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Post by Diane Merkel on Oct 14, 2010 8:10:28 GMT -6
About the Book . . .
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!” I am very excited about this book because I am familiar with some of the author's previous works. He has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, his research is impeccable, and he is a masterful storyteller. Here is an excerpt from the Introduction to the book: The half-Sioux interpreter William Garnett, who died a dozen years before I was born, first set me to wondering why Crazy Horse was killed. I read Garnett’s account of the killing in a motel at Crow Agency, Montana, not two miles from the spot where Crazy Horse in 1876 led a charge up over the back of a ridge, splitting in two the command of General George Armstrong Custer. Within a very few minutes, Custer and two hundred cavalry soldiers were dead on a hillside overlooking the Little Bighorn River. It was the worst defeat ever inflicted on the United States Army by Plains Indians. A year later Crazy Horse himself was dead of a bayonet wound, stabbed in the small of the back by soldiers trying to place him under arrest. Dead Indians are a common feature of American history but the killing of Crazy Horse retains its power to shock. Garnett, twenty-two years old at the time, was not only present on the fatal day but was deeply involved in the unfolding of events. In 1920 he told a retired Army general what happened. A transcript of the conversation was eventually published, and that’s what I read lying on my back on a bed in Crow Agency’s only motel. For more about the book, including some previously unpublished documents, see www.thekillingofcrazyhorse.com/.
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Post by Diane Merkel on Oct 20, 2010 17:05:30 GMT -6
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Post by Dark Cloud on Oct 20, 2010 20:51:57 GMT -6
I could have sworn I started a new thread today about this article. Age.
In any case, the man can write and this is decidedly better than, say, Donovan. It's sort of in the cadence of Stewart and Connell's last pages.
Understanding that there is nothing in the article about CH's death, his focus, my reaction was a muted variant of my standard whine. Things unknowable and arguable are stated as fact. He seems to buy Gray's times, which is okay but he should explain there is conflict on that. He states Indians did things ten minutes after they had done something previous. It's that fake precision out of ether than annoys me while it soothes and entrances so many others, but then Ward Churchill's appeal started today and is in the news and I'm agitated.
I still hate - loath - the sweeping generalization about the LBH being among the most studied actions in US military history with focus on C's generalship. It's a popular topic among laymen but hardly worthy of study. Again: the elevation of terms, 'study' for 'read about.' It's like the famous 'best (light) cavalry in the world' about one tribe or another without anyone wondering how such an estimate could be made, and who had witnessed enough competition to even voice an opinion.
Then, the announcement that while we can only guess about Custer's actions by inference, there are all these Indian accounts, announced as if they held the same value. They do not.
NOT because of their supposed source's lack of honesty but because they arrive way late and through highly dubious conduits (and white), if known at all. He believes Black Elk, notes the kid was 12 at the battle, but doesn't explain the numerous intermediaries, with full agendas, that separate us from him.
He implies that time was given in the Indian accounts, and like so many feels he need only treat these dubiously acquired and vetted accounts with the same veneration granted soldiers to have achieved something positive and long overdue. This is highly doubtful. And, in any case, the existing accounts have not been 'long neglected' in the better selling, more popular books of the battle. There is nothing referenced I haven't read before, and there's a lot I have NOT read.
I also seems to conflate some tales so that CH is the primary at both Reno and LSH.
He announces the count of the lodges from the Indians, one supposes. I'd not read counts by the warrior participants, and would question what the 1876 Sioux word would be for 800 or whatever, and what use it would be to them in those years.
I fear the 'new evidence' about what happened after CH was killed will be a cherry picked selection of recollections from lesser participants written later. If a soldier's report from the days immediate to it, and unknown till now, that would be exciting. But precedent does not inspire.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Nov 25, 2010 21:58:31 GMT -6
Read it.
It's very well written but it retains the same issues for which caveats need be stated: he takes accounts obtained well after the fact and perhaps - and probably - tainted by the variations of others. And there are things that may be issues I cannot interest myself in solving, ranging from the - to me - trivial to the possibly important.
