THE LIFE AND DEATH OF CRAZY HORSE

A spectacular match: Freedmans tale of the great Oglala Siouxs career is coupled with 50 black-and-white pictographs done by a tribal historian. By all accounts, Crazy Horse was a strange, solitary, ascetic man, and he is still revered as much for his private generosity as for his military exploits. Freedman (Kids at Work, 1994, etc.) depicts him as a classic, mythic hero, describing with dash and drama the vision that shaped his reckless courage, his role in the Fetterman Fight, at the Little Big Horn, and in countless smaller engagements, his stubborn resistance to the wars changing tide, and the ambiguous circumstances of his death. Unlike Judith St. George (Crazy Horse, 1994), Freedman plays down his subjects bloodthirsty side, but both authors present balanced, convincing accounts of the prejudice, confusion, and simple incomprehension that fueled the Indian Wars, and reaffirm the central role that Crazy Horse played in them. As was true of Freedman's Indian Winter (1992), illustrations created not long after the events they depict give this a unique authority; Amos Bad Heart Bull (1869-1913) was a cousin of Crazy Horse, and his drawings, done in the 1890s, are based on Sioux witnesses personal accounts. (Biography. 11+)