>> host: thank you for spending the past three hours with us and our viewers here on booktv, mr. tyrrell. we appreciate it. now, coming up next month is pauline mayor, historian on "in depth," she'll be here on the first sunday. booktv continues for the next 12 hours or so. thanks for being with us. >> now, two finalists for the 2010 national book critics' circle award. ..

>> up next fuel to prize-winning author thomas powers recounts the death of native american leader, crazy horse, who died under federal custody in 1877. the leader of the lakota, crazy horse defeated general custer at the battle of little bighorn in 1876. thomas powers discusses his book at the maine historical society in portland, maine. this is an hour and 15 minutes.

>> [audio difficulties] [audio difficulties] [audio difficulties] >> about crazy horse and about what happened to him. i have written in the past about two serious american attempts to assassinate foreign leaders. one of them was fidel castro and the other was heisenberg during the second world war. heisenberg was the rendition of the german bomb program and the united states made a serious

effort to kill him in several different ways, including by bombing him where he lived during the war. and also by sending somebody to possibly shoot him while he was getting a lecture during the war. fidel castro, i'm sure everybody vaguely recalls the various efforts under john f. kennedy to kill fidel castro. which failed. i think almost everybody now, thank goodness, i mean, carry that burden around would not be a pleasure. i can tell you working on those things delving deeper into the records down to the darkest rooms of the archives you never, you never, you never find a piece of paper where american officials are actually talking about killing somebody. it's always by implication. it's always from additional

sources, things were overheard. you never find them doing it directly. crazy horse you do. i ran across that a number of years ago. my brother, we paid a visit to the little bighorn national battlefield, and i picked up a book that contained three eyewitness accounts of the killing of crazy horse. i had never heard of any of those people or read those accounts before. and one of them, a fellow named billy garnett it was only 22 when crazy horse die. he was a half blood interpreter working for the army and for the indian department, had many years afterwards given an interview with a general, a retired general named hugh scott who was very interested in indians. scott wanted to know, well, how was crazy horse killed?

why did that happen? so garnett gave him an extensive account which was transcribed. and in it he described a meeting at fort robinson in the quarters of colonel bradley who was the commander at the post, but bradley was not present. general george crook was present. he was commander of the department of the black, and he was the man in charge of all military activities, a big chunk of the west which included nebraska or fort robinson is, and crook and a lieutenant named william philo clark, and 13 13 chiefs plan to kill crazy horse that night. summit in the room heard the conversation, and recorded it for history.

it was a startling, startling document. and when i read that, my interest was piqued and that's roughly how i got involved in doing this particular, this particular project. it always takes me a long time to decide what i'm going to do because once i do decide, then i spend a lot of time working on it. you have to live with it. i can tell you the worst nightmare of any author is the possibility that you wake up one morning and you don't care anymore. [laughter] you don't want to look at it. i've known a couple of guys that's happened to. it's a terrible thing to witness, and is a source of fear in the middle of the night for any author. so you've got to be sure you're really interested. it took me a long time to decide i was interested in this. and that moment everything that account, the plan to just kill a guy in his bed, that sort of got me paying attention.

but it's not just crazy horse that i'm interested in. and it's not just crazy horse that this book is about. it's about the larger episode that surrounded, the context that surrounded his life-and-death. and that larger episode is essentially the dispossession of the sioux by the united states government. a process that unfolded over a period of about 40 years, roughly 1850-1890. and that also is an event that fits into a larger context, as everybody knows, which is the dispossession of all the indians of america of the places where they lived at one time. and it's happened scores of

times. hundreds of times probably with different tribes, different languages, different specific circumstances. the process is kind of roughly the same. and the essence of it is why people arrive in the edge of interesting territory and they want it. the process becomes that a takeover and occupied, dispossessed the people people that are there. this is happen very frequently but nobody can absorb all those stories, and many of them are hidden because the record is thin and you can't really re-create now at thi this this e date what happened and what it was like. but in the case of the sioux between 1850-1890 the record is not then. the record is very robust. when you start getting interested in this, not only do you find that there are many

