“Crazy Horse” was not a horse.
He was an Apache child who ran as fast as the wind. So his mother called him “Crazy Horse.” He rushed the seasons to grow up and defend the Apache. At night he dreamed of one thing: Being a strong bird and soaring into the belly of the sky to nest in one of its clouds. To pounce on the White Man who hunted his ancestors like deer and scattered them all over Arizona.
But fever chased his soul out of his body and it settled in a passing cloud while his body slept in a ditch. He never became that fierce bird.
It was three years before the Apache’s final defeat, when five thousand soldiers besieged Geronimo and dragged him and his men in shackles (Skeleton Canyon, Arizona, 4 September 1886).
All that is left of the Apache today are reservations on the margins of history.
. . .
Do dreams die with their dreamers? Or do they roam the night searching for someone to dream them again?
Perhaps they become nightmares and inhabit the nights of others.
Apaches are hovering now.
In distant skies.
The hunt continues.
. . .
2010
* “Crazy Horse” was the call-sign for several Apache helicopters shown in footage released by Wikileaks in 2010. They were firing missiles on Iraqi civilians, including children, and killing them, in Baghdad in 2007.