I've just finished reading a captivating book that is also something of an historical artifact itself.  Crazy Horse:  The Strange Man of the Oglalas, was written by Mari Sandoz in 1942.  The writer grew up near Fort Robinson and the Black Hills, and interviewed oldsters who had lived through some of the events described in this biography. 

Sixty-six years later the book is still a good read.  It's on my in-law-family's reading assignment list for our trip to Fort Robinson this summer, and I suppose it's a good preparation for heading into that country where such tragic things happened.  Any biography that praises the subject will be open to charges of romanticism, and this one is no exception.  It would be pretty difficult to tell this story of the end of an entire people without slipping into some level of idealism.  Crazy Horse's lifespan from 1842-1877 roughly correpsonds to the end of the Oglala way of life at the hands of the U.S. Army.  As a spiritual and military leader of his people, Crazy Horse's own experiences mirror this downfall. 

This book, written in the cadences of Native America, provides a glimpse into the way of life of the nomadic tribe during its last generation.  Early in the story people talk about the loss of the old ways, even while they can't know the worse depredations in store for them.  By the end they are literally entrapped, kept behind fences and told when and where they are permitted to travel.  All of this within a few years of being promised peace "for as long as the grass shall grow."  Indeed, the "white man's promise" became synomymous with "lie" by the end of Crazy Horse's generation.   

I suspect this book's depiction of Oglala life has informed all the romantic images and stories about the Sioux with which we have grown familiar.  Undoubtedly life for a mid-19th century nomadic tribe in the north country was more hardscrabble and shorter than most of us post-industrialists could endure.  Sandoz describes the inter-tribal warfare and the sickness and death that were constant companions of the small tribes.  She also describes the reliance on the earth, the prayers to the four directions and to the sky, and the respect the Oglala people paid to the brave among their up-to-that-point deadliest enemies, the Crow. 

An important turning point in the book comes late, when Crazy Horse realizes, then tells his followers, that this war against white soldiers is something very different from the raiding parties and defensive battles they'd always had with the Crows.  This was no time for individuals to earn honors in battle, to go back home to brag about.  This was a time for cooperation among all rode against the whites, and time for planned battles with all the Indians working together to oppose these soldiers.  After all, as far as he could see, these white soldiers had no families and no wives.  Unlike the Indian warriors, their whole existence seemed to be dedicated to waging war.  He saw the difference and called for a different kind of warfare.  When he got cooperation the Indians won in battle - the Battle of the Little Big Horn being the most obvious example. 

The book is enlightening and terribly sad.  It ends with the hero's death at the hands of fellow Indians inside an American fort, a metaphor for the end of the Sioux nation itself.