volumes of memoirs by the soldiers, principally the military people and sioux who are actively involved in that period, but also to a surprising extent you find books by indians. and the books by indians are by indians in a special way. typically somebody got to know anything, was interested in historic. began to take down information and wrote an account. there are many such books, and they've all passed through the hands of a white writer, and generally speaking we know who the white writers are and we know something about them so we have an idea that there -- their general take on what's going on. but these books, they sort of lineup and you think there's nothing there that you could really rely on, but they are surprisingly consistent, and i

don't think in the course of my work more than once or twice that i've run across an account that i thought that's fabricated, that's just completely false, that didn't happen at all. they close in on the troops. they get close to the truth. and many details of course are lost and cannot be reproduced. but many can. and in the larger context, it is this event, the killing of crazy horse. one man, it's an isolated event. when you think about it. and nevertheless if you work at it you can kind of fit into pieces. you can kind of fit into pieces. the first time i ever really tackle something that was deeply hidden was in writing about the cia.

and i quickly discovered that there are two kinds of things that might be said to be true about the cia. and one thing would be the formal secrets. and if you, for example, wanted to know the combination to the safe and the director's office on the seventh floor of the cia's world headquarters in langley virginia you could not find out. that is hidden. there are a lot of other things having to do with times and dates and places and stuff like that that you can't find out. but you can find out what they are like your if you start paying attention to the intelligence business, pretty soon you begin to get a sense for the feel of the culture of various different intelligence organizations, what they are like. you pick up the newspaper and read something and you will see an event that has taken place let's say in london. you will say, that's the

russians. it's just got every signature. that's the russians. or some guy will have a car accident indonesia and u.s.a. that's the israelis. i mean, you know their style and the way they deal with things. you know what they're going to say when they're asked if they did it. the russians, for example, sometimes when they kill somebody they don't really hide it. that's part of the point. they are trying to let people know, hey, we are serious. so you can find out what intelligence organizations are like including the american intelligence organizations how they think and operate. and it's also true i feel of the indians in the 1870s. there's a -- i don't want to underestimate the gap between us and them, the gulf, the difficulty of crossing that and really understand what they were like. but you can if you do the work,

pay attention and emerge herself in that world, you begin -- you stop talking about it as if it were something you had studied and learned in school. and you start talking and thinking about it as if it were something you had experienced. so if you did ask me, you know, what kind of a man was red cloud, who is one of the principal rivals of crazy horse, and he was the leading chief of the sioux for a very long time from 1840 until his death about 1909. i would tell you on the basis of what i know, what i feel about him, i would describe them a summary i have actually known, say, in my father's generation. i might get me wrong but that's the way it has been internalized and kind of absorbed. so you can find out what these things are like and what those people are like your it would be

the same with lots of other characters. if you were to say, why did so and so? you know, my memory banks come up with a roll about why you did that or the other but the reason i -- knowing what kind of person this might've been. so, if some of you have a reaction obtain a copy of this book, i see if you enhance your, and those people who picked it up and held at no that it is substantial, rather heavy work. 462 pages of text, another 100 pages of notes. i myself do not think it is heavy going. i think it reads like the wind. [laughter] but other people might feel no. [laughter] it takes a little getting used to. so why, why a book about crazy

horse? there are a lot of indians there. i mentioned that clout and i can mention others. there are interesting figures. and about many of them there is a lot know. little big man, he flies through the story briefly but very intensely. there's a lot known about him. but crazy horse is the one that i concentrated on. and in many ways he seems like an improbable subject for such a long study. he was not a prepossessing person physically. no one ever described crazy horse into a room by everybody falling silent. he was slender. he was a low middling height. it kind of a mournful melancholy expression on his face most of the time. the account we have of his physical appearance come from some whites who knew herm during a brief window. the summer of 1877, roughly four

months and also from indians who knew him over a longer period of time. but he had a powerful presence. he was genuine leader. it takes a long time describe exactly what to call an indian chief. but crazy horse is one of those people who was a chief and had that kind of allegiance and that folly, and it came from some of his personal attributes that you would notice initially i looking at him. a lot of indians of that era, that part of the world where gifted orators and spoke all the time. red cloud made speeches right and left, and many of them were transcribed. and they are remarkable. and remarkable eloquence and poetry in them. crazy horse never said in a thing like that.

