Crazy Horse's Story

Over my long life on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, I have been asked, "Who is going to tell our story?" Or I have been told that this is a patriotic story that must be told. It's definitely an American story of the indigenous Lakota as told by The-Oklala and my Oklala ancestors. And from what I remember of the Crazy Horse legend. The story rummages through withheld Lakota history, starting from their coming into the sun's light in the Black Hills; then unfolds through their cultural endeavors on an endless plain with the buffalo and horses and a strong spirituality. Yes, this is an ageless journey through an era. And it includes Crazy Horse's birth, his becoming a passionate and spiritual man, his falling in love and marrying and becoming a father and his training and leading Lakota fighting men against such soldiers as Col. George Custer and Gen. George Crook: A major twenty-three-year war that matured at the legendary Custer's Last Stand. And building on what survived, the story tracks Crazy Horse's dignified and sincere attempts to not honor broken treaties. In the final segments, after the buffalo are exterminated, a famous Crazy Horse accompanies his people into Fort Robinson, Nebraska. At Robinson the bureaucracy refuses to honor its and a warlord's promise of a homeland and Crazy Horse is assassinated. And most of his nine hundred and eighty-nine followers, listed by name in this writing, landless, drift into Canada or went the way of the buffalo. As author I, in more than I can say, attempted to create a fresh historical novel that makes the reader forget historical and remember novel. A footnote: Although the gold was gone in 1980, to validate the theft of the Black Hills, the US Supreme Court awarded $106 million to compensate the Lakota, Dakota, Nakota and Santee, but not before Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun stated: A more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealing will never, in all probability be found in our history. As of this writing, with interest, the $106 million has swollen past $1 billion. And even though the majority of them live in abject poverty, they would rather have what was stolen, than the money. In August 2008, a campaigning Barack Obama told the Sioux, if elected he would consider the return of the unoccupied federal land in the Black Hills to its rightful owners. But first they must find consensus and then hand him a Black Hills land proposal. Ongoing and refusing government funding; to insure his history is secure; to define how Crazy Horse's death redefined civilization, the largest monument on Earth is being carved into Thunder Mountain in the Black Hills. Yes, his statue is being built on land stolen from him.
About the Author: My name is Robert W. Clifford I am American Indian: Lakota. I live on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. I am the publisher of Black Hills Peoples News in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. Information in this book has been handed down to me, orally and written, by my ancestors.