September 5, 1877: The Execution of Crazy Horse

Crazy Horse was never photographed, due to

a Native superstition that photography captured the subject's soul.

A Mormon missionary made this sketch after interviewing

Crazy Horse's sister, and she claimed the depiction was accurate.

September 5, 1877: The Lakota warrior Crazy Horse is executed -- martyred -- at Fort Robinson, Nebraska.

It's not clear how old he was, but, based on the sources available at the time, the likeliest year of his birth was 1840, making him 36 or 37 at the time of his death. He was born to the Lakota branch of the Sioux tribe of Native Americans, near Rapid Creek, in what is now South Dakota. He was born with the name Čháŋ Óhaŋ, meaning ''Among the Trees," indicating that he was "one with nature." Eventually, he was given the same name as his father: Tȟašúŋke Witkó, meaning ''His Horse Is Crazy.'' 

A cousin, Black Elk, described him in the 1932 book Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux:

He was a queer man and would go about the village without noticing people or saying anything. In his own teepee he would joke, and when he was on the warpath with a small party, he would joke to make his warriors feel good. But around the village, he hardly ever noticed anybody, except little children. All the Lakotas like to dance and sing, but he never joined a dance, and they say nobody ever heard him sing. But everybody liked him, and they would do anything he wanted or go anywhere he said.

(In this case, "queer" meant "strange," not "homosexual." Crazy Horse is known to have married at least once, and fathered at least one child, a daughter. And a story dating to before his marriage reports that a tribesman once caught Crazy Horse with his wife.)

In 1864, after the Third Colorado Cavalry decimated Cheyenne and Arapaho tribesmen in the Sand Creek Massacre, Oglala and Minneconjou bands allied with them against the U.S. military. Crazy Horse was present at the Battle of Platte Bridge (near present-day Casper, Wyoming) and the Battle of Red Buttes (on the North Platte River in Nebraska) in July 1865. Both were Native victories.

On December 21, 1866, he led a group of 10 men who killed 81 men at Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming, in what became known as the Fetterman Massacre. His reputation grew from there, peaking on June 25, 1876, when his troops crushed the U.S. Army's 7th Cavalry, killing 268 of them, including their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel George Custer, at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana.

The U.S. government's reaction was to put an end to the threat by any means necessary. They cut off supply lines, separating the Lakota from the buffalo, their main sources of food and clothing, for the Winter. The idea was to starve and freeze them into surrendering. It worked: Crazy Horse took his men to the Red Cloud Agency, located near Fort Robinson, Nebraska, on May 5, 1877.

On September 5, the Agency received orders that Crazy Horse was to be arrested and taken under the cover of darkness to Division Headquarters. Once there, Crazy Horse struggled with the guard, made up entirely of Natives. He was stabbed with a bayonet by one of the members of the guard. He died that night. His remains were turned over to his elderly parents. His final resting place is not known to the white man.

Historian Ian Frazier wrote of him:

Even the most basic outline of his life shows how great he was, because he remained himself from the moment of his birth to the moment he died; because [though] he may have surrendered... he was never defeated in battle; because, although he was killed, even the Army admitted he was never captured. His dislike of the oncoming civilization was prophetic. Unlike many people all over the world, when he met white men he was not diminished by the encounter.

In response to the carving of Mount Rushmore, near Rapid City, South Dakota, which Natives consider a desecration of one of their holy lands, Korczak Ziolkowski, who had worked on it, designed the Crazy Horse Memorial. He died in 1982, early in the moument's construction. When the head was completed in 1998, it was 87 feet high, compared to the 60-foot-high faces on Rushmore, 17 miles away. 

The Memorial in 2020

When finished, if it ever is, the Memorial will show Crazy Horse on a horse, pointing with his left arm. At last check, the hand, arm, shoulder, hairline, and top of the horse's head were anticipated to be finished by 2037.

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September 5, 1877 was a  Wednesday. At the time, the only professional sports league in North America was baseball's National League. And no games were played that day.