There is, for example, the 1872 mid-August skirmish at Arrow Creek, the name - according to Powers - of the site where the Sioux and Cheyenne fought with Major Baker's men. Here, Sitting Bull and his entourage displayed mucho macho by walking slowly out under fire, spreading the blanket, sitting, lighting up the old pipe, and casually passing it around while making the timely and appropriate prayers and invocations. They smoked until the tobacco was gone, and then casually stood and walked back, all under fire. That's page 64-6. At which point Crazy Horse, to justify his own reputation, made some bravery runs under fire armed only with a spear. At the end of the run his horse is shot dead by a volley of the trapdoor Springfields, says Powers. Crazy Horse "jumped up and ran for the Indian lines" and arrived safely. White Bull, who'd done the runs with him, arrived with horse unscathed as well.
Powers takes care to point out that Sitting Bull performed his brave but utterly pointless ritual in the "correct" manner, and I have to take his word for that. But the absence of 'correct' performance doesn't bother him.
I've read elsewhere that if a warrior's horse was downed, the correct thing (and I verge on irony, of course...) was to take off the bridle calmly and walk away. But according to Powers, here Crazy Horse bolts from the carcass to safety, with no mention of the 'correct' way. This leads me to question the whole concept: was there actually a 'correct' way or is that just a plaudit attached after an action about which nothing of import could be said, and the media ate it up? There were earlier issues. I tried to match up this action with Michno's Encyclopedia, page 256, but he calls it Pryor's Fork, which confused me because I thought Pryor's Fork was an Indian battle between Crows and Sioux that some activists are trying to get named as a national battlefield, the first of its kind. But that battle was Pryor's Creek in the 1860's. The Battle of Pryor's Fork is also the Battle of Arrow Creek. Got it.
Michno does not mention the Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse episodes at all. Okay, now the Springfield. Powers is under the impression, perhaps correctly, the Springfield carbine fired the .45/70 round, which explained the big boom that he thought would have alarmed Sitting Bull's calm. I thought that was the infantry round, and Baker had some infantry, but did he have the .45 Springfield trapdoor rifles or carbines at all? I thought they were introduced two years hence during the Black Hills expedition when the 7th tried out a bunch of different weapons. But, I get confused and maybe the rifles were already in use by infantry. This was 1872, again. What I read is that the .45 came in the 1873 model, a downsize in shot diameter, so I'm very confused.
And annoyed. Again, it's the pretensions of detail, combined with very good writing, that can utterly nail down falsehoods that are ever assumed. "Best light cavalry…" sort of surety that doesn't really withstand much attention. When I read this detail and detect the whiff of the unknowable or the contested stated as fact, I get uneasy.
But, this isn't about anything except a compilation of Indian tales about how Crazy Horse got killed. It was a sad, predictable FUBAR operation that was honed and configured for greatness by Wounded Knee. There is nothing entirely new in here except more detailed quotes from participants or the nearly so.
Among the Army officers who affected the fate of Crazy Horse and others was a guy who'd paid the price for the braking power of his horse, which caused his gonads to be flattened against the pommel. Well, let's start with that. Atop that introduction to the Wonders of Real Pain, for the rest of his life - every time nature called - he had to insert a glass catheter to get a urine stream. Four times a day, I read. Just the guy to be in charge of dicey issues, what with the sparkling mood that engendered plus the undoubted compassion of fellow soldiers who'd never, you know, laugh or anything sadistic. Fortunately, there's no gossip at remote frontier forts, so no chance of the Indians getting wind of that and remarking upon it. None.
Nope. He'd be objective in administration of justice and mercy.
Crazy Horse is described as what I'd imagine a half-white, half Sioux might resemble, having near sandy hair and lighter skin and absent the high cheekbones of the Sioux. He also comes off as somewhat manic depressive and hardly the Siegfried of the Sioux. He had some good outings and some less so and although I don't recall this description in Powers' book, he was strange, and he got stranger still. I think that's in Black Elk.
