The Journey Of Crazy Horse: A Lakaota History Of His Life, His Times, And His People

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Summary: a man greater than the myth emerges
Review: Joseph Marshall's elegant and powerful book, "The Journey of Crazy Horse," is the gold standard by which all other biographies of Crazy Horse will heretofore be measured. Rather than aggrandizing the legend, Marshall explores the inner workings and revealing actions of a seemingly contrary man, who, born in any other time, might have been lost to history as an eccentric mystic. "The Journey of Crazy Horse" deftly explains the times in which he lived and the politics of Whites and Indians alike that forced this reluctant icon to action. Marshall details a man bereft of worldly ambition, driven by circumstance and sustained by an indomitable inner spirit. The author never succumbs to the lure of stridency, never attempts to sway emotion to Crazy Horse and his cause, though had he done so, it would have been forgivable, for at it's core, this is a story of genocide and of the heroism and dignity that defied it. The truth is, Crazy Horse never needed puffery or pedestals. By resisting the temptation of such accouterments, Joseph Marshall's Crazy Horse emerges in flesh and blood, flawed and tormented. Crazy Horse, by rising above those things, is revealed as man greater than the myth. This is a graceful book that moves without manipulation and will resonate in your thoughts long after the final page has been turned. One gets a sense that somewhere, somehow, Crazy Horse approves-not because of any undue glorification of his heroics, but rather that after all this time, he is understood.


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Summary: I wish there was more documentation
Review: As of this writing I have read the first 10 chapters. There is so little known of Crazy Horse that I was hoping to really learn a lot of new information/insights that the author was privy to based on the stories that were passed down to him and on which this book is supposed to be based. The problem is this book is really an historical novel rather than a history book because the author does not list any footnotes. So the reader is left to wonder just which parts were passed down through oral traditions and which parts are just the authors imagination or rewording of Mari Sandoz' book. All in all, I am enjoying this book, but I really wanted documentation to separate the oral tradition from the author's storytelling.

Review updated 1-3-05
I am nearing the end of this book and recently finished the chapter that included the Little Big Horn Battle. Marshall really lacks a grasp on this famous event, stating falsehoods such as the Cheyennes recognized Custer after the battle and depicting Crazy Horse and Gall as "Generals" directing the other warriors. Of course, most people know that they were fighting the same as the other warriors and did not have "control" over other fighters. For one thing, the Lakotas and Cheyennes did not fight that way, and for another they didn't have the communication know-how or equipment such as two-way radios and air support to make any of this possible. Marshall is able to write a book such as this for no other reason than that he is of Lakota heritage/lineage. The dominant society must give him a platform or be called racist. This book needs to be marketed as a Lakota novel on the life of Crazy Horse.

Marshall seems content to pass on falsehoods and repeat idealized and romantic stories he heard from his elders that deify Crazy Horse. He had the chance to write an historically accurate book but as is the case with the late James Welch (Killing Custer), the scholarship is greatly lacking.

There are other problems with this book but I am not here to write a thesis on the topic. Suffice it to say, Mari Sandoz still reigns supreme as the voice of Crazy Horse. This book is more of a novel than Sandoz' book.

To give credit where credit is due, one of the closing chapters titled REFLECTIONS is wonderful and insightful. If Marshall had been this critical and thoughtful during many of the preceding chapters, this book would have been a classic.

It is when Marshall applies thoughts, motives and actions to Crazy Horse that I find the book least plausible. The overall impression I got was that Crazy Horse was a man out of time and somehow had a grasp on the situation (the clash with the whites) that those around him did not possess. So even though Marshall's intent was to portray Crazy Horse as a "normal" Lakota man, that was not the impression I got.

Add into this historical inaccuracies such as Frank Grouard's heritage and Native American leaders making tactical battlefield decisions as if they were Civil War generals and the book didn't live up to my expectations.

I know that Marshall put a lot of work into the writing, and I did enjoy parts of it, but I was hoping for something better.

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Summary: Book review of Journey of Crazy Horse
Review: Book Review
by Lydia Whirlwind Soldier

The Journey of Crazy Horse
by Joseph M. Marshall III
Published by the Penguin Group 2004

The Journey of Crazy Horse is written by Joseph Marshall III, a Sicangu Lakota. Joseph Marshall has been praised as an
historian, educator and story teller. He grew up on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota with his extended family and his
first language is Lakota. He has written six books, all of which I would recommend

In the 127 years since the murder of Crazy Horse many stories and books have been written about him by Euro-Americans. It is
important to recognize that the stories written about Crazy Horse by non-Indians have only touched the surface of the true life of
this great Lakota leader.

