Crazy Horse

When I think back of the stories that I have heard about how the

Native American Indians were driven from their land and forced to live on

the reservations one particular event comes to my mind. That event is the

Battle of the Little Big Horn. It is one of the few times that the Oglala

Sioux made history with them being the ones who left the battlefield as

winners. When stories are told, or when the media dares to tamper with

history, it is usually the American Indians who are looked upon as the bad

guys. They are portrayed as savages who spent their time raiding wagon

trains and scalping the white settlers just for fun. The media has lead us

to believe that the American government was forced to take the land from

these savage Indians. We should put the blame where it belongs, on the U.S.

Government who lied, cheated, and stole from the Oglala forcing Crazy Horse,

the great war chief, and many other leaders to surrender their nation in

order to save the lives of their people.

In the nineteenth century the most dominant nation in the western

plains was the Sioux Nation. This nation was divided into seven tribes:

Oglala's, Brule', Minneconjou, Hunkpapa, No Bow, Two Kettle, and the

Blackfoot. Of these tribes they had different band. The Hunkpatila was one

band of the Oglala's (Guttmacher 12). One of the greatest war chiefs of all

times came from this band. His name was Crazy Horse.

Crazy Horse was not given this name, on his birth date in the fall of

1841. He was born of his father, Crazy Horse an Oglala holy man, and his

mother a sister of a Brule' warrior, Spotted Tail. As the boy grew older

his hair was wavy so his people gave him the nickname of Curly (Guttmacher

23). He was to go by Curly until the summer of 1858, after a battle with

the Arapaho's. Curly's brave charged against the Arapaho's led his father

to give Curly the name Crazy Horse. This was the name of his father and of

many fathers before him (Guttmacher 47).

In the 1850's, the country where the Sioux Nation lived, was being

invaded by the white settlers. This was upsetting for many of the tribes.

They did not understand the ways of the whites. When the whites tore into

the land with plows and hunted the sacred buffalo just for the hides this