At his death he was not the universally beloved warrior among his folk as some think. He strikes me as different from the other Sioux and he was from the whites; he had that quality that Lincoln was said to have of being able to see himself as part of something from a near objective viewpoint. Powers makes the case that CH was going to die asap once in white custody, probably by Florida prison or the like. If so, he lucked out much as Custer did to die as it happened. The story of his corpse is truly sad because the land changed so much in the few years after his death, his body's location was lost, for which much guilt descended upon those entrusted to move it to a safe locale.
The book is a great read, which is such a rarity among Custer books, it has to be petted for that alone.
Regarding the battle, he adheres to Gray and simplicity, matching up the five main areas to the Indian descriptions of five last stands and the counter clockwise mover from Calhoun ridge to LSH and down. Over quick.
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Post by crzhrs on Nov 26, 2010 14:00:42 GMT -6
Powers' article in the latest issue of Smithsonian is quite good . . . it deals mostly with the LBH and CH's role there.
Powers doesn't have much good to say about the military . . . they were wandering around in an area they didn't know, going after Indians they couldn't relate to . . . didn't have any good data on the exact location of the village, size, fighting mood of the warriors, etc.
The last few paragraphs deal with some of the usual Custer/Indian stuff . . . the Cheyenne put a "hex" on him if he attacked them . . . Cheyenne woman recognized him and kept him from being mutilated . . . punctured his ears with awls so he could hear in the next world, etc.
Haven't gotten the book as of yet . . . but as soon as it's available from my local library will read it.
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Post by fred on Nov 27, 2010 7:08:48 GMT -6
I read both of your reviews and I must say they are very good... objective, I believe. Have you read Philbrick? If not, why Powers and not Philbrick? I keep promising myself I will get to Philbrick-- took it out of the library once; never got past the table of contents. Maybe it is all the stuff I read about it on this and the other board. I'd rather read Kuhlman. Some how all these "new" re-hashings don't appeal to me.
Your points about the immediacy the relation of events is very valid, as is the transfer of tales through intermediaries and the like. While I wholeheartedly agree with you about specific "times" and "800," I am less inclined to doubt when I read things like the sun in the middle of the sky, or the time it takes for the sun to travel the width of a lodge pole. Of course, putting those descriptions in the proper context is a whole 'nother issue.
The "Gray thing" is always a problem for me-- we've bashed that out before, haven't we?-- and I sometimes wonder what happens to all this stuff-- if anything-- when someone decides to refute Gray's work on timing.
I do like your emphasis on the "most," "best," things, but that type of crap seems to permeate American thinking: the 100 "Best" books; the 100 "Best" movies; the "most" beautiful woman in Hollywood. I think I would much prefer to study Stalingrad, Kursk, Vyazma, May 10, 1940, or Tet as the "most" or "best" fields than I would the LBH. Still, the mystery of those final 60 minutes is all pervasive to me.
You have made some really good points; we should learn from those.
Best wishes, Fred.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Nov 27, 2010 10:55:23 GMT -6
Understand the book is NOT about the LBH per se or even much at all beyond showing how it established CH's reputation with the whites and Army. It's about the issues and people that led to the murder of Crazy Horse, with Jesse Lee, Philo Clark, Crook, and Kennington getting attention along with Calhoun and others in charge and at the scene.
That's one reason I wanted to read it, as opposed to Philbrick whom I have not read, and do not plan to. As such, he makes no pretense of solving the fight and gives a general overview with stuff we've read before. For his point, the details don't matter much and, in any case, cannot now be known. I have many of the same beefs with quotes and degrees from source and improbable and late arriving detail, but that's the nature of the beast. It isn't his goal.
Not having read Bray, I don't know if this is repetitious about Garnett, but my impression is that it is not.
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Post by fred on Nov 27, 2010 11:19:36 GMT -6
I understand that about the Powers book and I have become considerably more choosey in what I spend my farthings on nowadays.
I have the Bray book, but as I believe I've said, have not read it... at least not yet. I have, because of the work I am doing, perused his section on the LBH. Your point is extremely well taken and Bray, unfortunately, falls into the trap: he treats events so matter-of-factly, as though he were there or got it first-hand from one of the participants. Let's roll the videotape!