February 28, 1973: The Wounded Knee Occupation

February 28, 1973: A group of 200 Oglala Sioux members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) seized the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, located within the borders of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

The town had been the site of the last major conflict between the U.S. government and Native Americans, in 1890, when the U.S. Army shot and killed 250 Natives in one of the worst massacres, committed by any side, in American history.

The occupation was launched after the Oglala Sioux were unable to remove the Oglala Reservation Chairman, Dick Wilson, whom they accused of corruption since his election the year before. Frank Fools Crow, the senior elder of the Oglala, and AIM leader Russell Means led the occupation. Fools Crow later said, "We called our brothers and AIM to help us because we were being oppressed and terrorized. They answered our call."

Frank Fools Crow

The occupation lasted for 71 days, until an agreement was reached between federal officials and a Lakota delegation, which included Fools Crow. Following the occupation, violence increased on the reservation, with residents reporting attacks by Wilson's henchmen. More than 50 of his opponents allegedly died violently in the next three years. He was finally defeated in the next election, in 1976. He was never tried for any crime, and died in 1990.

Fools Crow continued to lead his people. On September 5, 1975, he accepted an invitation to recite the opening prayer before a session of the U.S. Senate. He delivered it in the Lakota language, and it was translated into English. He died in 1989.

Means retired as AIM leader in 1988, saying the organization had achieved its goals. He continued his activism, and ran for President and for Governor of New Mexico on the ticket of the Libertarian Party. He also became an actor, appearing in films as Native heroes Jim Thorpe and Sitting Bull, and was the voice of Powhatan, Chief of the Virginia tribes and father of the title character, in Disney's animated Pocahontas films, even though they flew in the face of history. He lived until 2012.

Russell Means

Wounded Knee is far from any major city. It's 104 miles southeast of Mount Rushmore, 350 miles northeast of Denver and over 400 miles northwest of Omaha. In fact, the Little Bighorn Battlefield is about 350 miles to the northwest, so it's closer to that than to Denver, the closest major league city.

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February 28, 1973 was a Wednesday. Hockey star Eric Lindros was born.

Baseball and football were out of season. There were 4 games played in the NBA:

* The Boston Celtics beat the Golden State Warriors, 118-111 at the Boston Garden.

* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Baltimore Bullets, 102-96 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia. This was a rare win for the Sixers, undergoing the worst season in NBA history: 9-73. Phil Chenier scored 36 in defeat for the Bullets, who moved a few miles down Interstate 95 to the suburbs of Washington, D.C. the next season.

* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 124-110 at the Milwaukee Arena. In 1974, it was renamed the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center and Arena, or "The MECCA." Since 2014, it has been named the UW-Panther Arena. Spencer Haywood scored 36 for the Sonics, but it wasn't enough.

* And the Kansas City-Omaha Kings beat the Phoenix Suns, 109-107 at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix. Nate "Tiny" Archibald of the Kings led all pro scorers on the night, with 41 points.

There were 4 games played in the American Basketball Association:

* The New York Nets beat the Memphis Tams, 115-108 at the Nassau Coliseum.

* The Kentucky Colonels beat the Virginia Squires, 117-97 at Freedom Hall in Louisville.

* The Indiana Pacers beat the San Diego Conquistadors, 109-106 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum (now the Corteva Coliseum) in Indianapolis.

* And the Carolina Cougars beat the Denver Rockets, 104-96 at the Auditorium Arena in Denver. The Rockets became the Denver Nuggets for the 1974-75 season.

There were 6 games played in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers and the Chicago Black Hawks played to a tie, 3-3 at Madison Square Garden.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Los Angeles Kings, 5-2 at the Montreal Forum.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Vancouver Canucks, 7-2 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* The Pittsburgh Penguins beat the St. Louis Blues, 4-2 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh.

* The Detroit Red Wings beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 6-5 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

* The Minnesota North Stars beat the California Golden Seals, 7-3 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* And the New York Islanders, the Boston Bruins, the Buffalo Sabres and the Atlanta Flames were not scheduled.

There was 1 game played in the World Hockey Association: The Houston Aeros beat the Alberta Oilers, 3-2 in overtime at the Sam Houston Coliseum in Houston.