The Journey of Crazy Horse
A Lakota History
By Joseph M. Marshall III
By Joseph M. Marshall III
Reviewed by Ernest M. Whiteman III
"Crazy Horse is the only Indian Man that Indian Men are allowed to be in love with."
This book represents a Lakota history in the truest sense. In that Joseph M. Marshall is a Lakota himself, raised by family and grandfathers, taught to give respect to, take part in and most importantly, be responsible to a Lakota way of life. At the center of that lifestyle, according to Marshall, stands the Oglala leader Crazy Horse.
Marshall was raised on the Rosebud Reservation hearing the deeds of Tasunke Witko, so much so that like most (if not all) Native men, developed a mythological image of the historically petnia-coated figure called Crazy Horse. The man that has gotten lost in a haze of sepia tones and boyhood dreams. Marshall writes in hopes of connecting to that figure that is constantly forgotten about when set along side of the legend.
As one western movie put it, "If you have a legend and you have the truth. Print the legend."
And so many have since the death of Tasunke Witko. Marshall though has a very unique perspective of the man, the myth and the legend. Because Crazy Horse is one of Marshall’s people. They came up the same way, though in different eras (born almost exactly one hundred years apart.) Both taught from a young age to be responsible to a way of life that was true to the Lakota of the times.
I first met Joseph M. Marshall III when he was my instructor for an Introduction to Native American Studies course back at Central Wyoming College in the early nineties. Back then though, he was going by the simple name of Joe Marshall. He is a knowledgeable man though not beyond using ideas he garnered from past students. It irked me at first but I realized that he was doing what the best teachers do, like my own mother and father, he learned from his students. I have come to respect the great lengths he goes to, to preserve a way of thought and life which he brings to his writings.
I honestly cannot tell you if he would remember me from that class if you asked him. But I would like to jokingly tell you now, that only after that class did he begin going by Joseph M. Marshall III.
I also count myself among the Native men who have deified Crazy Horse. He, along with my father are the two best men I have known and in a sense, never known. I still carry in my mind the image of the Rider, the Dreamer, the Warrior, the Lightening. Many writers, including myself, have taken our shots at writing the "Definitive" biography of Crazy Horse. Mostly with mixed results.
Mari Sandoz and Stephen Ambrose are the more famous for theirs. Lonesome Dove Writer Larry McMurtry’s short version for the Peguin Life Series has become a personal favorite. McMurtry writes that many historians "print the legend" and thus tries to avoid the myth. But this gives him little else to write about after dismissing the large volumes of histories out there. But his straight-forward attitude about it not being his history to write and his way with the turn of phrase has made it my number one book on Crazy Horse.
That is, until now.
Marshall’s book should be, no, needs to be listed right up there with Sandoz and Ambrose, maybe even above them. Because Marshall is not simply writing another biography on Crazy Horse, he is telling us the story of Tasunke Witko.
This book is not algow with twittery prose espousing Native-nature terminology, nor is it an exercise in showing how many Lakota words he can spell correctly. Marshall draws on a rich historical tapestry that is never in history books. He draws on the stories and tales that have been passed down to him through the years. What gives these stories credence is that Marshall’s grandfathers were the sons of Crazy Horse’s contemporaries. He lays out the vast cultural differences and sets the stage for change that Crazy Horse fought to prevent.
Most histories focus on the battles of Manifest Destiny and rarely covers the ground of pre-Oregon Trail contact. Through the stories Marshall paints a picture of Lakota life before the encroachment of whom he rightly deems European Immigrants. This is Lakota land that is being invaded and Marshall tells of what was at stake that made the Lakota fight hard to protect it. Marshall does what few writers do, places Crazy Horse in the cultural context of his times and shows the changing of the Lakota world that Crazy Horse was on hand for.
Some have found this book a bit over-reliant on Native "word-of-mouth", but that is just another reflection of the cultural differences that Marshall plays out in this book. Just as whites need books to look to, to assure their histories happened, Natives have the old people, the storytellers, the scars, the experience to prove our histories are real, and that is no different to us than whites needing books. (Which is why American Society treats their elders like used books, I guess, they tuck them away never to be read or they throw them out.)