I am sure you have seen some of the spat on the other board between ConZ and me regarding Crazy Horse's crossing of the LBH. I put very little stock in that and to me logic rules rather than some ridiculous theory of what could have happened. Bray-- in his matter-of-fact writing-- quotes one of the warriors who apparently rode with Crazy Horse, claiming they crossed the river, rode up the bluffs, and then proceeds in his narrative to include a couple of others who were supposedly with them. Well, that's all fine and dandy, except for two things... maybe three.
Enough Indians-- 12 or older!-- who were there said Crazy Horse arrived at the Reno fighting very late, maybe too late to have made much of a difference. The second "thing," is logic... would he? would you? cross when there was so much yet to slaughter on the west side and new troops were reported arriving (Benteen). And three, how come no one else said anything about Crazy Horse crossing. To me, it doesn't compute and Bray's mere acceptance-- with no question-- is tantamount to dictating to his reader what may have transpired. Personally, I reject that brand of history. I would rather rely on logic-- as you seem to want to do-- than a story related many years later, translated by Harry the White Guy.
I am also a huge believer-- and I have to blame you for this-- in the business about "closer to the event" than "many years afterwards." I must admit, it made my conscience considerably more clear when I now unilaterally reject claims made 40 or 50 years later that contradict RCOI testimony, testimony to me that is still the most valuable and most valid; viz, Martini, Godfrey, and even bosom buddy Benteen.
Anyway, you have provided me with several good lessons here, and I will admit quite freely that I appreciate it. You will have helped me in what I am doing.
Best wishes, Fred.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Nov 27, 2010 11:53:49 GMT -6
What I recall in Powers is that CH was swimming at the attack, and he took his sweet time getting organized to the annoyance of his guys, and when he hit the Reno area the Feds were 'charging' out and his fighting was along the banks and in the river. There was a quote about the noise the cavalry horses made jumping or being pushed into the river from an uncomfortable height, which stays with me. Big, thunderous splash. So, he seems to support a late arrival.
I suspect the contention CH rode up the bluffs with Reno is a bit of a conflation with something else, probably downriver when he may have zooted up Deep Coulee (not Ravine...) for his attack on Keogh etc. No clue, but it's hard to see him running all the way north on the flats and then up, but maybe. Philo Clark's 1877 map sort of set the stage for future maps with those handy arrows suggesting a sweep up by the casino, it looks like.
Like to point out again that the various tales of the years with Deep Ravine/Coulee provide numerous potential for confusion, along with MTC, originally Reno Creek. It requires no conspiracy or anything to see how a reference to, say, Deep Coulee after it was named could be recalled later erroneously as Deep Ravine and set down and the years pass without anyone noticing the error until our time when we suddenly go literal and have to take them at face value to honor them. Or something.
The sad thing is that the Indian accounts, which probably were as honest and accurate as could reasonably be expected, just about ALL appear to us late, and that through many sieves. The early arriving ones were in newspapers, about which enough said.
For whatever reason - and again, I've never served or remotely been in combat - it is very easy for me to see Custer reasonably starting down MTC for any of the alleged purposes, being blunted by a few shots from each side of the coulee with someone wounded who needs to get to a place of safety. A Custer if not THE Custer, but anyway....
Temp firing line put out, those units in the rear of the narrow coulee get antsy and pull out so as not to be sitting ducks, note the surge north of soldiers and Sioux and follow along the ridgeback in parallel. But the western units don't get a chance to relax, each skirmish line rolled up, and then the attacks from the east at Calhoun and a fusillade when the officers crest LSH and mounting hysteria and fear because the dust and smoke prevent an accurate grasp of the land (which can be confusing on really clear days, anyway....) as they degrade to WTF? level. And no organization and no last stand per se, just a biodegrading battalion on the move.
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Post by fred on Nov 27, 2010 14:15:26 GMT -6
The description of Crazy Horse taking his own sweet time in getting ready for battle seems to be fairly consistent with a number of other sources, so I accept that as being pretty close to the truth, as I do his late arrival. The part about the "noise the cavalry horses made" impresses me a lot and I put a great deal of stock into comments like that. I am much more impressed with the grunts and groans of battle than I am with specific verbal references or specific time references (although there are some exceptions, namely, someone like DeRudio claiming he glanced at his watch every ten minutes or so... it shows an element of fear I am familiar with and that I can understand).
