EPISODE 10 Crazy Horse (Part 4)

July 10, 2016 Daniele Bolelli

“In your presence they feel small, and their baseness glimmers and glows against you with hidden vengeance.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche

“Let me go, my friend—you have hurt me enough.”
— Crazy Horse

In this last chapter of the Crazy Horse series, we’ll see Crazy Horse hunting miners in the Black Hills, a Lakota leader shaking hands with one hand while holding his guts in with the other, fighting at Slim Buttes, cutting horses open and hiding babies inside them to keep them from freezing, saying farewell to Sitting Bull, surrendering, Crook and his lies, the jealousy of petty chiefs, a hot ‘brown eyed girl’, a shining example of Lakota-American cooperation in setting up a murder, the end of history, Crazy Horse Mountain.

This Crazy Horse series is dedicated to James R. Weddell (“Ista To’paicagopi”), a great friend and the subject of Dakota Warrior: The Story of James R. Weddell

This episodes is sponsored by http://www.geeknationtours.com In addition to offering tours to many locations that would be of interest to fans of history, next summer they will lead a tour to the Little Bighorn Battlefield in Montana, site of the 1876 epic clash between the 7th Cavalry and the Lakota and Cheyenne forces.
Also, please show some love to my regular sponsors by shopping for supplements, special foods, clothing and exercise equipment at http://www.onnit.com/history and receive a 10% discount.

For those of you who may be interested, here is a lecture series I created about Taoist philosophy: http://www.danielebolelli.com/downloads/taoist-lectures/

EPISODE 9 Crazy Horse (Part 3)

June 15, 2016 Daniele Bolelli

“Hold on, my friends! Be strong! Remember the helpless! This is a good day to die!”
— Crazy Horse

Everything we have seen so far in Crazy Horse’s life was a warm-up. In Episode 9, things really heat up: leadership, a legend in intertribal warfare, a bison apocalypse, Black Buffalo Woman, a bullet in the face, heartbreak sets up home in Crazy Horse’s tepee, drowning pain into an ocean of blood, taking on the Northern Pacific Railroad, round one with George Armstrong Custer, the thieves’ road, fighting on—in the face of hopelessness, Sun Dancing, against the Army at Rosebud and at the Little Bighorn. Plus, the story of the poor man who decided it was a good day to go hunting ducks, and instead run into Crazy Horse.

This Crazy Horse series is dedicated to James R. Weddell (“Ista To’paicagopi”), a great friend and the subject of Dakota Warrior: The Story of James R. Weddell

For those of you who may be interested, here is a lecture series I created about Taoist philosophy: http://www.danielebolelli.com/downloads/taoist-lectures/

EPISODE 8 Crazy Horse (Part 2)

May 23, 2016 Daniele Bolelli

“There were many bullets, but there were more arrows—so many that it was like a cloud of grasshoppers all above and around the soldiers”
— Fire Thunder

In Episode 8, we pause the blow by blow narration of Crazy Horse’s life to focus on the larger context: the war between Lakota & Cheyenne and the United States in the mid-1860s. In this episode: things heat up with battles at Platte River Station and Red Buttes, “the yellow metal that makes the wasichus crazy”, just for fun Crazy Horse lets soldiers shoot at him, the 1866 State of the Union address misses the target by a mile, painting the Bozeman Trail red with blood, the head of a photographer rolling in a wagon, Captain Brown’s obsession with scalps, the winkte prophet, spirits could use math tutoring, making arrowheads from a frying pan, Lakota warriors honoring a soldier they killed, and after the battle… a dreadful silence, Hieronymus Bosch, and coyotes & crows. Also, General Sherman’s diplomatic reaction (“We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux even to their extermination—men, women and children”), the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, and setting fire to the forts.

This Crazy Horse series is dedicated to James R. Weddell (“Ista To’paicagopi”), a great friend and the subject of Dakota Warrior: The Story of James R. Weddell

For those of you who may be interested, here is a lecture series I created about Taoist philosophy:

EPISODE 7 Crazy Horse (Part 1)

May 3, 2016 Daniele Bolelli

You Don’t Get to Be a Legend by Being Normal

"What good is power if you cannot protect the ones you love?" muses Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones. I can’t think of a more appropriate question to discuss the life of 19th century Lakota hero Crazy Horse. His undeniable power as a warrior, in fact, didn’t spare him from having tragedy visit him time and time again. Taking place against the backdrop of the Lakota-U.S. conflict in the second half of the 1800s, his life was the quintessential tale where epic, heartbreak, bravery, and horror mix freely. His people were one of the last Native American tribes to stand in the face of American expansion. And Crazy Horse was always in the thick of the action, throughout over twenty years of intermittent warfare. In the first of this four-part series, we’ll cover the first couple of decades of Crazy Horse’s story, the first dramatic clash between Lakota warriors and the U.S. Army, vision quests, thunder-dreaming, earning the ‘Crazy Horse’ name, Sand Creek Massacre, and calling for revenge.

This Crazy Horse series is dedicated to James R. Weddell (“Ista To’paicagopi”)

This episodes is sponsored by www.geeknationtours.com In addition to offering tours to many locations that would be of interest to fans of history, next summer they will lead a tour to the Little Bighorn Battlefield in Montana, site of the 1876 epic clash between the 7th Cavalry and the Lakota and Cheyenne forces.

Also, please show some love to my regular sponsors by shopping for supplements, special foods, clothing and exercise equipment at http://www.onnit.com/history and receive a 10% discount.

For those of you who may be interested, here is a lecture series I created about Taoist philosophy: http://www.danielebolelli.com/downloads/taoist-lectures/