Crazy Horse By Larry McMurtry Viking. 148 pp. $19.95 Reviewed by Greg Varner, Arts editor of the Washington Blade. Sunday, February 28, 1999

	Search online   merchants   for this book.

McMurtry may have had the more daunting assignment, given the dearth of hard information about the great Sioux warrior. He addresses this lack directly: "I am not writing this book because I think I know what Crazy Horse did – much less what he thought – on more than a few occasions in his life; I'm writing it because I have some notions about what he meant . . . in his lifetime, and also what he has come to mean to . . . our time."

Despite the scarcity of facts, McMurtry sketches a credible portrait of Crazy Horse. But it is his death, not his life, about which McMurtry writes best. Crazy Horse was killed at Fort Robinson, in Nebraska, where he had gone to make one last attempt at reconciliation with the soldiers who were enforcing the government's Indian policies. McMurtry compellingly presents his death as "an American Rashomon." His account sensitively places Crazy Horse in the pantheon of great American figures such as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and other assassinated leaders.

"Violence produces shock, and shock distorts memory," McMurtry sensibly says, explaining why no two eyewitnesses to horror can ever seem to agree, afterward, on exactly what happened. The conflicting accounts of Crazy Horse's death make for spellbinding reading.

McMurtry is good at contrasting Indian styles of warfare with more deadly white methods, as well as illuminating the inability of white Americans to understand their Indian adversaries. Whites expected to make binding agreements with one all-powerful chief, but there were in fact many "chiefs" among the Sioux. But the Sioux did not have a monopoly on confusing styles of leadership; McMurtry also depicts the chaotic effects of Army bureaucracy. "A good many commanders in the field made well-reasoned promises to the Indians," he writes, "only to have them rejected by someone higher up the ladder of command."

Crazy Horse could have profited from one more round of editorial scrutiny: 1874 appears twice on one page as the date of the meeting at which the government hoped to buy the Black Hills from the Sioux, while 1875 appears twice on another. A table of dates would be useful, especially given McMurtry's looping construction: He moves back and forth through the years, occasionally dissipating suspense in the process.

What may be most affecting about this book is how characters and events from a century ago can suddenly seem so contemporary. "A desire to steal horses was usually the nominal aim of Plains warfare [between Indians]," McMurtry writes, "but the need for the warriors – young warriors, particularly – to display their bravery was usually the real motive." As usual, boys would be boys.

Back to the top