Here is a Native author, instructor and researcher writing a biography of a man that has been relegated to the white man’s history books. He is telling as accurate a story as any of the non-Native biographers yet his is criticized for not being over-reliant on the non-Native perspective.
The non-Native historians tend to push either the Warrior Savage who learned everything about fighting from the whites, and that was the ONLY way he could have defeated Custer and Crook, or the Mystical Savage who is lost in a haze of dreams and smoke, only fought when his dreams told him to. Here, Marshall plays out the cultural differences mainly though how each side dealt with war. Marshall conveys a Lakota warfare dependent on landscape, knowing the territory and your own abilities. Also, how Lakota warfare, which brave acts and honor were highly prized, was different from the non-Native form of war, which was to kill as many of the enemy as possible, inflict a lot of damage. This was the most eye-opening for me.
What I love about Marshall’s telling is that he is able to get under the layers of mythology and gives us a look at how Crazy Horse must have lived as a boy, as a fighter and as a man. Crazy Horse experiences the same things we all do, love, death, and conflict. But Marshall does not play them up for ideology, but firmly roots them in the Lakota lifestyle.
Marshall's book made me think of my own father, who was no less a warrior than Crazy Horse. My father did what he felt he had to do in the circumstances of the times. He experienced love, death, and conflict, yet counted that as a part of life. That was this books greatest gift to me. Marshall presented a legend as a man and helped me understand my father a bit more.
All sons have an idealized perspective of their fathers. No one ever really believes that their parents had full and complete lives BEFORE becoming our parents. Marshall’s book brought me closer to that understand because his telling of the life of Tasunke Witko, showed me that there were circumstances, a way of living, of loving and dying, of conflict with enemies, a way the world was before Tasunke Witko became Crazy Horse the Legend, before my father became a parent.
So, now I will place this on my shelf next to the other biographies of Crazy Horse knowing in at least, in this one book, I have a Lakota story of Tasunke Witko.
"Crazy Horse is the only Indian Man that Indian Men are allowed to be in love with."
This book represents a Lakota history in the truest sense. In that Joseph M. Marshall is a Lakota himself, raised by family and grandfathers, taught to give respect to, take part in and most importantly, be responsible to a Lakota way of life. At the center of that lifestyle, according to Marshall, stands the Oglala leader Crazy Horse.
Marshall was raised on the Rosebud Reservation hearing the deeds of Tasunke Witko, so much so that like most (if not all) Native men, developed a mythological image of the historically petnia-coated figure called Crazy Horse. The man that has gotten lost in a haze of sepia tones and boyhood dreams. Marshall writes in hopes of connecting to that figure that is constantly forgotten about when set along side of the legend.
As one western movie put it, "If you have a legend and you have the truth. Print the legend."
And so many have since the death of Tasunke Witko. Marshall though has a very unique perspective of the man, the myth and the legend. Because Crazy Horse is one of Marshall’s people. They came up the same way, though in different eras (born almost exactly one hundred years apart.) Both taught from a young age to be responsible to a way of life that was true to the Lakota of the times.
I first met Joseph M. Marshall III when he was my instructor for an Introduction to Native American Studies course back at Central Wyoming College in the early nineties. Back then though, he was going by the simple name of Joe Marshall. He is a knowledgeable man though not beyond using ideas he garnered from past students. It irked me at first but I realized that he was doing what the best teachers do, like my own mother and father, he learned from his students. I have come to respect the great lengths he goes to, to preserve a way of thought and life which he brings to his writings.
I honestly cannot tell you if he would remember me from that class if you asked him. But I would like to jokingly tell you now, that only after that class did he begin going by Joseph M. Marshall III.
I also count myself among the Native men who have deified Crazy Horse. He, along with my father are the two best men I have known and in a sense, never known. I still carry in my mind the image of the Rider, the Dreamer, the Warrior, the Lightening. Many writers, including myself, have taken our shots at writing the "Definitive" biography of Crazy Horse. Mostly with mixed results.