he leaves no words behind. or very, very few. collected sayings of crazy horse, you could put on three typewritten pages probably, the ones that are really well tested to. he left no children behind. he had one daughter. she died of some kind of a fever, unidentified, but it could've been a childhood illness of this war that killed so many indians during those years. he never had another child. i heard she had a remarkable name. they are afraid of her. and she died at the age of about three. you wonder, boy, what kind of a kid was that? that was a very painful experience in crazy horse his life, as you would imagine. there's an account by a man who actually accompanied him to the burial site of his daughter, and his name was frank grouard. he was also of mixed blood but

he was part polynesian and part white, and he had lived with the lakota for quite a while under circumstances that are too complicated to explain here, but fully explained i promise in the book. and he went with crazy horse who had learned on returning from the war party that his daughter had died, to the place that she was buried on a scaffold. he went out there and crazy horse, crazy horse climbed up onto the scaffold with the body of his daughter. that's typically how they buried people. they erected a scaffold 60 or so off the ground. the idea was to keep wolves and things that they. he climbed up there for three days and just morning. indians were very open about grief, but he never had any more children. there are lots of people who claim to be descendents from crazy horse but there are no actual descendents. and there are no photographs of crazy horse.

there are indians who drew pictures of him and who knew him, and some of these pictures are great. the style of drawing called ledger art, which i love. and it's called that because the paper that was used by these indians mostly came to military post, trading post, came out of ledger books initially. they were drawn in pencil or pen and color them in with the the crayons or watercolors. there are a number of drawings of crazy horse in battle and in council type situations. but there's no photographs. all these other indians of the plains and so indians, almost every single leading picture -- leading figure has left behind not just what to but many photographs. red cloud and geronimo, sitting bull must have been photographed hundreds of times, i think hundreds of images of all of those people. but no photographs of crazy horse. and crazy horse was buried in an

unknown place. there's a whole mini literature about the burial place of crazy horse, and it's kind of fascinating. when you're out there in in game country, which it still is, the pine ridge reservation, you will meet people who will tell you stories about their crazy horse is buried. and it will come from an uncle who was told by his father that on a certain night back in 1878 when it was raining like hell, that he and his wife and their cabin saw a procession of people coming up the madison wrote, you know. and they will tell you that they were carrying the body of crazy horse to rebury it in a new place to keep it secret from the white people. it was his father who buried him, and his father who principally did not want anybody

to know where his son was buried. he did not want white people to touch his son's body. and so crazy horse is buried in an unknown place. but crazy horse did a notable thing. a really remarkably notable thing. it's to raise what it makes sense to pay attention to this particular person. the notable thing was to defeat on two occasions, closely together, they united states army, a significant detachment of the united states army of soldiers and cavalry. first on the 17th of june, 1876, at the rosebud river in south-central montana. and secondly at the little bighorn river, a little bit to the north, to the west of the rosebud, the 25th day of june,

1876. it's the second of those days that really lives in the american memory. the defeat and annihilation of george armstrong custer was a shocking event for the entire united states. the 25th june, 1876, just one week before the centennial, which was being celebrated in philadelphia at the time. and the news of custer's annihilation arrived to reach the rest of the country just not on the fourth of july. fourth or fifth of july. it was a deep, deep shock. i would say the united states has never been so stunned and stirred by a stinging defeat as that except on two other occasions. one in pearl harbor and the other on 9/11. in a case of pearl harbor in the case of 9/11, part of the shock was being attacked out of the

blue. but in the case of custer at the battle of the little bighorn, the shock was not being attacked out of the blue. the shock was that a famous civil war general and a gifted military commander was beaten so completely and so utterly by an indian chief. i mean, nobody thought that was possible. you cannot imagine how disturbed people were and how angry they were about that. that was a very, very powerful thing. and the first one, rosebud, did not involve any such massive loss of life, but it did involve running circles around a detachment of a thousand u.s. soldiers and exhausting them and driving them from out of the campaign in which they were a part, which was a notable thing to have been done. so how did crazy horse do this? there's plenty to pay attention to their, to really think about. it's so remarkable.

