Crazy Horse

It is not much of a biography as there is not much factual information, although McMurtry writes what little there is quite well. ( )

A funny little biography, in which the author takes issue with most other biographers -- so little is known about Crazy Horse's life that most writers make things up along the way, or so says Larry McMurtry. Still, in only 140 pages, learned a lot. For one, I know that I'd like to see this sculpture of Crazy Horse emerging from the mountains of South Dakota one day http://www.crazyhorse.org/ ( )

Larry McMurtry tries to wade through all the interviews, the conjectures, and the myths surrounding the life and death of the Native American warrior Crazy Horse only to find many gaps in the historical record. He does what he can with the supporting evidence, but where history gets hazy, he supplies the reader with a level-headed history of the many conflicts concerning the Plains Indians. His short narrative gives the reader a glimpse into life on the Greats Plains and just how sad many of the stories are. ( )

Larry McMurtry (Telegraph Days, Lonesome Dove) brings his clean and concise writing style to this brief but illuminating life of Crazy Horse.

This compact little biography is one of the Penguin Lives series that features what Penguin Books web site describes as an "innovative series of biographies pairing celebrated writers with famous individuals who have shaped our thinking." The series is worth looking into for its other biographies of Churchill by John Keegan, Buddha by Karen Armstrong, and Saint Augustine by Garry Wills among others.

In the case of Crazy Horse not a heck of lot is really known about the man. As McMurtry points out, most of what we know about Crazy Horse and most Indians derives from their contact with whites and Crazy Horse generally avoided whites to the fullest extent possible. He was a brave warrior, a leader of his people at times, but not truly a chief, a loner, an iconoclast within a tribe of iconoclasts.

Crazy Horse is an iconic figure who captures the imagination. His life of some 35 or so years spanned the rapid transformation of the West from the free days of the nomadic Plains tribes and limitless buffalo herds to the confinement of those peoples on poor reservations and the destruction of the herds. Crazy Horse never really yielded to the whites unlike nearly all other Indian leaders, not that it mattered much in the grand scheme of things because no strategy was going to change the ultimate outcome. Crazy Horse declined to go to Washington, resisted any restraints, refused to attend the parleys with the whites.

He did ultimately sacrifice his own freedom when he brought his 900 or so followers after the brutal winter of 1876-1877 - just months after the twin victories over Crook at Rosebud and Custer at Little Bighorn. Crazy Horse was killed, probably by the bayonet of a white soldier as he resisted his final arrest. His death was a blessing as the whites planned to ship him to Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, a tiny prison atoll in Florida.

Unlike other popular authors, notably Stephen Ambrose, McMurtry resists the temptation to let his imagination roam too freely and sticks mostly to the known facts and reasonable deductions to be drawn from them. Those facts however immutably established Crazy Horse as perhaps the single most romantic and heroic figure of the great American Western epic. He lived free, defeated Custer, the great white romantic figure, and then died young "in the last moments when the Sioux could think of themselves as free. By an accident of fate, the man and the way of life died together...he came to be the symbol of Sioux freedom, Sioux courage, and Sioux dignity." (Page 17, hardcover edition)

Highly recommended for any reader with an interest in the American West. ( )

Short and sweet biography. ( )