Peter Matthiessen - In the Spirit of Crazy Horse

The first solidly documented account of the U.S. governments renewed assault upon American Indians that began in the 1970s.

Dee Brown, Chicago Sun-Times

By the time I had turned the final page, I felt angry enough... to want to shout from the rooftops, Wake up, America, before its too damned late! For Matthiessen, in this extraordinary, complex work, powerfully propounds several large and disturbing themes which the white majority in America will ignore at extreme peril.

Nick Kotz, The Washington Post

A giant of a book... indescribably touching, extraordinarily intelligent.

Carolyn See, The Los Angeles Times Book Review

The reappearance of Peter Matthiessens In the Spirit of Crazy Horse... is a major political and legal, as well as literary, event.

Bill Farrell, New York Newsday

Meticulously researched... A courageous document.

Howard Norman, The Boston Globe

A book of enormous importance... You have to believe that Crazy Horse would have loved its renegade spirit and unflinching reach for the truth.

The Milwaukee Journal

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse is really about contemporary America and the way American law is seen through the eyes of American Indians.... It is one of those rare books that permanently change ones consciousness about important, yet neglected, facets of our history.

The New York Times Book Review

Raises painful, imperative questions for a nation that prides itself as a global champion of human rights.

USA Today

For raising these crucial moral questions, and for doing so within the context of the American Indian struggle for self-determination, Peter Matthiessen deserves the greatest possible reading audience. He is also an excellent journalist, drawing heavily upon people personally involved on both sides.

Chicago Tribune

Mr. Matthiessens sympathies are evident, but he is neither gullible nor uncritical. He realistically portrays individuals, landscapes, customs, and problems that, though wholly American, are unfamiliar to most American citizens.

The New Yorker

One of the most dramatic demonstrations of endemic American racism that has yet been writtena powerful, unsettling book that will force even the most ethno-pious reader to inspect the limits of his understanding.

The New York Review of Books

An important and angry book that belongs on the shelf containing A Century of Dishonor, Custer Died for Your Sins, and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

Wallace Stegner, The New Republic

Peter Matthiessen (19272014) is the only writer who has ever won the National Book Award in both fiction and nonfiction. His travels as a naturalist and explorer have resulted in more than a dozen books on natural history and the environment, including The Snow Leopard, his first NBA winner. Matthiessens equally important career in fiction has produced a collection of stories and nine novels, among them At Play in the Fields of the Lord (an NBA finalist) and the Everglades trilogy (Killing Mister Watson, Lost Mans River, and Bone by Bone), which, rewritten and distilled, were published in one volume in 2008 under the title Shadow Country, winner of the NBA in fiction. Shadow Country was also the 2010 recipient of the William Dean Howells Medal, given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for the most distinguished American novel published during the previous five years. Matthiessen was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His final novel, In Paradise, was published just after his death in 2014.

PETER MATTHIESSEN

IN THE SPIRIT OF

CRAZY HORSE

WITH AN AFTERWORD BY MARTIN GARBUS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

375 Hudson Street

New York, New York 10014

USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

penguin.com

A Penguin Random House Company

First published in the United States of America by The Viking Press, 1983

This edition with an epilogue by Peter Matthiessen and an afterword by Martin Garbus first published by Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1991

Published in Penguin Books 1992

Copyright 1980, 1983, 1991 by Peter Matthiessen

Afterword copyright 1991 Martin Garbus

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

An excerpt from this book originally appeared in The New Yorker.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Matthiessen, Peter.

In the spirit of Crazy Horse.

Includes index.

1. Indians of North AmericaGovernment relations1835. 2. American Indian Movement. 3. Oglala IndiansGovernment relations. 4. Peltier, Leonard. I. Title.

E93.M46 1983 305.897073 82-8466

ISBN 978-1-101-66317-2

Maps by David Lindroth

For all who honor and defend those people who live in the wisdom of Indian way

We did not ask you white men to come here. The Great Spirit gave us this country as a home. You had yours. We did not interfere with you. The Great Spirit gave us plenty of land to live on, and buffalo, deer, antelope and other game. But you have come here; you are taking my land from me; you are killing off our game, so it is hard for us to live. Now, you tell us to work for a living, but the Great Spirit did not make us to work, but to live by hunting. You white men can work if you want to. We do not interfere with you, and again you say, why do you not become civilized? We do not want your civilization! We would live as our fathers did, and their fathers before them.

Crazy Horse (Lakota)

Many people, past and present, Indian and white, have made important contributions to this book; I wish to thank the following for useful interviews and/or information, with apologies to anyone I may have forgotten.

Al Trimble

Archie Fire Lame Deer

Bill Hazlett

Bill Means

Bob Burnette

Bob Robideau

Bruce Ellison

Chief Eagle Feather

(Bill Schweigman)

(deceased)

Clyde Bellecourt

Dennis Banks

Dino Butler

Dr. Garry Peterson

Ellen Moves Camp

Ernie Peters

Evan Hultman

Evelyn Bordeaux (deceased)

Gerry Spence

Jacqueline Huber

James Leach

James Roberts

Janet McCloud

Jean Bordeaux

Jim Calio

Joe Eagle Elk

Joe Flying By

John Lowe

John Trudell

Judi Gedye

June Little

Karen Northcott