the short answer is that he had a gift, and he had a gift sort of like an athlete who plays with balls. and one of the things that tennis players and squash players, basketball players really have a sense of is sort of where people are going to be, where they're going to be expected and where they are not going to be expected to be. they have a gift for the field, a gift for the court and how to behave on the court. and any cavalry action moving very rapidly over a large field, that is also a gift that controls the outcome of a conflict. and crazy horse had this, this god-given ability to sort of know where the other guy was going to be. and do not what moment he would respond or be crushed by an attack. the battle of the little bighorn

is something that's been frequently argued about over the last 130 years since custer was wiped out there with 200, which as i said was a deep and shocking thing. nothing like that ever happened in the civil war. you never had a major unit just wiped out. how did crazy horse do that? i'm guessing that there will be some people in this room who have opinions about the battle of the little bighorn, i could be wrong, but so anyway. very easily may disagree with my reading of what i could occur. but what actually occurred was that custer, although intending to attack the indians, never actually did it. he never asked the got to a place where he could attack the indians. a kind of rose up and swung him and defeated him before he could ever respond in an organized way. and if you go to the little

bighorn, which i urge anyone who can come is a dramatic site. very little changed from june of 1876. you can stand on the hill where custer's body was found, where he probably died but not certainly, but his body was found there. if you just look back to the south up the little bighorn river to a hill in the distance of where his second, a second group of soldiers had broken off by custer who is making a stand, called reno hill after the major was in charge of those, if you look back. you can kind of see how the battle unfolded in its final moments. because when the bodies were discovered the day after the fire by other soldiers, they placed crosses in spots where the bodies were found. so you look back, you see where the men fell and you can see this week and you can see this sort of mad rush of them coming up along the side of this ilk

heading towards this custer hill where custer himself was killed. custer was not at the top. he probably would've liked to been at the top but he couldn't get to the top. they were just too many indians. you can see them all rushing out there. well, that backbone or ridge extends to custer hill down in the direction of reno hill for about half a mile or so. slopes down towards the little bighorn river and west, and then away from the little bighorn river east. and to put it very briefly, what crazy horse did was to take a detachment of people up around the back of what is known as customers feel, and attack them on the eastern side, they were not expecting them. custer's men were moving up this hill, moving towards this high point on custer hill. they were attacked in east. as they were strung out on that

hill, and that a certain point crazy horse led a charge through the middle of custer's force and split them into two bit and there's a lot of verbal evidence from indians and a lot of archaeological evidence from the field that suggests that at that point, organized resistance collapsed and they panic gripped both halves of these soldiers and they were defeated. it was such a simple thing to have done. happen any moment, and from that -- within a very few minutes after that attack, custer was dead, and so are all the men within. this is an amazing, remarkable thing. it makes sense to pay attention to crazy horse who did this remarkable thing. that's why crazy horse -- why the killing of crazy horse --

crazy horse is killing was the price he paid for his victory, and if you look at that event which took place about a year after the fight at little bighorn, if you look at it closely, almost everybody who played a significant role in the sioux war and the disposition of the sue over that four-year period and almost every event that was significant during that episode can be seen in clear relief in the actual killing of crazy horse. he was induced to surrender at the red cloud agency near camp robinson, now fort robinson and northwest nebraska, largely because you stood there was no point in trying to conduct an endless military campaign against a power as great as that of the united states.

he knew that was hopeless, and he did not want to surrender but he did because it was the best thing for his people. and he surrendered at the beginning of may 1877, and he was killed in september. and at first it was a very confusing summer in many ways. at first the army toyed with the idea, general crook toyed with the idea taking crazy horse the chief of all the indians, all the sioux indians in the hopes he could work this young army lieutenant young william philo clark who is a very intellectually confident man, and quite interested indians, taught himself the indian sign language, could communicate with them in a subtle nuanced way and believe that he could work those indians. he thought as well as crook at crazy horse could be induced to work with the united states in ways we wanted them to do. and he resisted that.

