Thomas Powers, _The Killing of Crazy Horse_ (2)

THERE ARE TOO many ironies in thinking of Crazy Horse as a great American, chief perhaps that "America," or its state apparatus, murdered him. It's obvious Powers admires him, though, and that there was much to admire. Powers sticks close to the known facts, leery of speculation, and if he has any of the novelistic imagination that (for instance) Mari Sandoz (God bless her) let loose in her account, he keeps it reined in.

Crazy Horse is a figure that plucks at the imagination, though. His name in his own language, Tasunka Witko, might be more literally rendered "His Horse Is Crazy," with "crazy" here standing in for a word that could also mean a kind of visionary delirium. He seems to have been the kind of charismatic figure whom a community naturally turns to, but who also stands a bit apart from the community norms. He was made a "Shirt Wearer" at a young age but also had that distinction taken away for some kind of infraction of community values. He was famously taciturn but also possessed of extraordinary insight.

Towards the end of Powers's account, I found myself thinking of...weird as this sounds...Jesus, another charismatic figure who in some ways was apart from his community (as in his "the Law says tats, but I say this" moments). Towards the end, they both showed signs of exhaustion, Jesus in his last week in Jerusalem, Crazy Horse in coming in to the Red Cloud agency. They both just made it into their early 30s before they were put to death by the authorities in whose side they had been a thorn, and both were betrayed by friends who had become estranged. Rumors of being still alive after a public death were circulated about both (cf. Elvis and Jim Morrison). Something about them was just plain from elsewhere.

It is, though, hard to imagine Jesus as an intuitive military genius capable of stunning personal bravery in battle. Apparently a maneuver conceived and personally led by Crazy Horse split Custer's men and proved decisive at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. He's Jesus plus Simon Bar Kochba.