In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse (11 page)

Grandpa Nyles paused and shook his head. He removed his straw hat to wipe a bit a sweat off his forehead. “Of course, the sad fact is that Custer lost
all
his men, including himself. Every man in the five companies he led was killed in this second part of the battle. That's why there are so many white markers.

“That's the sad part about war and battles,” he concluded. “Doesn't matter who you are, what side you're on. It's still sad, no matter what kind of uniform you wear or the color of your skin. It's still sad.”

Jimmy looked across the meadow. He could imagine all those soldiers falling in the grass, falling to the ground. Somewhere inside, he wished he would never, ever see the real thing. After a moment he looked up at his grandfather.

“What did Crazy Horse do, in this part of the battle?” he asked softly.

“Well,” replied the old man, putting his hat back on, “I'll tell you, but first let me tell you what Gall did.”

Dust rose from the hooves of the galloping Long Knives' horses. They were struggling up the long slope. Gall and the warriors were closing the distance
.

They had raced across the uneven western slopes above the river. Arriving at Medicine Tail Coulee, they saw the soldiers running away. Most of the Lakota and Cheyenne warriors in the encampment had been in battles before. Furthermore, they had been trained to be war fighters since they were children. Eight days before, many had been in the Battle Where the Girl Saved Her Brother. They knew what to do
.

Some mounted warriors veered to the right, others to the left. A third group stayed behind the soldiers. If the soldiers stopped, they would be immediately surrounded. If they kept going up the hill and beyond, they would be cut down as they rode
.

At the top of the ridge, a group of Long Knives stopped and dismounted. They formed a line to face the oncoming warriors. The soldiers fired, but it did not slow the warriors. They returned fire even as they galloped
.

Most of the dismounted Long Knives fired again; then all of them remounted. They hurried to the north
.

The onrushing warriors kept riding and firing from horseback
.

Farther north along the ridge, some Long Knives dismounted again. This time only a few fired at the warriors before remounting. They hurried to catch up with the other soldiers, who were galloping north
.

The galloping horses were raising a dust cloud that hung just above the ground
.

Warriors were on either side of the Long Knives, and behind as well. Soldiers were being hit and falling from their horses
.

Gall whipped his horse to run faster. He was on the slope below the soldiers. He shouted to the warriors near him. “Get ahead of them!” he yelled. “Get ahead of them, dismount, and shoot at them from the ground.”

Eight warriors urged their horses faster. They raced recklessly over the uneven ground and outran the Long Knives' horses on the ridge. The warriors dismounted, formed a line, and knelt to get a steady aim. One by one they opened fire with their rifles at the fleeing soldiers
.

All the while soldiers were falling, and falling. Many of their horses were galloping without riders
.

“So that's what Gall did,” Grandpa Nyles said, pausing for a moment. “He was one of the main war leaders, after Crazy Horse. The warriors with him below the ridge were all very good marksmen. They hit a lot of the soldiers. No one knows exactly how many, but a lot of them.”

He pointed to the truck. “Come on,” he said. “Let's go back to Last Stand Hill.”

Jimmy hurried and climbed into the truck. “So where was Crazy Horse?” he asked.

Grandpa Nyles started the truck and drove north, following the paved road. “When Gall was here, Crazy Horse was on the other side of the river. He had gone through the village, gathered a lot of warriors, and ridden north. Somewhere
beyond where the visitor center is now, he crossed the river and went east. He took his warriors up the hills, and there they encountered some soldiers who had gone ahead. They chased those soldiers back.

“So what Crazy Horse did was to block the soldiers from going beyond Last Stand Hill,” the old man went on. “Gall's warriors and others, Crow King and Black Moon, were leading warriors, too. They were chasing the Long Knives from behind. There was no way the Long Knives were going to escape. By then, oh, maybe five or six hundred warriors were involved. It was all but over for Custer and his soldiers.”

Grandpa Nyles pointed west toward the river. It was at the bottom of the slope behind the trees. “Right about here, some of the soldiers went toward the river,” he said. “They made it to a deep gully and were surrounded there by warriors coming up from the village. Those soldiers didn't make it out. They say they are still there, buried in that deep gully.”

Jimmy looked down the slope. He saw several white markers on the slope below them. He was beginning to
understand how difficult it must have been for the soldiers.

They drove into the parking spot near the large stone monument. From there they could see back along the road they had driven. Jimmy could see a lot of white markers.

“Crazy Horse led a charge against a group of soldiers, right about here,” Grandpa Nyles said, “probably a company. He saw they were organized and fighting strongly. He inspired other warriors to follow him, and they wiped out the company. At first he was the only one riding at the soldiers, far ahead of the other warriors.”

“Wow! Wasn't he afraid?”

“He probably was,” Grandpa Nyles said. “But remember his dream, when the rider was untouched by bullets and arrows? Crazy Horse was untouched at the Battle of the Hundred in the Hands, and he was unhurt here, too. Sometimes you have to do things no matter how scary it is, or how scared you are. For days, and weeks, months, and years after that, the warriors who were there talked about that—how Crazy Horse charged ahead of everyone else. Look, we're still talking about it now.”

