Service, 1975; Hindman, William B. The Great Mead-
ows Campaign and the Climactic Battle of Fort Ne-
cessity.Leesburg, VA: Potomac Press, 1967; Leduc,
Gilbert F. Washington and the “Murder of Ju-
monville.”Boston: La Société Historique Franco-
Americaine, 1943; O’Meara, Walter. Guns at the Forks.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1965; Peyser,
Joseph. Ambush and Revenge: George Washington’sAdversaries in 1754.Dunbar, PA: Stefano’s Printing,
1999; Stewart, David M. Les Compagnies franches de
la marine: Canada’s First Permanent Military
Corps.Point Claire, Quebec: Lake St. Louis Historical
Society, 1967; Stotz, Charles M.Outposts of the War
for Empire: The French and English in Western
Pennsylvania: Their Armies, Their Forts, Their Peo-
ple.Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985.CRAZYHORSE
Crazy Horse
(ca. 1840–September 7, 1877)
Sioux War Chief
A
fearless warrior, Crazy Horse was an
implacable foe of white encroachment
and the reservation system. His annihi-
lation of American forces at Little Bighorn in
1876 established him as the most able Native
American tactician.
Crazy Horse (Tashunka Uitko) was born
near Rapid Creek, South Dakota, around
1840, a member of the Oglala Sioux nation. As
a young man he accompanied horse-stealing
raids against the Crows and other neighbor-
ing tribes and became renowned for fearless-
ness and guile. His quiet nature, refusal to
take scalps, and penchant for mystical visions
made him unique among his people, and they
appointed him war chief around 1858. Appar-
ently, Crazy Horse’s first contact with army
troops came as a result of punitive raids by
Gen. William S. Harney against Sioux villages
in 1855; he thereafter displayed a hostile, un-
compromising attitude toward whites. Crazy
Horse subsequently distinguished himself in
Red Cloud’s war against settlers along the
Powder River road in the late 1860s and en-
joyed great success using feinting and decoy
tactics. On December 21, 1866, he lured a de-
tachment of 80 soldiers under Capt. William J.
Fetterman up a ravine and wiped them out.
He also fought well at the Wagon Box Fight of
August 2, 1867, and refused to abide by the
Fort Laramie Treaty, which was signed in- Rather than settle on a reservation,
Crazy Horse led his tribe west onto traditional
ranges, where they hunted buffalo, raided
Crow villages, and attacked prospectors look-
ing for gold. In 1873, Crazy Horse skirmished
at Yellowstone River with a party of cavalry
led by a future nemesis, Gen. George A.
Custer, before riding north to join a group of
Sioux and Cheyenne under Sitting Bull.
In 1875, gold was discovered in the Black
Hills of South Dakota, a region the Sioux re-
garded as sacred. The government offered to
buy the land, but when tribal leaders refused,
it threatened to shoot any Indian not on a
reservation by January 1876. This threat
pushed the Indians into open defiance and im-
parted a sense of unity and cohesion lacking
in prior encounters; by springtime they mus-
tered several thousand warriors. On March
17, 1876, an army column under Gen. George
Crook mistakenly attacked what he thought
was Crazy Horse’s village. Instead, it turned
out to be a Cheyenne encampment, and the
survivors threw themselves into the swelling
ranks of other tribesmen. The extent of Indian
resolve became apparent on June 17, 1876,
when Crook’s 1,300 men attacked Crazy
Horse’s 1,500 warriors at Rosebud River. The
whites sustained heavy losses and, by being