Little Killer on Crazy Horse
An Oglala Sioux's eye-witness account

Little Killer On Crazy Horse

I WAS WITH Crazy Horse all the time, like that (both forefingers pressed close together). But I was not with him when he was killed. If I had been, maybe I would have been killed too.

I was with Crazy Horse's people when they came out to him from Fort Robinson with tobacco and asked him to come in. Crazy Horse said, all right, he would come to Fort Robinson in the spring.

Crazy Horse moved in a little ahead of me. I trailed him when he was coming in and joined him. When we were a little distance from Fort Robinson, people came out bringing us meat. This meat was not buffalo meat but beef and other food. Crazy Horse told me that he was "captured" (i.e., had surrendered) and was going to Fort Robinson and from there on to Washington. The white people at Fort Robinson wanted our guns and horses-the things we fought with. Crazy Horse said, "All right, let them have them."

When he let the horses and fighting materials go, he wanted to go to Washington. He wanted to tell the president he had picked out a place where he wanted to stay. The place where he wanted to go was back over near the White (Big Horn) Mountains near the Tongue River. Crazy Horse had a white man carve a stone marker and gave it to my brother to take over and set up in that country where he wanted to go. This brother was named Club Man. He is dead now. If he were living, he would be chief of the whole tribe. He had married Crazy Horse's older sister. He had eight children, but none of them lived long enough to get allotments from the government.

When Crazy Horse first came to Fort Robinson, he wanted to go to Washington. But other Indians were jealous of him and afraid that if he went to Washington they would make him chief of all the Indians on the reservation. These Indians came to him and told him a lot of stories. After that he would not go there. So then he was arrested and killed.

I was not with Crazy Horse when he was killed. I had been sent to the Spotted Tail Agency with a message. When I got back, I heard about it.

Question: Were you at the Spotted Tail Agency at the time when Crazy Horse came there to see the agent, Capt. Jesse M. Lee?

Answer: No, I was not there then. I heard about that afterward.

Q: Can you tell us what Crazy Horse looked like?

A: Crazy Horse was a short, little man. He did not have black hair; he had brown hair like a white man's and a long straight nose. His eyes were black like a Lakota's.

Q: Can you tell us about Crazy Horse's family, to whom he was married and if he had any children?

A: All the time I knew Crazy Horse before he was "captured" he was married to one woman. Afterwards he was married to two, one a white woman (mixed breed). His first wife was Red Feather's sister. She was the only one by whom he had children, a little girl who died young. Crazy Horse's sister and her children all died before 1901.

According to R. Eli Paul, "Little Killer was connected with Crazy Horse by marriage, being the younger brother of Club Man, who married Crazy Horse's older sister. He was a member of Crazy Horse's band and a personal admirer, as his narrative testifies. He is approximately the same age as Short Buffalo [also known as Short Bull]."