Welcome to You Ask Andy

Joey Huggenberger, age 7, of Homer, Neb., for his question:

WHO WAS CRAZY HORSE?

A most colorful period of American history was written with the westward movement of civilization. From the Great Plains to the Rockies and then on toward the Pacific, wagon trains moved the white man into new territory. And one after another of the Plains Indian tribes gathered to defend their lands.

Indians from the Great Plains were fast riding horsemen and excellent buffalo hunters. Members of the various tribes looked alike. They were all tall. They covered their naked bodies and faces with war paint and wore war bonnets of eagle feathers. They would charge screaming shrill war cries. It was actually the last cry of defiance of a most courageous people.

Red Cloud called all the great chiefs of the Dakota or Sioux tribes together  Sitting Bull, Rain in the Face, Man Afraid of His Horses and Crazy Horse. White men were ruthlessly killing the herds of buffalo and something had to be done.

The Army had started to build a series of forts along one of the wagon train routes called the Bozeman trail. The Sioux decided to take to the warpath with Red Cloud doing everything possible to stop the fort construction. In December, 1866, the Indians killed Capt. William Fetterman and 80 men near Fort Phil Kearny. The next summer Fort Smith was attacked.

In 1875 gold was discovered in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The treaty of Fort raramie had given the Black Hills to the Sioux, but in spite of the treaty prospectors invaded the land and the Northern Pacific Railway laid tracks across the Indian hunting grounds.

The call came again for war. The Sioux Indians made a desperate attempt to keep back the white men. Crazy Horse led the Indians to a victory at the Battle of the Rosebud in 1876.

Crazy Horse then joined forces with Sitting Bull at the Little Bighorn River. A band of Sioux trapped Gen. George A. Custer and more than 200 of his men from the Seventh Cavalry. Outnumbered, Gen. Custer and his men were all killed in the massacre that came to be known as Custer's last stand.

Crazy Horse was pursued by Col. Nelson Miles and in the spring of 1877 he surrendered. He was killed in the same year while fighting to escape from prison.

Crazy Horse and other great Indian chiefs played important parts in the history of the expansion and settling of the United States. The Sioux rebellion, an important chapter, came to an end when the Indians were brutally slain at the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890. Andy will not comment at this time on the important moral issues in the wars involving the Indians.

 

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