Photography took something of the person — the image, the representation — and put it in the hands of someone outside the person’s control.

Whether Crazy Horse understood photography in these terms is not documented.

What is documented is that he did not participate in the public self-presentation that other leaders of the period sometimes accepted as part of the political landscape.

The burial mystery is the final expression of this quality: his family refused to let anyone outside the community possess the knowledge of where he was.

His physical location — like his image — was not something they were willing to give to the people who had been trying to control, contain, and ultimately kill him.