Sioux Chief Crazy Horse is a holy man whom Black Elk considers "the greatest chief of all." Black Elk describes him as a little strange and not very sociable except with young children. As troubles increase between Indians and whites, Crazy Horse became one of the bravest of warriors, routing the cavalry during the Battle of the Rosebud (which Black Elk calls "the Fight with Three Stars"). Unlike Red Cloud, he refused to make concessions to the whites and to advocate the move to reservation life. He would not be part of a conciliatory group of Indians who met with the president in Washington, D.C., and he refused to agree to the U.S. Government's purchase of the Black Hills territory at any price. Convincing him that all that the white leadership desired was to talk, white soldiers persuaded him to come to Fort Robinson, where he was imprisoned. Soldiers killed him at the fort when he refused to surrender a knife that he was carrying. He was thirty years old. The Sioux deeply mourned his death; Black Elk and his father wept all night when they heard the news.
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