While the story told by Marshall has been passed down from one Lakota generation to the next, it has not been shared in detail to
the out-side world. This story confirms in many ways the fact that Crazy Horse struggled valiantly against injustice and
persistent forces that fragmented the Lakota Nation. Joseph Marshall's portrayal of Crazy Horse's life unfolds the tragic
circumstances in which peace with the Lakota Nation was dictated rather than negotiated. Under enormous odds the Lakota
under the leadership of Crazy Horse and other great Lakota leaders were able to withstand the onslaught of the United States for
many decades.

In the end, under the guise of treaties making, the powers that be shamelessly used divide and conquer tactics to establish
apartheid types of control. They essentially used these controls to create a reservation system very much like a concentration
camp to isolated, control and steal the territory belonging to the Lakota people.

There are several ways to look at the injustice and understand the immorality of the war waged against the Lakota. Marshall
describes and traces the tactics of deviation, trickery and atrocities used against the Lakota to help the reader understand and
acknowledge the right of the Lakota to defend their homes, families and property.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of this book. This may be the first time that oral tradition has been accepted by
publishers as authoritative and worthy of being believed. Up to this time, oral tradition was sometimes described as legend or
myth and not given the credibility that these stories deserve. While, in turn most of us who heard the stories of our history from
our relatives read the historical accounts written by non-Indians with doubt and sometimes even disbelief and were skeptical
of their interpretation.

Marshall, growing up as a Lakota is able to capture the nuances of the Lakota lifestyle, philosophy and culture that only those
living this lifestyle will understand and could articulate to the public so thoroughly. There is no question that Joseph Marshall
captures the essence of this great Lakota leader, Crazy Horse. It is a story of a loving son, a family man, and brilliant and daring
warrior and tactician, a man that we could easily and closely identify with as a tribal member. In any event, this tragic, yet amazing
story about Crazy Horse and the Lakota Nation is described eloquently by Marshall.

This is a story I would recommend to all. This story is about a true and great Lakota hero, Crazy Horse who represents the pride
and honor of the Lakota people. It is a story about a man who bravely protected his people, gave his life and who has become an inspiration in the eyes of people throughout the world.


Rating:
Summary: Despite flaws a whirlwind
Review: Crazy Horse was the paramount of the Native Warrior. Always a fascination to the Whites he has seemed to embody all that was noble and all that was tragic in the fight of Lakota and the bigger fight of all native cultures against impending doom. Crazy Horse, his dreams and his often strained relationships, his messianic nature, his young virile attributes, whether the victory over Custer, his murder by his own people, or his noble riding to surrender mounted proudly on a white horse. AL the poetry of the west and the vanishing ways of the Lakota is presented here in a lively story telling of the life of Crazy Horse. It is a needed contribution to the scant literature on this Indian leader and noble hero of the American west, who often seems more fiction then fact.

But herein lies the problem. Not much is really known about Crazy Horse, except that he participated in the defeat of Custer in 1876, he subsequently surrendered and was killed. That is about it. But their were tales, rumors, stories, oral traditions, some invented, some accurate and some embellished. Anyone looking for a scholarly account should look elsewhere, this book is pure popular history bordering on a novel, but contained within it is the truth of the Lakota culture and the legend of Crazy Horse.

Seth J. Frantzman


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Summary: NOT ENOUGH ABOUT CRAZY HORSE
Review: LOTS OF GENERAL INDIAN INFO,ALREADY KNOWN BY MOST WHO READ INDIAN HISTORY. NOTHING NEW ABOUT CRAZY HORSE.

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Summary: A PORTRAIT OF A GREAT AMERICAN
Review: Of all of the great Native American leaders of the Old West, none is more elusive than Tasunke Witko, Crazy Horse. While we have photographs of Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, Gall, Rain in the Face, Chief Joseph and Geronimo, no image of Crazy Horse, the legendary field general of the Lakota, exists or has survived.

Past efforts at providing a credible literary portrayal of the man have reeked of the mythology that pervaded Western History. All through those accounts the stereotype of supposed ruthless savagery lingered in the background, like a vile stench. Even those authors who tried to be fair couldn't, somehow, rise above the temptation to sensationalize Crazy Horse.

Why is it that we tolerate such fiction? Why is it that we succumb to the temptation to paint all of our enemies, past and present, as demons and devils without honestly trying to understand where they were coming from? Sadly, this continues to be the major problem when whites (of whom I am one) contemplate the bloody history of conflicts between their ancestors and Native Americans. We just can't seem to let go of the prospect that we were the ones that were wrong!

