Sources differ on the precise year of Crazy Horse's birth, but they agree he was born

between 1840 and 1845. According to a close friend, he and Crazy Horse "were both
born in the same year at the same season of the year", which census records and
other interviews place at about 1845.[ ] Encouraging Bear, an Oglala medicine man
and spiritual adviser to the Oglala war leader, reported that Crazy Horse was born
"in the year in which the band to which he belonged, the Oglala, stole One Hundred
Horses, and in the fall of the year", a reference to the annual Lakota calendar or
winter count.[ ] Among the Oglala winter counts, the stealing of 100 horses is noted
by Cloud Shield, and possibly by American Horse and Red Horse owner, as
equivalent to the year 184041. Oral history accounts from relatives on the
Cheyenne River Reservation place his birth in the spring of 1840. On the evening of
his son's death, the elder Crazy Horse told Lieutenant H. R. Lemly that his son
"would soon have been thirty-seven, having been born on the South Cheyenne river
in the fall of 1840".

Crazy Horse was named at birth Cha-O-Ha ("In the Wilderness" or "Among the
Trees", meaning he was one with nature.) His mother's nickname for him was
"Curly" or "Light Hair"; as his light curly hair resembled that of his mother.

Family[edit]

Crazy Horse was born to parents from two tribes of the Lakota division of the Sioux,
his father was an Oglala and his mother was a Miniconjou. His father, born in 1810,
was also named Crazy Horse. One account said that after the son had reached
maturity and shown his strength, his father gave him his name and took a new one,
Waglula (Worm). (Another version of how the son Crazy Horse acquired his name
was that he took it after having a vision.) His mother Rattling Blanket Woman (born
1814) died when Crazy Horse was only four years old. Crazy Horse's cousin (son of
Lone Horn) was Touch the Clouds. He saved Crazy Horse's life at least once and was
with him when he died.

Rattling Blanket Woman was the daughter of Black Buffalo and White Cow (also
known as Iron Cane). Her older siblings were Lone Horn (born 1 90, died 18 ) and
Good Looking Woman (born 1810). Her younger sister was named Looks At It (born
1815), later given the name They Are Afraid of Her. The historian George Hyde
wrote that Rattling Blanket Woman was Miniconjou and the sister of Spotted Tail,
who became a Brul head chief.

In the summer of 1844, "Waglula" (Worm) went on a buffalo hunt. He came across a
Minneconjou Lakota village under attack by Crow warriors. He led his small party of
warriors to the village and rescued it. Corn, the head man of the village, had lost his
wife in the raid. In gratitude he gave Waglula his two eldest daughters as wives: Iron
Between Horns (age 18) and Kills Enemy (age 1 ). Corn's youngest daughter, Red
Leggins, who was 15 at the time, requested to go with her sisters; all became
Waglula's wives.

Genealogy[edit]

According to Frederick Hoxie's Encyclopedia of North American Indians (1996),

Crazy Horse was the third in his male line to bear the name of Crazy Horse, which in
Oglala is Tasunke Witko. Tasunke Witko III (1840 ) was the son of Rattling Blanket
Woman and Tasunke Witko II. The love of his life was Black Buffalo Woman, whom he
courted, but she married another man named No Water. At one point, Crazy Horse
persuaded Black Buffalo Woman to run away with him. No Water borrowed a pistol
and ran after his wife. When he found her with Crazy Horse, he fired at him, injuring
him in the face and leaving a noticeable scar. Crazy Horse was married two times:
first to Black Shawl, and second to Nellie Larrabee (Laravie). Nellie Larrabee was
assigned to spy on Crazy Horse for the military, so the "marriage" is suspect. Only
Black Shawl bore him any children: a daughter named They Are Afraid of Her, who
died at age three.

