“Black Elk Continues:
Crazy Horse whipped Three Stars on the Rosebud that
day, and I think he could have rubbed the soldiers out there.
He could have called many more warriors from the villages
and he could have rubbed the soldiers out at daybreak,
for they camped there in the dark after the fight.
He whipped the cavalry of Three Stars when they attacked
his village on the Powder that cold morning in the Moon of the
Snowblind [March]. Then he moved farther west to the Rosebud;
and when the soldiers came to kill us there, he whipped
them and made them go back. Then he moved farther west to
the valley of the Greasy Grass [Little Bighorn River].
We were in our own country all the time and we only wanted to be let alone.
The soldiers came there to kill us, and many got rubbed out.
It was our country and we did not want to have trouble.
We camped there in the valley along the south side of the
Greasy Grass before the sun was straight above; and this was,
I think, two days before the battle. It was a very big village
and you could hardly count the tepees. Farthest up the stream
toward the south were the Hunkpapas, and the Oglalas were
next. Then came the Minneconjous, the San Arcs, the Blackfeet,
the Shyelas; and last, the farthest towards the north, were
the Santees and Yanktonais. Along the side towards the east was
the Greasy Grass, with some timber along it, and it was running
full from the melting snow in the Bighorn Mountains.
If you stood on a hill you could see the mountains off to the south
and west. On the other side of the river, there were bluffs
and hills beyond. Some gullies came down through the bluffs.
On the westward side of us were lower hills, and there we grazed
our ponies and guarded them. There were so many they could
not be counted.”
Excerpted from “Black Elk Speaks”, as told through
John G. Niehardt, author.
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London.
Islander.