biography
| name: |
Crazy Horse
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Sioux name Tashunka Witco
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (c.1842–77)
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| biography:
| Oglala Sioux chief, born near the Black Hills, present-day South Dakota, USA. His mother was a sister of Brulé Chief Spotted Tail and his father was an Oglala medicine man who often spoke of the need for a leader to unite the Sioux and drive out the whites. As a youth, Crazy Horse was solitary and meditative (the Sioux called him ‘Strange One’) but also an accomplished hunter and fighter. He fought in all the major Sioux actions to protect the Black Hills against white intrusion, believing himself immune from battle injury. In 1865 he was selected as a ‘shirt wearer’ or protector of the people, in recognition of his valour and achievement, and he took part in the main battles of Red Cloud's war (1865–8). In 1876 he was named supreme war and peace chief of the Oglalas, uniting in struggle most of the Sioux still free. That year he led the Sioux and Cheyenne to victory at the Battle of Rosebud (Jan) and in defeating Custer's forces at Little Bighorn (Jul). Pursued by US forces and with his band of some 1000 facing starvation, he surrendered (May 1877). White fear and Indian jealousy led to intrigue against him and finally to his death at the hands of a US soldier, allegedly while resisting being forced into a jail cell. He is regarded as a symbol of the heroic resistance of the Sioux and as their greatest leader, and a gigantic figure of Crazy Horse has been sculpted by Korczak Ziolkowski out of a mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota. |
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