He did not participate in some of the typical activities of warriors seeking public recognition.

He gave away his possessions rather than accumulating them.

He was, by multiple accounts gathered from people who knew him, not conventionally demonstrative.

The name Crazy Horse — the Lakota name for a horse that is spirited, wild, unbroken — was given to him by his father when he had proven himself in the manner the community recognized.

It was a name that carried the sense of something untameable, something that moved by its own internal direction rather than the direction others tried to impose.

In the years of the greatest pressure on the Lakota nation — the 1860s and 1870s, when the combination of buffalo slaughter, settler expansion, gold discovery in the Black Hills, and military campaigns was transforming the world the Lakota had inhabited — Crazy Horse emerged as the primary military leader of those who resisted.