Re-Burial of Crazy Horse

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Remember our discussion last year about the Blackpipe “Museum” in Martin, SD? (It turned out to actually be a bank, with an extensive collection of artifacts.) Well, today I stumbled across a book of reminiscences by the banker who developed the collection. Unfortunately, he doesn’t really talk about the artifacts (though there are a number of photos of the collection – quite an extensive looking display!), but I found one of his little vignettes quite interesting:

The Crazy Horse Project*

Summer of 1967. Another pleasant visit today with our friend, Fr. Joseph Karol, who has been working diligently over the years among the Native Americans through his position with the Holy Rosary Mission near Pine Ridge and the St. Francis Mission on the Rosebud Reservation.

Fr. Karol has managed to become a trusted and close friend of many of the tribal elders and leaders on those two reservations. He had a particularly close relationship with Mr. Morrison, an elderly fellow, living at this time on the Rosebud.

Fr. Karol explained that Mr. Morrison was the last known custodian of the burial site of Crazy Horse. Fr. Karol explained how this tradition was described to him. When a famous leader is first buried, it is usually by family members. The site is kept secret out of respect for the deceased and to avoid vandalism of the site. In the following years a respected friend of the family is entrusted with this information with instructions that upon some later date, that person is expected to remove the remains of the deceased and secretly re-bury them at another secret site, known only to themselves. When they become older and feel the time is right, they are to pass along this tradition, each new custodian being charged with the same re-burial and secret activities.

Well, Fr. Karol explained that he wanted to vouch for Mr. Morrison, so that they could acquire some operating funds to dig the last known burial site of crazy Horse on land belonging to Morrison, being the last known custodian of this trust. Due to Mr. Morrison’s advancing age, and at the urging of Fr. Karol that it was now time to make this information public and to build a memorial to this great leader on that site or near there, they had secured cooperation with others and were ready to proceed with this dig. Mr. Morrison was the third-in-line custodian and had agreed with Fr. Karol that there was no longer any threat to the remains and that it was now an opportune time to try for some sort of shrine to memorialize the site.

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At any rate, in the fall of 1967 this group of people went about the exhumation and returned to the Blackpipe with a box of remains that they had removed right where Mr. Morrison said he had buried them many years before. They asked for and I made available one of our largest commercial-sized deposit boxes where once more, Crazy Horse was re-buried for awhile, pending their efforts to put the details together for the memorial.

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In frustration with the lack of progress and because of Mr. Morrison’s declining health, Fr. Karol and Mr. Morrison returned to the Blackpipe and removed the contents of their deposit box. Fr. Karol corresponded with me about the project throughout 1971. It seems all their efforts to establish this memorial site on that piece of land went for naught. I assume their efforts to write a book on the subject also went astray since my promised copy never arrived. Mr. Morrison passed away and I have lost contact with my dear old friend, Fr. Karol.

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*Hodson, Bruce. West of a River, 1997.