Visions[edit]

Crazy Horse lived in the Lakota camp with his younger brother, High Horse (son of
Iron Between Horns and Waglula ) and a cousin Little Hawk. (Little Hawk was the
nephew of his maternal step-grandfather, Corn. ) The camp was entered by
Lieutenant Grattan and 28 other US troopers, who intended to arrest a Minniconjou
man for having stolen a cow. (The cow had wandered into the camp, and after a
short time someone butchered it and passed the meat out among the people). A
conflict known as the Grattan massacre ensued and the Sioux killed the US Army
forces.

After having witnessed the death of the Lakota leader Conquering Bear, Crazy Horse
began to get trance visions. His father Waglula took him to what today is Sylvan
Lake, South Dakota, where they both sat to do a hemblecha or vision quest. A red-

tailed hawk led them to their respective spots in the hills; as the trees are tall in the
Black Hills, they could not always see where they were going. Crazy Horse sat
between two humps at the top of a hill north and to the east of the lake. Waglula
sat south of Harney Peak but north of his son.

Crazy Horse's vision first took him to the South where, in Lakota spirituality, one
goes upon death. He was brought back and was taken to the West in the direction of
the wakiyans (thunder beings). He was given a medicine bundle to protect him for
life. One of his animal protectors would be the white owl which, according to Lakota
spirituality, would give extended life. He was also shown his "face paint" for battle,
to consist of a yellow lightning bolt down the left side of his face, and white powder.
He would wet this and put marks over his vulnerable areas; when dried, the marks
looked like hailstones. His face paint was similar to that of his father, who used a
red lightning strike down the right side of his face and three red hailstones on his
forehead. Crazy Horse put no makeup on his forehead and did not wear a war
bonnet. Lastly, he was given a sacred song that is still sung by the Oglala people
today and he was told he would be a protector of his people.

Black Elk, a contemporary and cousin of Crazy Horse, related the vision in Black Elk
Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, from talks with John
G. Neihardt.

When I was a man, my father told me something about that vision. Of course he did
not know all of it; but he said that Crazy Horse dreamed and went into the world
where there is nothing but the spirits of all things. That is the real world that is
behind this one, and everything we see here is something like a shadow from that
world. He was on his horse in that world, and the horse and himself on it and the
trees and the grass and the stones and everything were made of spirit, and nothing
was hard, and everything seemed to float. His horse was standing still there, and
yet it danced around like a horse made only of shadow, and that is how he got his
name, which does not mean that his horse was crazy or wild, but that in his vision it
danced around in that queer way.

It was this vision that gave him his great power, for when he went into a fight, he
had only to think of that world to be in it again, so that he could go through
anything and not be hurt. Until he was killed at the Soldiers' Town on White River,
he was wounded only twice, once by accident and both times by some one of his

own people when he was not expecting trouble and was not thinking; never by an
enemy.

Crazy Horse received a black stone from a medicine man named Horn Chips to
protect his horse, a black-and-white pinto he named Inyan (rock or stone). He
placed the stone behind the horse's ear so that the medicine from his vision quest
and Horn Chips would combinehe and his horse would be one in battle. The more
accepted account, however, is that Horn Chips gave Crazy Horse a sacred stone
that protected him from bullets. Subsequently, Crazy Horse was never wounded by
a bullet. In addition, it should be noted that "Horn Chips" is not the correct name of
this medicine man, and it has become a repeated error since 1982 in subsequent
publications. His Lakota name was Woptura and he was given, by the government,
the name Chips, and was referred to as Old Man Chips. Horn Chips was one of his
sons, who was also known as Charles Chips.

Personality[edit]

Crazy Horse was known to have a personality characterized by aloofness, shyness,

and aloneness. In Black Elk Speaks, Neihardt relays:

...he was a queer man and would go about the village without noticing people or
saying anything. In his own teepee he would joke, and when he was on the warpath
with a small party, he would joke to make his warriors feel good. But around the
village he hardly ever noticed anybody, except little children. All the Lakotas like to
dance and sing; but he never joined a dance, and they say nobody ever heard him
sing. But everybody liked him, and they would do anything he wanted or go
anywhere he said.[