Wolf Mountain Moon: The Battle of the Butte, 1877

man. So ashamed that he had packed up his family and abandoned the White River Agency. Late last summer in the north country he joined the wanderings of the Crazy Horse village.

It hadn’t taken long for many of the chiefs in Crazy Horse’s camp to see that the soldiers were not going to rest for the winter. In a short time Packs the Drum became the leader of those who believed that the Oglalla should surrender to avoid the fighting that invariably killed so many women and so many of their children.

As more and more of the chiefs began to listen to the persuasive arguments of those who suggested making peace with the wasicu, Crazy Horse spent more and more of his time away from the camps—preferring to be alone, sleeping in wickiups he constructed himself, or in caves and bear dens he found in the surrounding hills.

At that moment Crazy Horse sat on the hillside looking down on the huge village, the thick fur of the buffalo robe brushing his cheek, tickling his flesh in the wind. How could he blame them? Crazy Horse thought. The Bear Coat was doing all that he could to drive a wedge between the Titunwan Lakota peoples. It wasn’t only just Packs the Drum, but men like Pretty Bear and Tall Bull, Yellow Eagle, Two Elk, and Poor Bear too—yes: Sans Arc, Miniconjou, and even Four Horns’s Hunkpapa—they all had talked with the soldier chief and believed he would give them a good peace.

As inconceivable as it sounded, the Bear Coat had promised the chiefs that he would establish an agency for them at the forks of the Cheyenne River, east of the sacred He Sapa. The soldier chief even vowed they would have a soldier for their agent and that he would understand their needs. The Lakota would soon see that the Bear Coat could be trusted to treat them generously.

Were there no warriors left who would stand steadfastly beside him? Crazy Horse brooded. How long must he go. on bullying his own people so they would not slip away to the agencies?

It had come to that. So many in this great camp feared the soldiers would come without fail that winter, so many suffered from lack of meat and the brutal cold, that the Bear Coat’s words actually began to make sense to the Lakota heart.

Filled with anger, Crazy Horse had ordered his akicita^* to soldier the villages, throwing a wide cordon around them, allowing no family to escape back to the wasicu’s reservations.

It was but another reason he spent so much time away from the camp. Only a man with a heart of stone could remain untouched when he looked at the ribs of the women, when he stared into the hollow eyes of the children, when he saw how the once-proud warriors cast their gaze on the ground like sick horses about to die.

Crazy Horse had allowed the first few to go. They took down their lodges late at night while the rest of the village slept, slinking away in silence with their meager belongings, often lashing their possessions to travois left some distance from camp so others would not know until long after they had gone. Those first like those who would leave now if they could: all of them frightened of this terrible winter as much as they were of every soldier scare. So scared, they chose to flee to the little deserts the white man had made of the reservations, where the mighty Lakota would be forced to eat the moldy flour and the rancid pig meat, because they no longer had a choice. How heavy it made his heart to know that if his people went in to the agency, they had to surrender their ponies and their weapons.

They might as well turn over their whole way of life. Without ponies and weapons—no more would they be Titunwan Lakota.

Just what had happened to Red Cloud and Red Leaf at the White River Agency?

Hoyay! What was a man without his weapons, without his pony? Was he still a man?

Last autumn when Three Stars asked who among Red Cloud’s warriors would go with the soldiers in search of the hostile bands—Crazy Horse’s old nemesis, No Water, was the first to volunteer. Crook gave the traitor a rifle, pistol, and a pony to use when they came looking for Crazy Horse. No Water, the turncoat—the very same husband from whom Crazy Horse had kidnapped Black Buffalo Woman winters gone before.

It had come to this: Lakota against Lakota!

Only the wasicu would drive a wedge between the hearts of the People.

Back and forth Crazy Horse felt himself begin to waver again like the willow blown by a strong autumn wind that strips it of all leaves. Day by day he grew more frustrated and angry; then in a rage he finally sent his police after those who had already abandoned his village. Once and for all he decided that if he did not stop the escapees, more and more and all the more would leave.

Soon none would be left with him.

“Break their lodgepoles!” he ordered his akicita. “Cut up their lodges so they are useless to anyone! Break the bows of those men who refuse to turn back with their families! Kill their ponies if you have to, and bring in the meat to feed our people!”

But just when Crazy Horse was beginning to wonder if he himself had the strength to hold the Hunkpatila and others to him by force, if he himself had the heart to inflict such pain on his people for their own good … he saw how the sour ball of anger swelled in their bellies once more when they watched the crippled Shahiyela stumbling through the snow, making bloody prints in the snow, most clad in little more than the green frozen hides they had peeled from the carcasses of ponies sacrificed so that the little babes could be placed inside the temporary warmth, so that old ones could stuff their hands and feet into the steaming gut-piles.

Just to cast their eyes on the pitiful Shahiyela made the bile rise again in the throats of Lakota warriors. Again the Titunwan talked of making war on the soldiers so evil they would drive helpless women and children into the winter.

“But where will we find the ammunition and more rifles we need to fight the wasicu?” asked Two Elk.

“After hunting to feed our families and fighting the soldiers all summer and into the autumn,” explained Red Horse, one of the Miniconjou who had been advocating making peace with the white man, “we do not have enough bullets and weapons to make war for the winter.”

Each time the chiefs and headmen talked, Crazy Horse could see the anxious fear on all the faces. It was written there as plain as was the fear in the eyes of a new-foaled mare when she scented a nearby mountain lion. His people were wavering. But how could he blame them? He himself was beginning to have his own doubts.

“Perhaps we can steal what bullets and rifles we need from the log villages in our sacred hills,”^* Poor Bear suggested.

“How can we decide to do that?” Yellow Eagle scoffed. “Our ponies are poor, and most will not be ready to ride into battle until the tender grass of spring has shown its head on the prairies.”

Working hard to maintain his composure, Crazy Horse said, “Doesn’t a warrior fight on—even when the pony beneath him has been killed?”

“Crazy Horse! You were my enemy in battle,” declared the stocky shaman who now carried the name Pehinhanska, Lakota for “Long Hair.” Last autumn, after the roaming bands learned who it was they had defeated at the Greasy Grass, this war chief had begun using the name—stating that the warrior spirit of the dead soldier chief talked through him daily. “But now I am your brother in death.”

All eyes turned to Long Hair. Patiently, Crazy Horse said, “What do you have to say to me this day, Long Hair?”

In that hushed lodge the stocky warrior half closed his eyes and spoke his words in an unfamiliar, high, and reedy voice. “You must not give up. Fight until you die. You are a warrior, Crazy Horse. As I was a warrior in life. A warrior must die as a warrior. Make your people understand there is no life at the agencies. Fight on, Crazy Horse!”

In the growing clamor and hubbub Roman Nose whirled on Crazy Horse. “Fight on? What if we have no bullets to put in our guns?”

“I will make bullets for you!” Long Hair shouted the others down.

“Make bullets for us?” Crazy Horse demanded.

“Yes. Each morning you will find that my two hands are filled with bullets for our guns. Wakan Tanka will provide, if you do not lose heart!”

How he desperately wanted to believe.

So the next morning at the middle of camp Crazy Horse waited with hundreds of others for Long Hair.