As for his running up the bluffs, then back again, I agree with you. It would make little sense, yet we have further indications he rode north through the village. That would tell me he never went up those bluffs. We also have no reports from the troops that Indians were on the hilltops in any great strength, as I suspect they would be had Crazy Horse done so.
There is also a very interesting dynamic you should be aware of between Crazy Horse and a Minneconjou warrior named White Bull. Of course the story becomes enmeshed in the ruminations of old men, but White Bull-- and don't get him confused with similar names or other Anglicized versions-- seems to have joined up with Horse and his merry band while they were engaged with Reno. White Bull was one of less than two dozen Indians we can account for-- by name-- who were on the east side of the river about the time of the Reno attack or shortly after Custer passed by on his way to MTC. This is somewhat unusual because most of those who rode with Horse were Oglala (there were also a few Cheyenne) and White Bull makes no mention of meeting Crazy Horse on the east side. White Bull also credits himself with spurring Crazy Horse on to attack Keogh once they were east of that sector. A little late... still... where there's smoke....
Michno makes reference to Crazy Horse crossing at Deep Coulee (rather than Ravine), though Bray uses Ravine and I suspect that makes more sense-- strictly from a timing perspective-- because it could lead to accounts that refer to troops moving up from the so-called "basin" area to LSH. Why would they be there in the first place, right? The terminology and naming of these terrain features borders on the ludicrous, so you and I are in accord there certainly.
There is also something to be said about the third route-- near the casino, but again, the ingress into that area could very easily have been jammed with those fleeing the village, so I tend to pay that route less shrift. While I am not terribly comfortable with Deep Ravine, again, from the point of view of timing, it seems to work the best. It's pushing three years now, almost every day that I have worked on this timing issue in one form or another and unless I gerry-rig things Deep Ravine stills screams out, It's me! it's me!
I believe you are absolutely on the money with your depiction of the confusion, the hysteria, fear, smoke, and dust and I must tell you reading brought a smile to my face because I have been harping on this for years. Of course, so has Richard Fox-- and I will admit I got it from him, not from my own brainstorm. I like your take here a lot.
The "last stand," "no last stand" issue is interesting, as well, and I am a fair weather fan of the theory, never being able to pull the trigger one way or another. My latest ambivalence has me believing there was less of a stand anywhere-- except maybe amongst Keogh's NCOs-- precisely for the reasons you have listed.
We part ways, however, with either of the Custer's being shot at Ford B. I am not a believer in anyone being hit there, but if you pressed me, I would offer up Algernon Smith as a possibility, namely because of dubious Indian accounts that I would compromise over (that would be a legislative sop of little historical use), and because his body was the only E Company body found atop LSH. It also makes eminent sense to me that Custer would have used Smith's company as a screen when he was down in that area. Of all the officers with him, Yates was his closest confidante-- along with Tom-- and I don't see them parting for anything as mundane as a screening element.
I also agree with you regarding the Indian accounts. I use them primarily for "color" and discount almost entirely their bravado fables. Sort of like reading Peter Thompson. Nice to quote; impossible to believe. Quite frankly, I rely a lot on Wooden Leg-- there is a lot less rodomontade bluster, though I am equally wary of guys who claim to have been everywhere. What is refreshing about him, however, is that he was more of a reporter than a participant, so the horn was kept in its travel bag... unlike White Cow Bull or even White Bull.
We may also part ways on the action itself. I am still a believer that things unfolded very slowly... over a period of some 35 minutes-- from the first arrivals on Calhoun Hill to the onslaught of C Company in Calhoun Coulee. From that point on, things began to happen, first in that counter-clockwise direction, but then clockwise as the Custer/Yates actions became simultaneous with Keogh's. I believe that is the difficulty most people have in picturing the entire event.
Anyway, your final description here is first-rate in my opinion. It may not be what most want to hear or believe, but I find no fault with it at all.
Best wishes, Fred.
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