Introduction to a Hero Story The winter of 1866?67 was bitterly cold and snows were deep along the foothills of the Shining (Big Horn) Mountains in the region the Lakota called the Powder River country, in what is now north-central Wyoming. Buffalo were scarce and hunters had great difficulty finding elk and deer. Crazy Horse, then in his mid-twenties, and his younger brother Little Hawk did their share of hunting, risking their lives in the frigid temperatures as they searched for whatever game they could find. One day a sudden blizzard forced them to seek shelter, but in the midst of it they happened to see several elk that were also hiding out of the wind. After the storm abated somewhat the two hunters brought down several elk with their bows and arrows, not easy to do in extreme subzero weather. They transported the meat home and saved their relatives and friends from starvation. Only weeks before, on another unbelievably cold winter day, Crazy Horse had led nine other fighting men in luring eighty soldiers into an ambush by several hundred Lakota and Cheyenne warriors and into a battle known in the annals of Western history as the Fetterman Battle or Fetterman Massacre. It was a hard-fought battle and a decisive victory for the Lakota and their Cheyenne allies.

During the decoy action Crazy Horse stopped well within enemy rifle range and calmly scraped ice from his horse's hooves just to infuriate the pursuing soldiers.He didn't know, and wouldn't have cared if he did, that he was laying the foundation for the myths and legends that surround his legacy. Say the name Crazy Horse and immediately events such as the Fetterman Battle, the Battle of the Rosebud, and, of course, the Battle of the Little Bighorn come to mind for those who have some inkling of Western American history. They think in terms of the legendaryCrazy Horse. Crazy Horse was the Lakota battlefield leader who, in the span of eight days, got the best of two of the United States Army's field commanders: Brigadier General George Crook and Lieutenant General George Custer. His exploits off the battlefield are less well known, however. Deeds such as finding meat in the middle of a blizzard endeared him to those who knew him as an ordinary man. He became a hero to them long before he became a legend in other peoples? minds after Little Bighorn and the defeat of the Seventh United States Cavalry.

Crazy Horse has been my hero since I was a boy. He was arguably the best-known Lakota leader in the latter half of the nineteenth century, a turbulent time on the northern Plains. His name floats in the consciousness of most Americans, along with the names of indigenous leaders and heroes from other tribes, such as Geronimo of the Chiracahua Apache, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, Washakie of the Eastern Shoshoni, and Quannah Parker of the Comanche, to name a few. He is certainly no less known than Sitting Bull, the Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and political leader who was his friend and ally, or Red Cloud, his fellow Oglala, who was not among his friends. At first I knew Crazy Horse only as a fighting man, the warrior. I didn't know or care what he felt, what he thought; I cared only that he was Lakota and that he was brave and performed deeds that fired my imagination. But as time went on there were more stories. I now know Crazy Horse as a man first and a legend second, a very distant second.

In fact, he is much like my father and my uncles and all my grandfathers. He walks straight, he is polite, and he speaks softly. But there is also an aura of mystery about him, as though sometimes I am seeing him in a mist that blends legend and reality. It's that aura that seems to appeal most to people and I'm convinced that many want to connect with the mystery more than they want to identify with the man. I can consciously remember hearing his name for the first time the summer I was six years old. My grandfa.