Crazy Horse and Custer
A historical account of the lives and conflict between the Native American leader Crazy Horse and U.S. Army General George Custer.
The Indians exhibited an independence—like “the air they breathed or the wind that blew,” according to one trader—that was the despair of the white man, who tried to create in them wants that could be satisfied only through the fur trade.
No dry religious doctrine, not even a burning faith, could account for the way Americans labored. They worked so much that work became a psychic need with them; Americans were fidgety and nervous when they were not “doing something,” anything, as long as it was important enough to be called “work.”
From the time of the first landings at Jamestown, the game went something like this: you push them, you shove them, you ruin their hunting grounds, you demand more of their territory, until finally they strike back, often without an immediate provocation so that you can say “they started it.” Then you send in the Army to beat a few of them down as an example to the rest. It was regrettable that blood had to be shed, but what could you do with a bunch of savages?
Custer’s argument was that the village contained men guilty of murder, theft, and other outrages, which justified the attack. But although the city of Denver was also full of men guilty of murder, theft, and other outrages, no one in the Army ever thought to lead a column of cavalry on Denver, shoot it up, and burn it down.
The program worked. In slightly more than ten years, a continental herd of buffalo numbering fifty million was reduced to a few thousand stragglers. By 1888 there were less than one thousand buffalo in the United States. So many buffalo robes were shipped east that the price quickly fell to $1.00 per hide.36 The buffalo hunters, not the Army, cleared the Indians off the Plains.
The reporter had asked him why the tribe looked up to him. Sitting Bull replied with a question, “Your people look up to men because they are rich; because they have much land, many lodges, many squaws?” “Yes,” the newspaperman replied. “Well,” said Sitting Bull, “I suppose my people look up to me because I am poor.”