Crazy Horse was one of the greatest leaders of the Sioux against the movement of white settlers to the plains. In general Sioux opinion he rated far above the other prominent Sioux, Sitting Bull and Red Cloud.
From 1865 to 1868, Crazy Horse attacked army detachments and helped destroy a chain of forts through Sioux territory in Wyoming, and in 1875 he led raids against gold prospectors on the Sioux reservation in the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory.
When the Indians refused to sell or leave the Black Hills, the U.S. government launched the Sioux War of 1876. Crazy Horse joined the Sioux medicine man Sitting Bull and on June 17 defeated General George Crook at Rosebud River in Montana. The two leaders then assembled a huge war camp on the Little Bighorn River. They were attacked by Lieutenant Colonel George Custer on June 25, and the Indians completely destroyed the U.S. troops in the battle that has since been known as Custer's Last Stand.
Crazy Horse then separated from Sitting Bull. After eluding pursuit in the mountains for almost a year, he brought his starving warriors into Red Cloud Agency in Nebraska in May 1877. The government, however, did not give Crazy Horse a separate agency as it had promised, and jealous Indians stirred up suspicion against him. He left the agency but was arrested and taken to nearby Fort Robinson, where he was killed by a U.S. soldier.