Mari Sandoz and Stephen Ambrose are the more famous for theirs. Lonesome Dove Writer Larry McMurtry’s short version for the Peguin Life Series has become a personal favorite. McMurtry writes that many historians "print the legend" and thus tries to avoid the myth. But this gives him little else to write about after dismissing the large volumes of histories out there. But his straight-forward attitude about it not being his history to write and his way with the turn of phrase has made it my number one book on Crazy Horse.
That is, until now.
Marshall’s book should be, no, needs to be listed right up there with Sandoz and Ambrose, maybe even above them. Because Marshall is not simply writing another biography on Crazy Horse, he is telling us the story of Tasunke Witko.
This book is not algow with twittery prose espousing Native-nature terminology, nor is it an exercise in showing how many Lakota words he can spell correctly. Marshall draws on a rich historical tapestry that is never in history books. He draws on the stories and tales that have been passed down to him through the years. What gives these stories credence is that Marshall’s grandfathers were the sons of Crazy Horse’s contemporaries. He lays out the vast cultural differences and sets the stage for change that Crazy Horse fought to prevent.
Most histories focus on the battles of Manifest Destiny and rarely covers the ground of pre-Oregon Trail contact. Through the stories Marshall paints a picture of Lakota life before the encroachment of whom he rightly deems European Immigrants. This is Lakota land that is being invaded and Marshall tells of what was at stake that made the Lakota fight hard to protect it. Marshall does what few writers do, places Crazy Horse in the cultural context of his times and shows the changing of the Lakota world that Crazy Horse was on hand for.
Some have found this book a bit over-reliant on Native "word-of-mouth", but that is just another reflection of the cultural differences that Marshall plays out in this book. Just as whites need books to look to, to assure their histories happened, Natives have the old people, the storytellers, the scars, the experience to prove our histories are real, and that is no different to us than whites needing books. (Which is why American Society treats their elders like used books, I guess, they tuck them away never to be read or they throw them out.)
Here is a Native author, instructor and researcher writing a biography of a man that has been relegated to the white man’s history books. He is telling as accurate a story as any of the non-Native biographers yet his is criticized for not being over-reliant on the non-Native perspective.
The non-Native historians tend to push either the Warrior Savage who learned everything about fighting from the whites, and that was the ONLY way he could have defeated Custer and Crook, or the Mystical Savage who is lost in a haze of dreams and smoke, only fought when his dreams told him to. Here, Marshall plays out the cultural differences mainly though how each side dealt with war. Marshall conveys a Lakota warfare dependent on landscape, knowing the territory and your own abilities. Also, how Lakota warfare, which brave acts and honor were highly prized, was different from the non-Native form of war, which was to kill as many of the enemy as possible, inflict a lot of damage. This was the most eye-opening for me.
What I love about Marshall’s telling is that he is able to get under the layers of mythology and gives us a look at how Crazy Horse must have lived as a boy, as a fighter and as a man. Crazy Horse experiences the same things we all do, love, death, and conflict. But Marshall does not play them up for ideology, but firmly roots them in the Lakota lifestyle.
Marshall's book made me think of my own father, who was no less a warrior than Crazy Horse. My father did what he felt he had to do in the circumstances of the times. He experienced love, death, and conflict, yet counted that as a part of life. That was this books greatest gift to me. Marshall presented a legend as a man and helped me understand my father a bit more.
All sons have an idealized perspective of their fathers. No one ever really believes that their parents had full and complete lives BEFORE becoming our parents. Marshall’s book brought me closer to that understand because his telling of the life of Tasunke Witko, showed me that there were circumstances, a way of living, of loving and dying, of conflict with enemies, a way the world was before Tasunke Witko became Crazy Horse the Legend, before my father became a parent.
So, now I will place this on my shelf next to the other biographies of Crazy Horse knowing in at least, in this one book, I have a Lakota story of Tasunke Witko.
Highly Recommended
1 comment:
I came to you through your review and I really like what you have to say, Thank you!
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