The Narrative Problem With Crazy Horse

One of the challenges in writing about Crazy Horse is the narrative problem that his legend creates: he is so famous, and the legend so well-established, that the specific historical person is sometimes hard to see behind the accumulated stories.

The legend includes elements that are either unverified or later additions: the claim that he was never photographed (which may be true or may be a later invention), the specific spiritual powers attributed to him (which may reflect genuine Lakota understanding of his abilities or may be mythological accretion), the romantic image of the solitary warrior (which does not capture the social and political complexity of his actual position within the Lakota community).

The historical person is harder to know than the legend, partly because the documentary sources were created by outsiders and partly because the Lakota community’s own knowledge of him is selectively accessible.