Crazy horse was the leader of the Lakota Sioux. He was celebrated for his battle skills as well as his efforts to preserve Native American traditions. He fought alongside Sitting Bull and others in the American-Indian wars, and was instrumental in the defeat of George Armstrong Custer’s forces at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. After surrendering to federal troops in 1877, he was killed amid rumors of a planned escape. Since his violent and controversial death, Crazy Horse, or Tashunka Witko, has become almost a mythical figure of the Great Plains Indian wars. The place and date of his birth are uncertain, but he was probably born in the early 1840s near Bear Butte on the Belle Fourche River in South Dakota. His father was a medicine man
