Crazy Horse and Anti-Colonial Resistance
It is believed that Crazy Horse placed this signature on a bluff near Ash Creek just before the Battle of Greasy Grass in 1876. The image depicts a snake, representing the enemy or the United States, pursuing a horse with a lightning bolt on its flank, the signature of Crazy Horse.
This is the first of several posts about Tasunka Witko, reflecting on Joseph Marshall III’s book, The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History. It is the most exemplary biography of Tasunka Witko. The narrative is presented from the perspective of the Lakota people and is derived from the oral histories of Lakota elders.
In recent months, I have focused on reexamining Lakota texts and influential figures who have significantly impacted my perspective. A recent podcast interview with Palestinian author Susan Abulhawa prompted me to revisit one of the most mythologized and often misunderstood leaders of Lakota resistance, Tasunka Witko—commonly referred to as “His Horse Is Crazy” or simply “Crazy Horse.”
The killing of Palestinian resistance leader Yahya Sinwar, as noted by Susan, bore similarities to historical figures like the Lakota war leader Tasunka Witko, known as Crazy Horse to his enemies. She reflected on how Sinwar endured days without food, continuously engaging in combat until his demise, which occurred after he launched grenades at enemy soldiers. In an act of ultimate defiance, he also threw a stick at a surveillance drone that recorded his final moments before a tank shell blew up the building, taking him with it.
Sinwar’s last days were marked by hardship; he did not seek refuge in a tunnel or remain surrounded by captives, as suggested by his adversaries. Instead, he faced his enemies directly, sometimes yards away. This sharply contrasts with the leaders of the opposing forces, who sought to eliminate him, as they have entrenched themselves in underground bunkers, shielded by the protective reach of the United States.
Susan mentioned that Crazy Horse also fasted, receiving spiritual guidance and a vision that contributed to the success of his battlefield exploits. He led his men not from the safety of the rear but by engaging the enemy, favoring his war club in close combat. However, their deaths differ: Sinwar was killed by an unknown enemy, while Crazy Horse fell to a fellow Lakota after he had previously surrendered.
What Sinwar and Crazy Horse hold most in common is their spirit of resistance as anti-colonial fighters, equally villainized and mystified by the forces that sought their annihilation. Their stature as myths reveals more about their colonizer than about their humanity. The culture of genocide makes a double move. While it demonizes the people it seeks to destroy as primitive savages, it also attributes superhuman powers to them.
The portrayals of brutality and depictions of merciless violence obscure the motives for resistance, thereby attempting to frame genocide as self-defense and a rational response to an irrational opponent. Anti-colonial resistance gets framed as led by “fundamentalists,” “hostiles,” “extremists,” or “terrorists” — that is, in other words, people who react and respond to their conditions in irrational or extreme ways beyond the bounds of what is considered “civilized.” This purposefully obscures the material and objective conditions of resistance. At the same time, the colonizer projects invulnerability and superiority. Starving Lakotas and Palestinians, without the weaponry and material wealth of their opponents, still represent an existential threat. Why? Because they continue to draw breath. Their heartbeats are constant reminders of the precarity of the settler project.
This analogy may resonate more with some in the context of Palestine. However, if Lakota people are not still viewed as a threat, why do we see such high levels of repression within our communities? There is evident political repression against Water Protectors. A slew of anti-protest and critical infrastructure laws have progressed through state legislatures, criminalizing Indigenous dissent in the aftermath of the 2016 Standing Rock movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Natali Sergovia, the executive director of the Water Protector Legal Collective, referred to the recent lawsuit against Greenpeace as a “proxy war” against Indigenous sovereignty. The less evident is the continued criminalization and punishment of ostensibly “non-political” acts.
It’s not just the high rates of incarceration among and police violence against Lakotas — and American Indian people, in general — but also the extremely low life expectancy. For example, 58 is the median life expectancy of American Indians from my home state, South Dakota, more than two decades shorter than that of white people. Such a severe disparity in other parts of the world might justify calls for “regime change” or “humanitarian intervention.” In our system, the overseers of such immiseration, like former South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, are promoted to the highest levels of government, as head of the Department of Homeland Security. We can link these deaths to the conditions colonialism still imposes despite having moved away from industrial extermination and slaughter yet profoundly connected to the current regime of repression against pro-Palestinian students and university faculty and the intensified war against migrants.
This structural elimination of Lakota people today is directly linked to the same war waged against Crazy Horse during his day. This war has expanded with the U.S. empire and its homicidal alliance with zionism.
Crazy Horse may not have pursued the warrior’s path had the United States not invaded his homelands. He might have followed his father’s path as a spiritual leader and healer. Yet, there is something material and profound about the supposed supernatural powers received from his vision that guided his path as a resistance leader. In that dream, enemy bullets and arrows rained down Crazy Horse but were unable to harm him while he charged mounted on a horse. But the hands of his own people rose from behind him, grabbing and pulling him down.
The dream apparently granted him immunity from the weapons of his enemies but not from those of his own people. In today’s parlance, we might see Crazy Horse’s dream as envisioning the counterinsurgency campaign against the Lakotas. U.S. military leaders and Indian agents fomented and exploited divisions within Lakota society after imposing conditions of starvation, scarcity, and deprivation. Colonization wasn’t just an external enterprise that had to be forced upon recalcitrant Lakotas; it was internalized, turning relatives against each other.
Yahya Sinwar sitting in a chair atop the ruins of his home.
Yahya Sinwar sitting in a chair in the final moments before being killed.
Yahya Sinwar’s enemies used the images of his final moments to diminish his stature. It had the opposite effect. Equally iconic were the images of him smiling defiantly while sitting in an upholstered chair atop the rubble of his home, which had been bombed by Zionists, as well as his final moments spent in the chair, hurling a stick in a last act of resistance. A similar case could be made about the killing of Crazy Horse. He was one of the few Lakota leaders who never signed a treaty. (Tatatanka Iyotake, Sitting Bull, had also never signed a treaty and was also killed at the hands of his own people.)
Assassinations are meant to serve as lessons for those choosing the path of resistance. They are meant to make mortal ideas that are immortal and cannot be killed. The killing of Crazy Horse may not have inspired armed resistance right away. His life, nonetheless, has served as a model of total resistance and embodying the virtues of Lakol Wicoun, the Lakota way of life, that inspired generations of Lakotas and allies since. It is no coincidence that “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse” became the rallying cry of the American Indian Movement when it took up arms in defense of Lakota homelands and declared independence from the United States in 1973.
Crazy Horse’s body was destroyed, but his spirit lives on.
This piece first appeared on Nick Estes’s Substack, Red Scare, you can subscribe here.
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