he was a contrary kind of a person. he had his own aims and goals which were essentially to get -- aha. crazy horse was -- the one person who really committed the general respect of all of the young indians at that agency. and he engendered a great deal of jealousy on the part of rival chiefs like red cloud and like spotted tail. and that jealousy contributed greatly to his killing. you have to ask why did the army want to kill crazy horse, and

basically it was because of their anger at him over custer in the little bighorn, and their fear. they were afraid of crazy horse because he had the ability with a relatively limited military force to cause endless trouble for the united states army. he had a great gift for running war, for a protracted war spread over time, and they were afraid he might be induced to go out again. and the rival chiefs who wanted to get rid of crazy horse began to spread rumors about him that he was planning to leave the reservation and resumed the war. so the army became very agitated that in the end, they didn't -- they did creep out in the middle of the night and killing in his bed to try to place him under arrest so they could send him to florida. where he would be placed in prison. and it sounds interesting.

actually, that was the treatment of choice for troublesome indians. we sent a lot of cheyenne's and arapaho to florida, fort marion in 1875. and after the end of the apache wars we sent geronimo there. he spent a lot of time there and they let him come back. eventually he got to oklahoma where he died. never got back to arizona but that's what they plan to do with crazy horse. and things turned out another way. and he was killed. there's one less question i would just raise and i will try to answer it, spent this long book essentially trying to answer that question. whited crazy horse let them kill him? -- why get crazy horse let him kill him? do you have a guy with a well-deserved reputation as a warrior and a combatant, and somebody quick to defend himself

and with a gift for rapid movement and rapid response. and in the last 36 hours of his life, the army made it apparent over and over again, and explicit ways, that whatever promises that they had given him in the past were gone. but crazy horse did not respond like a man in danger. and on the last day of his life he rode back to fort robinson where he was fatally wounded in the evening by a guard with a bayonet. and six times during the course of that last 36 hours, lieutenant lee who was the man in charge of taking them to fort robinson assured him that he would not be harmed. he would not be hurt. and every stage along the way it was just a ton of evidence, just

obvious evidence that this could not be true, the army was not treating them that way and he would was not going to survive the day. he was deeply apprehensive, and when you pay attention to all those, you see here's this man deeply apprehensive about what's about to happen. but he went along at every stage, and when he got to fort robinson he was handed over to the officer of the day, a lieutenant, and he took his hand and they walked hand-in-hand. the first time i read that i was so startled. hand in hand to the guardhouse where the they plan to put him in prison, contrary to all the promises they have given you. and he walked into the guardhouse, and it wasn't until he saw the bars on the window and the guardhouse door that is born warrior did what you think, surrounded by 1000 people who did not intend to let him survive the day. he tried to break free, escape.

back i was a fighter. but it was not to have been. he let them do it. he let them lead him to that point. so why did he do that? i'm going to tell you. [laughter] you have to kind of absorbed herself into it and let it merge from the facts of the story. i wouldn't want to spoil it or you. i'd like to read a brief piece of this book, if i may, to give you a sense of what sort of book it is and how i went about it. it's a passage about preparation of the indians for the rosebud fight. and that took place as a mention on the 17th of june, 1876, and indians were at first reluctant to fight, but crazy horse and sitting bull finally decided that they had to.

general crook was approaching them in a threatening way, and the young men of the tribe wanted to go out and fight them. at a certain point they just had to say all right, and so they made their preparations for war and went out to fight. it like to read the section about their preparations to give you a sense of the flavor of what i think these people were like. not since the bozeman war have assumed gone out in such numbers to attack soldiers, and they went prepared dressed in their work clothes, faces and horses been in the right way where the protected, singer their sacred sites. some indians said the warriors did not measure more than 750. some said more than a thousand. only if you had the best guns. others had one shot military changes in cartridges, i can't crazy horse called open and shoot. shyam woodlake said he brought

his six shooter, perhaps two-thirds of the indians had firearms of one kind or another but it was not the numbers or weapons alone that made the sioux stronger it was the protection that comes from the favorite of walk and talk of, the great spirit and the power acquired in dreams or visions. just before the fight of the rosebud according to the dock, crazy horse is fun, the dreams i conducted some of the most powerful dances. elaborate ceremonies power of the black tailed deer. l., and that there. all of the source of power and religion of the sioux was an instrument for understanding and partaking in the power. the sioux religion is a complex affair that defies neat description, but at its heart is a sense of the world is fluid and interconnected, controlled by an animating power that inhabits the four winds. this power is sometimes called -- that which stirs, or something that moves.

