the river and up the slope. They suffered many casualties crossing the river. Same when they scrambled up the slope. Soldiers were falling, hit by bullets and arrows.”

“There, in a meadow, they took cover. They put up barricades with saddles, boxes, with anything they had, even the bodies of dead horses. They dug shallow pits in the ground.”

The angry scowl on his face made him look very scary.

He was a young Lakota warrior Crazy Horse recognized. In his hand was an eagle-bone whistle. It had a high-pitched sound. The young man was agitated.

“Somewhere here,” Grandpa Nyles began, resuming the story, “one company of the Long Knives stopped...."

Some mounted warriors veered to the right, others to the left.

They raced recklessly over the uneven ground and outran the Long Knives’ horses on the ridge.

The warriors with him below the ridge were all very good marksmen. They hit a lot of the soldiers.

He inspired other warriors to follow him, and they wiped out the company.

“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.”

“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...."

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

They finished looking at the granite panels, lingering reverently at the panel devoted to Crazy Horse.

They finished looking at the granite panels, lingering reverently at the panel devoted to Crazy Horse.

“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.”

The last engagement—soldiers on a hill

A young warrior scurried on hands and knees through the grass and found Crazy Horse.

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.

“Here is where the Lakota snipers were,” he said.

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.

They sat inside it, leaning against the replica Lakota chairs, also called “backrests.”

“The message is ‘Do not forget what happened here.’”
Jimmy nodded. “I won’t forget,” he promised resolutely.