His family’s specific fear — stated in some accounts, strongly implied in others — was that the Army would take Crazy Horse’s head.

His reputation made him exactly the kind of figure whose skull an institution devoted to studying the skulls of Native American leaders might want.

This fear shaped the specifics of the burial.

The family wanted not just to bury the body but to ensure that the location could not be found and the body could not be disturbed.

The account that has become most widely cited — that the family buried him in a location they disclosed only to specific trusted people, and that those people carried the knowledge carefully and selectively — reflects a deliberate strategy of protective secrecy.

How well that strategy worked is evidenced by the fact that nearly 150 years later, the location remains publicly unknown.