a godlike spirit or entity that shares its power with every creature in thing. these in turn can grant favor or withhold it. on the spirit level, all creatures and things speak a common language. what they say is sometimes transparent. sometimes obscure. than in whites called medicine man, the sioux called me and sharing in holy or sacred power. sacred medicine men can query or intercede with wakan tanka and can interpret the instructions received in visions or dreams thereby helping men to control the power given to them by the end of our natural world. these powers reside not only in the world of the spirit but in things themselves. the speed of the hawk for example, resides in the body of a hawk. the power of the eagle in an eagles down. the ferocity of the. and the bears to the cole.

the alex power to attract females with it you can link all resides in the horn with the ivory tooth or the dew claws are held. these physical things properly prepared share their inherent power with a man who carries them on his person, or ties them to his shield. it is the same with a representation of things, the image of a dragonfly gives a man some element or aspect of the quickness of a dragonfly. zigzag lightning streaked down the leg of a horse gives it the trampling power of thunder making it beautiful to in these. a drawing of a bear or even of its claws can convey the actual power and ferocity of the bear. crazy horse went into battle with the aid of wakan tanka prepared for him by a friend or mentor. whites called important chips, or just chips.

it was when chips it interpreted for crazy horse the meaning of his vision many years earlier. in the vision he had seen them a man emerging from a lake on a horse. this man told crazy horse that he should not tie up his horse's tail as other warriors did when he went to war, and that he should dress in a certain way, that he could not be killed by bullets, and and he could only be killed if someone held him. later, when chips prepared protective charms for crazy horse. he directed that crazy horse should wear only one feather, plucked from the center of the tale of a war eagle. chips made from a whistle to blow as he rode into battle. about the year 1862 or 1863 according to red feather, his brother-in-law, chips prepared for crazy horse the most powerful of all his protections. it was made from iraq trailed through the center which crazy horse was to wear on a thong under his left arm. another tiny stone he were

behind his left ear, such stones were known as spirit rocks. they possess magical properties given by their nature, their shape, their source or the songs sung over them. it was commonly believed by the ogallala that they were protected. with their ted crazy horse could hide in battle are the bullets were knocked away by the power that dwelt in this done. that was not all. on his body that she carried a medicine bottle our wars act. there are several descriptions of the sac itself and what it contained. some provided by those who knew him and others by a leader generation whom crazy horse had already become the mythic figure. some say that she's a bundle was wrapped in deerskin, suspended on a braided thong. bundles typically were made of the skin of a small animal like a badger, weasel or other. they might be decorated with

beads mark wilson. sacred objects would then be wrapped up tight in small of leather. many years later they said the medicine bundle given to crazy horse by horn chips contained the dry seat of the wild astor, mixed with the dried heart and brain of an eagle. a sun fire thunder report that crazy horse had on his person a little medicine bad just before each battle he would choose a small portion of this medicine and rub it on his body. chips themselves are the eagle claws were part of the bundle any further instructed crazy horse to make a zigzags greek with red earth from the top of his four head down to one side of his nose at the base, to the point of this gin. this was done with one finger. horn chips added the chief strike his horse. many of these details were included in an account by google

elk, a friend of crazy horse to call him cousin and who described what he had watched crazy horse do as she readied himself to go into battle. eagle elk said he always wore a strand of braided buckskin. at the lower end of something like medicine tied up in buckskin. he had an eagle thing was all tied on. he had with them all the time. just before the start of the battle when you're ready to go into it, he got off his point and got a little dirt and put it between the use of his horse, and then on the hips of the horse. and then he took some, got in front of the horse and threw it over towards the tail and then he got around behind the horse and through some towards his head. then he went up to the horse and brushed it off and rubbed it on. and he rubbed a little on his hand and over his own head. then he took a spotted eagle feather and put it upside down in the back of his head instead of standing up as most it. chips was the one who dragged crazy horse to do these things,

