The Earth Is All That Lasts: Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and the Last Stand of the Great Sioux Nation, Gardner - B+

             When Sitting Bull was born in 1831, the Lakota* Sioux were already trading with the white man, exchanging buffalo hides for weapons and other goods. His father and his father's younger brother were the most important influences for him growing up in the Bad Bow band of the Hunkpapa Lakotas. "Bravery, generosity, endurance and wisdom" were the most critical virtues taught to the young men of the tribe. He excelled with the bow and arrow, and horseback riding, and engaged in his first fight as a teenager. A little to the west and a decade younger, Crazy Horse was being raised as an Oglala Lakota. Like all boys in the tribe, he learned how to ride and fight. He captured his first scalps at sixteen.

          "By this time, the various Lakota tribes were the lords of the northern plains..." They imposed their will from the Yellowstone River in the north to the North Platte in the south, "with the sacred Black Hills the beating heart at the center of their domain." The Lakota had traded with French trappers for goods and weapons, but tensions mounted in the 1840's when Americans began their wagon trains to the west coast. In the two decades before the Civil War, the Plains Indians continued to fight amongst themselves and increasingly, in tit-for-tat raids, with settlers and soldiers. The early 1860's saw the discovery of gold in Colorado, and soon thereafter in Montana. Conflict quickly followed. In 1864, twenty-four hundred Bluecoats decimated a campsite with over a thousand Lakota and Cheyenne tipis at Killdeer Mountain, and Sitting Bull saw for the first time the incredibly effective artillery of the US Army.  

        A major blow was struck against the US Army in December 1866 by Red Cloud and Crazy Horse. They set, and sprung, a trap on the work party constructing Ft.  Kearny. Eighty-one soldiers died in the fight. The following year, the army withdrew from three forts in the Wyoming and  Montana territories and left the Indians in peace, under the terms of a treaty signed at Ft. Laramie. Neither Sitting Bull, now recognized as the leader of the Sioux nation, nor Crazy Horse 'touched the pen' of the treaty, under which the Sioux purportedly agreed to live on a reservation. In the early years of the next decade, planning for the Northern Pacific R.R. began threatening the Sioux heartland. Over the course of constant skirmishing over the railroad, the Sioux had their first contact with Long Hair, George Custer, in 1873.

         The ongoing resistance to the incursion of the whites was led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, who were able to gather approximately 2,000 warriors, mostly Sioux, but also Cheyenne and Arapaho, to their side.  "The warriors who followed the two leaders and their fellow anti-treaty chiefs were arguably the best horseback fighters in the world." In the summer of 1874, Long Hair led an expedition to map the Black Hills. Soon the news flashed around the country that there was gold in them thar hills. The miners came and the army followed. The United States had decided that it was time for all Indians to be sent to reservations. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse needed to be corralled. In June of 1876, the Indians coalesced around the Little Big Horn, while the Long Knives made a number of forays nearby. Custer had about 600 men in the 7th Cavalry on June 25th. He saw a large Indian encampment about a dozen miles away and divided his forces in three. A Crow scout begged him to not split his forces, and when Custer dismissed him, the scout prepared to die. Custer advanced towards the tipis in the distance with 200 men. He soon found himself surrounded and his entire command was killed. When the Indians sang of the day, the name Crazy Horse was the most honored.

       The US response was to expropriate the Black Hills, and make an enhanced effort to either exterminate the Indians or settle them on a reservation without weapons or horses. The army pushed and attacked the Indians throughout the winter, causing many to surrender. Winters were always hard on the Plains, but more and more difficult every year with fewer buffalo to hunt. Tired of the endless fighting, Sitting Bull took his people to Canada. Crazy Horse declined the invitation to go north, but was fighting on with fewer and fewer warriors. On May 6, 1877, Crazy Horse surrendered at the Red Cloud Agency in Nebraska. Over the summer, he said little and slowly unnerved the army and those who had already surrendered. The army was afraid he would leave and the Indians feared he would make trouble. Told he was going to a meeting with a general, Crazy Horse fought back when he realized he was being led to a jail, and was bayonetted by a Bluecoat. He died on Sept. 5th.

      On July 19, 1881, the residents of Ft. Buford in the Dakota Territory witnessed the surrender of Sitting Bull and the remains of the Hunkpapa. They were transferred to the  Standing Rock Reservation and joined thousands of other Lakotas. He was the best-known Indian in the world, someone everyone wanted to see, and was soon part of Buffalo Bill Cody's show. The antipathy of Agent McLaughlin in charge of Standing Rock limited Sitting Bull's travels, and he endlessly complained to Washington about the chief. In late 1889, the Lakota were told by a wise man that if they performed the Ghost Dance the world would return to the past when they were free. Sitting Bull supported his people and McLaughlin did not. The Ghost Dancing terrified the whites at the reservation and as far away as Chicago. Newspapers were touting the dancing as a precursor to rebellion. HQ decided that the chief needed to be arrested and deported to a prison in Florida. On the morning of Dec. 15, 1890, Indian police awoke the chief in his lodge at Standing Rock. One of Sitting Bull's followers shot a policeman and in the ensuing melee, the chief was shot dead.

    "It shouldn't be forgotten that the immigrant people, Euro-Americans, who displaced the Plains Indians always held themselves up as 'civilized', as vastly superior to the Lakota and other native tribes. And yet there was nothing civilized about the way the US government, its Indian agents, and its citizens lied to and stole from the Lakotas. There was nothing civilized in the way the US Army attacked Indian villages, killing and maiming women and children. There was nothing civilized in the deaths of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull."

    In 1980, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Black Hills were wrongfully taken from the Lakotas. They were awarded $100M which they refused. Today, the award plus interest is $2B. By refusing the money, they feel that they are honoring their ancestors. This is an excellent and powerful book. No matter how many times we read this sad history, it still shocks and embarrasses us. 

*The Lakota Sioux were the western branch of the tribe. They had moved from their Minnesota homeland in the early 19th century.