He is known today as the great Indian warrior, who defeated General Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, yet Crazy Horse was an enigma even among his Lakota people, and his death a year later while in federal custody remains a controversial mystery. A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and the author of The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA, intelligence expert Thomas Powers finds a world of similarly complex and clandestine relationships among Indian nations and the United States in the 19th century. He mines accounts of those who were closest to Crazy Horse—many of them his rivals or opponents—to chronicle the final months and days of his life.
"A richly textured account of clashing civilizations on the Great Plains during the late 19th century ... carefully and elegantly wrought.... Powers tells us much that is revealing and moving about the Sioux in their last days as free warriors."—NYTBR