so he would not be hurt. the dirt from the molehill have the power to make his horse and visible from the front and rear the rear, anti-enemies both the chief and the web in any sane. that's crazy horse road protected by magic. the favor of gods and spirits. ministore is survived by the ways in which crazy horse uses the sacred power. it is everything he believes they kept him from harm and helped him to defeat his enemies. but he was not the only one to benefit from the favor of the spirit means. when he came onto the battlefield, his friend said everybody felt stronger. crazy horse had dreams of horses which were thunder beings as a kind of dream he enjoyed power that went beyond the ordinary calculation of weapons, numbers or clever plans. some of his friends were also thunder dreamers including taking. no, and then crazy horse called

cousin. in the summer of 1930 when the wars were long over, kicking bear told anthropologists what thunder dreamers could do. their power came from the sky bird whose beating wings were heard by men like the sound of thunder. iraq was the first of all things. it created a companion, the second of all thanks. to dream could complicate a man's life almost got imaginary requiring them to behave as a contrary pullout when he was sad, pledged his hand into boiling water, went naked when it was cold. but there was a second kind of thunder dreamers, and he's also had very great power. so great that they could control the weather. by this it was not meant only that they could provide a blue day for a ceremonial event, or make it rain during a dry season. their power was much greater and

more explicit. kicking bear described his power to whisper. surprised once in the open by an approaching storm, kicking bear said he did not hide as the sioux usually get. they were frightened by lightning and the region. lightning often killed men on horses trapped in the open. kicking very there he took a pipe and climbed the hill directly in the path of the storm as if inviting the sky beings to striking. he let his bike industry could wait and offered a prayer to the great spirit. and with the power granted him, he split the storm. by this he intended no figure of speech, kicking bear meant that the roiling clouds of black sky and flashes of lightning divided in two, passed a decide decided to down the middle by kicking bear's power. whistler reported, he says that anyone can do this if they are worthy. that is what rode south toward the rosebud on the night of

june 16, 1876. thunder dreamers, storm splitters, men who could turn a cycle as. men on horses who flu-like hearts or darted like dragonflies. they came with powers real as a whirlwind as if the whole natural world that bears and the buffalo, storm clouds and lightning, we're moving in tandem with the indians, protecting them, making them strong. the scout frank grouard had tried to explain the power of the indians, but it is doubted that crooks officers understood what he was trying to tell them. the whites all thought they were a match for any rabble of ignorant savages. [applause] >> thank you, thank you. i invite questions, if somebody here has got a permission stick, and it's been explained to us

most carefully that you need to hold it as it were a microphone and speak into it when you have a question. so if someone has one, there's a hand right there. >> i will break the ice by asking what was the origin of his name? did you come across that? >> there are many stories about the origin of crazy horse's name. the lakota, the word for horse and the word for something like crazy. but not crazy in the sense that we might normally think of it as an same don't be responsible are incapable, irrational action. it meant kind of exalted by a powerful thoughts and insights and trains, almost like being in a swoon. and the name translates as his horses crazy. so he's not really crazy horse.

his horse is crazy, but in a special magical powerful religiously significant way, it comes from his father. it had been his father's name or when he was a young man and performed a notably feet in battle, his father held a kind of a giveaway, and fed everybody that came and gave horses to the elderly, you need folk, to bring honor on his own and gave him his own name, which was crazy horse. and crazy horse carry that name until he died. and then his father took the name back. so for the last two years of his life, the father was once again known as crazy horse. yeah. >> why hasn't the monument to crazy horse been finished, carved in the mountainside? >> you would have to ask ruth.

the widow of the man who started carpet. it's a huge undertaking and have carved quite a lot. it's extremely expensive. i mean, it's a big, big thing to do. and i don't think they are in hurry. [laughter] >> i was looking through your introduction, something struck me that i've never really realized in all the readings and that is crazy horse wasn't killed. he was assassinated. and i'm wondering if you ever thought of using that word or look at it that way? >> if things played out a little differently, then i would've been happy to use that word. crook in being with the other chiefs, lieutenant clark, fully intended to arrange his assassination, his murder in the

middle of the night. but then they change their mind. it's interesting why they changed their minds. caramel brownie was the commander of the post learned about the plan to kill crazy horse and his name. and he intervene. as soon as crooked made these plans, he did what you would expect somebody to do in that kind of the case. he took off and he was immediately -- they started heading for for many which was 90 miles away, and eventually is going to get on the train in cheyenne and go out to western wyoming where he was scheduled to command an expedition against indians. so he was off the poster just no longer the senior officer, crook, whose plant was. but bradley was the senior officer and he basically said no. no know, we're not going to kill this guy. and he asked he said his life is as sweet to him as mine is to be. quite a remarkable moment.

