What do You think about Crazy Horse: A Life (2005)?
McMurtry paints a stark but engaging (like the Great Plains themselves) portrait of Crazy Horse and the time and place in which he lived. He allows both the real man and the legend to share the stage, giving us a impression of who Crazy Horse might have been (because we'll never know the truth) and who people thought he was. The story of Native Americans during the 19th century is definitely one of incredible sadness, misunderstanding, greed, power politics and bigotry, skating along the line of genocide. The life and death of Crazy Horse is a tragedy in the highest, saddest sense. McMurtry says his last days, hours and minutes could have been written by the Greek or Shakespeare, which is definitely true; his romantic relationships could have been written by Danielle Steele. McMurtry is a powerful wordsmith, fully worth of writing a biography of someone who should be considered a American tragic hero.
—Shawn Thrasher
In the early 90s my family visited the statue that is being carved into a South Dakota mountain in his image and the National Park on the location of the Little Big Horn Battle in Montana, in which Crazy Horse alongside a coalition of tribes were victorious against the US Cavalry, otherwise known as "Custer's Last Stand." Afterwards, I wondered what about this particular man warranted all of the mythology that has surrounded him in the last two centuries. McMurty's book offers few answers, and in fairness, it seems like anything more definitive would be historical fiction. What he does offer is an explanation for the fanfare surrounding Crazy Horse. By all accounts he was a man who had no interest in following the conventions of others: to some extent he didn't fully conform to some of the propriety demanded of his own people, who were on the whole much more willing to accept nonconformity than the European Americans of the 19th century. McMurty observes that his iconoclast nature makes him the ideal hero for a people whose other great warriors (ie. Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, et al) were subdued on reservations; Crazy Horse, on the other hand, died resisting arrest and refused to relinquish his way of life. While I think McMurty treats his subject objectively, I can't give this biography a 5th star because I was perplexed by the comparisons to native struggles against other colonizing powers (ie. comparisons and quotes from individuals in India and New Guinea resisting their colonizers) -- something about writing that a particular Native American tribe's tactics or objections to Americans invading their territory is just like this other minority group's problems seems reductionist.
—Michelle
This is a short book (140 pages, with shorter pages than normal), but it took me a long time to read. I have loved every McMurtry novel that I have read, but this history was a bit dull. It's not all McMurtry's fault; Crazy Horse is a difficult topic. The problem is that little can be said conclusively about the famous Oglala warrior. His companions didn't keep records, so most of the recorded history about Crazy Horse comes from his encounters with whites and interviews with his friends, but this presents problems. A) he avoided whites and B) most of the interviews of his friends took place many years after his death, and they were highly inconsistent. So this book gets bogged down describing things that might have happened, places where Crazy Horse might have been, things he might have said, and events that Crazy Horse did not participate in but were somehow related to him.Although little is really known about him, Crazy Horse is significant, mostly as a legendary hero, as a symbol of the end of the Native American way of life. The big things we know are:-he was charitable-he never compromised with whites-he kicked butt at Little Big Horn, and other smaller battles-he had a tragic death, betrayed by his own peopleI don't particularly recommend this book. Wikipedia will probably suffice.
—Chris