Now Lakota author, Joseph Marshall III, provides a sensitive account of the life of Crazy Horse drawn from the rich Native American oral tradition that still exists for all who are open-minded enough to hear it. What better way and who better to tell the story of a hero? THE JOURNEY OF CRAZY HORSE: A LAKOTA HISTORY relates the life of Crazy Horse, as Mr. Marshall promises in his foreword, as a Native American storyteller might.

What emerges is the story of a good man, a man who, for his part, fought for what he believed was right. From his beginnings to his rise as a gifted warrior and leader to his triumph at The Greasy Grass Fight (The Battle of the Little Bighorn) to his death in 1877, Crazy Horse lives for the very first time with an accuracy and tenderness that seem most fitting.

Marshall also relates the traditional accounts of the man off the battle field. We discover a caring father, brother, husband and friend. THE JOURNEY OF CRAZY HORSE: A LAKOTA HISTORY provides, at last, an accurate portrait of one of America's greatest leaders. Hopefully readers will see this, looking past the stereotypes and prejudices of the past that seem all too alive and well today.

THE HORSEMAN



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Summary: Written like Mr. Marshall is teaching personally to you
Review: This is my third Joseph Marshall book (after "Soldiers Falling into Camp" and "The Lakota Way"). Reading Joe Marshall is like having a "story teller" right in front of you, talking, teaching, engaging, looking you in the eye and speaking to you. Mr. Marshall cares about what he writes about, and cares that his readers take something with them. This clearly comes through in his writing. In this book he speaks of the "conflict" between the oral and written traditions -- I think Mr. Marshall is a master at synthesizing the two.

The Lakota history and experience he imparts are as genuine as it gets - and a treasure he has given us non-Lakota people a chance to see. The book describes, through synthesis of oral history and the experiences/culture of the Lakota people, the man of Tashunka Witko (His Crazy Horse). Marshall shows how the life of a very heroic yet very human man transcends linear time and remains part of living culture through faithful oral tradition and living into that tradition - something very different than what we're used to. Direct sources with the people who lived and continue the live in the influence and experience of a leader of the Lakota people. "History" as real as it gets.


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Summary: Crazy Horse and the Lakota Culture
Review: This is the first book I have read authored by Joseph M. Marshall, a Lakota Sioux. Based on this effort on Crazy Horse, I plan on reading others as well. Stereotypes are cast aside regarding the Lakota Sioux who were fighting an enemy that threatened their cultural way of life. It was the Fetterman Fight in December of 1866 in which Crazy Horse demonstrated his leadership by luring William Fetterman and his eighty men from Fort Phil Kearny into a trap that led to the demise of his entire group while young warriors, fighting impatience, waited until all of Fetterman's men were within the trap before attacking the soldiers. Much has been written about The Battle at the Little Bighorn in Montana in which Crazy Horse was instrumental in the defeat of General George Custer, but little is written about The Battle of the Rosebud near Buffalo, Wyoming, in which Crazy Horse and his men fought General George "Three Stars" Crook eight days prior to Little Bighorn. This battle is important because it eliminated Crook and his men from attacking the Indians at the Greasy Grass. Crazy Horse ultimately had to surrender at Fort Robinson in Nebraska because it meant the survival of his Lakota people. To continue fighting meant death to all against the superior numbers of the white invaders. I have read three other biographies on Crazy Horse, but this one by Joseph Marshall is the best of the bunch. Marshall puts himself in the position as an instructor of the Lakota way of life, and we, the reader, are his students. I found it to be a very informative book.

Rating:
Summary: A Line, Not a Stereotype.
Review: We have had surprisingly few biographies of the Native Americans who were here long before our arrival. And many of the biographies we do have are primarily of the warrior aspect concentrating on the conflict aspects.

Here we have a first rate biography written by a Lakota historian raised in the same Lakota community that raised Crazy Horse. It is based on extensive research combined with the rich oral tradition that is rarely shared outside the local community.

Crazy Horse is remembered by most Americans as the leader and participant in the Battle of the Little Big Horn. There is obviously more to the man, more to a life than one battle. To his fellow Lakota indians, he was a dutiful son and humble fighting man who, with valor, spirit, respect, and unparelleled leadership fought for his people's land, lifelihood, and honor. His personal life, the woman he loved but due to duty and circumstance was destined to marry another, make us realize that here was a good man put into tragic circumstances.