so, they did place him under arrest. they were under orders from general sheridan from chicago who was the commander of the army of the west. they had no choice but to do that. from their point of view it seems like a rational thing to do, get him away from his dangers easily inflamed situation, but he wasn't really at that point things just went wrong, and it was really an assassination. >> in your treaties of the magic course, did you interpret him as being all indian? remember mary, the strange man of oglala. he didn't do any and think that he didn't do any sundance.

he didn't fire his rifle like he was off like a white man. mother and father were both indians. did you ever hear any talk of that? in other words, did he have a white weight in? >> there's been much speculation about that, and you know after the battle of the little bighorn, initially white people thought that sitting bull had been in charge, was the man who really won the battle which is not true. they ascribed the amazing qualities to sitting bull. it was reported at one time hit accident to west point. it was reported that sitting bull it actually been to see napoleon and he had french -- he had spoken french. it was nonsense, but the kind of thing does oftentimes. crazy horse was sometimes spoken of white our part why because it light colored hair. it was a brown as opposed to

black. and distant good explanation for why he happened to have brown hair, except he did. his surviving relatives who were numerous, the lakota say we are all related. and they take a very intense proprietary interest in exactly what he was, he was, a large group of people who say he was not oglala. they say no, he was more than that. you can get any big argument at pine ridge about that. i've never seen any evidence that actually identified any white ancestor. so if it's true it's just -- [inaudible] just different people of talk about it. >> they have talked about it but i tell you, one of the things i did notice during that period,

almost any indian who is remarkable in any way, people would say he must have white blood. [laughter] and you know, -- >> that's true but even mary, she writes in her book the strange man. and anything. another guy's wife and they got mad about that, which they didn't do a story about it, am i right? >> i would say you're an interesting territory. >> did would've crazy horse is death to get out to the sioux nation? if it did, what was the reaction of the sioux nation to his death? >> his stabbing took place in the middle of a very large and unruly crowd filled with people who were shouting and pushing,

and very few people actually saw with any clarity what happened. and the lights immediately began spreading the word that crazy horse had not been stabbed by the guard, although plenty people ask he saw that, but that it somehow, he stabbed himself with his own knife in the course of a struggle while he was trying to break free and to get away. as i mentioned earlier, there's about a thousand people roughly or maybe even more is seen at that fatal moment. the indians were probably about evenly divided between supporters of crazy horse who wanted to protect him, and supporters of spotted tail and red clad who wanted to make sure he did not survive the day. so they reacted very differently. there was no immediate clear sense that the chief had been murdered. that was a little bit slow to emerge over a period of time.

and the red cloud indians who had not taken part of the battle of the little bighorn and bin laden on a reservation for a long time went out of their way to make these with the crazy horse people come and particularly his relatives in the traditional way by giving them blankets and by giving them horses and sending chiefs all around canceling the avoidance of a larger conflict. at the moment when he was stabbed, there were a number of people who are ready to start shooting. they didn't because if they had there probably would've been a big killing. it took an amazing forbearance to not allow that to occur. and at that moment, one or two exceptions, all as everybody in that crowd try to prevent further bloodshed. >> get this guy moving. >> get your perspective, crazy

horse was a great warrior, a great leader, but in hindsight when you look at sitting bull, crazy horse and red cloud, red cloud had recognized in 1868 when he signed the fort laramie treaty that he couldn't win, he couldn't beat the army. the other two went on and fought for nine years with thousands of their own people being killed. he was impetuous but was a really red cloud the wiser of the chiefs? >> that's a reasonable question, and i would say you're missing some parts of history here that are important. under the treaty of 1868, all sioux indians were allowed to inhabit any part of the great sioux reservation which included all of south dakota from the