Jimmy nodded slowly. The tall stone marker was nearby,
and several white markers were on the slope. Below the tall monument were more headstones—those inside the black iron fence.

“So,” he said quietly, “the battle was over, after that?”

Grandpa Nyles nodded. “Yeah. The last group of soldiers with Custer fired a few shots. The warriors had them surrounded and fired back. Maybe once or twice more there was light exchange of firing. Then it was over. They say it became very, very quiet.”

“Then what happened?” Jimmy asked.

“People came up from the village, the women mostly,” the old man said. “They were looking for their husbands, sons, and grandsons. They wanted to know that their loved ones were safe. Many of them were angry at the Long Knives. So that's when it started.”

“What? What started, Grandpa?”

“Well,” Grandpa Nyles replied, his voice low, “the first thing was probably someone taking something off a fallen soldier—you know, a gun, bullets, maybe boots. Then someone took a knife and cut a soldier's body. All that anger was
hard to hold back. So they began stripping bodies, taking things, and then mutilating them.”

“ ‘Mutilating'?”

“Cutting arms and legs.”

Jimmy didn't know what to think. “Why?”

“Like I said—the people were angry because the Long Knives probably would have hurt women and children—shot them, even. And Long Knives had done the same thing to Indians—like at a place called Sand Creek, in Colorado—mutilated people, I mean.”

He paused for a moment and took a deep breath. “I personally think it's a bad thing no matter who does it. But that's the way it was then.”

Jimmy felt a bit sick to his stomach.

He could imagine Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho women and children crossing the river and walking onto the battlefield. He could understand why mothers and grandmothers would be worried about their sons and grandsons. That's the way his mom and his grandmothers were.

“So, what happened after that, Grandpa?” he asked.

“Well, the second part of the battle ended here,” Grandpa Nyles replied. “But remember those soldiers on the hill, back there above the river?”

Jimmy nodded.

“They were the first part of the battle, and they would be the third part. We'll talk about it in a bit, but right now let's go see that monument to our people. How's that?”

Jimmy and his grandfather followed the path to the monument to the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho people. It was unlike the tall stone marker for the soldiers. This monument was round and sunk into the ground.

They entered it from the east opening. It was like an open-air room. Jimmy liked it immediately, even before he looked closer at all the pictures and words on the walls. The first thing that caught his eye was the metal sculptures outlined against the sky. The north wall was lower, and on the stone ledge were three metal figures. Each looked exactly like a pen-and-ink outline sketch of a man on a horse.

Grandpa Nyles noticed Jimmy looking at the figures. They seemed to be moving from left to right. “Those represent the three tribes who fought here on our side: Lakota,
Cheyenne, and Arapaho,” he explained. He indicated the third figure, the last one. That one had a hawk on his head and was reaching to take weapons from a woman on the ground.

“That's Crazy Horse,” the old man explained. “Or at least someone's idea of him.”

Jimmy pointed to the woman figure. “Who's that?” he asked.

“I'm sure that's his wife,” Grandpa Nyles replied. “It was customary for Lakota wives and mothers to hand weapons to their husbands and sons. And they had a saying that gave them encouragement and reminded them of their duty as warriors.”

“What was it?”

“The women would say, ‘Have courage and be the first to charge the enemy, for it is better to lie a warrior naked in death than it is to turn away from the battle.' ”

“What does it mean?”

“It means that courage was a warrior's best weapon, and that it was the highest honor to give your life for your people.”

“Oh,” Jimmy said, in a low voice. “That's kind of scary, I think.”

Grandpa Nyles put his hand on the boy's shoulder and nodded. “Yeah, it is, but that's what being a warrior was all about: facing the scary things no matter how afraid you were. That's what courage is. And what's more, it doesn't happen only on the battlefield. You can have courage and face the tough things that happen to you anywhere.”

“Oh.”

“Come on,” Grandpa Nyles said, pulling on Jimmy's arm and pointing to the polished walls around them. “Let's go look at those carvings and the inscriptions on the panels.”

There were twelve thick granite panels on the walls inside the circular monument. All were nearly four feet high and just over seven feet wide. They had images and words connected to the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

The words were from the warriors who had fought here, from Lakota warriors and the Cheyenne. The words of Wooden Leg, a Cheyenne warrior, were simple: “We had killed soldiers who came to kill us.”

“That about sums it up,” Grandpa Nyles said quietly.

The panel devoted to Crazy Horse also had words on it. They were not about fighting or battles. “We did not ask you white men to come here. The Great Spirit gave us this country as a home. You had yours . . . We did not interfere with you. We do not want your civilization!”

Jimmy was a bit puzzled.

“I think that explains why he fought so hard, why he didn't want to surrender,” Grandpa Nyles said. “He was fighting just as hard for those who had lived before as he was for those living at the time and those who would be born later.”

“Like us?”

“Exactly.”

Some of the other panels were about the enemies of the Lakota and Cheyenne: the Crow and Arikara scouts who were with the Long Knives that day.