Sculptures and Stories

The Story of Crazy Walking Buffalo Runner

The buffalo hunters’ fastest horses were pets, who trotted along and played until the hunt began. They were adrenalin freaks, who enjoyed the chase and who sometimes met sudden death, when the horned beast gouged them. One famous buffalo runner known to the people of Sitting Bull was called Crazy Walking. This is my sculpture of Crazy Walking.

I read the account of the end of Crazy Walking’s life, in a book written by Indian Agent James McLaughlin, “My Friend the Indian, The Greta Buffalo Hunt at Standing Rock, page 97–116. McLaughlin took 3,000 Lakota’s on the last ceremonial hunt after he had incarcerated Sitting Bull in Fort Randall in 1882. The herd was the last 80,000 buffalo left in North America and I’m telling this story to 4 or 5,000 people at the Hettinger Centennial in Southwestern North Dakota, July 3 through July 6, 2007. I will play the role of James McLaughlin and be publicly confessing my sins and finally admitting that “I James McLaughlin, Indian Agent, had ordered the murder of Sitting Bull.”

“Crazy Walking” the Buffalo Runner

Crazy Walking hauled James McLaughlin to glory at the prayer service. He carried McLaughlin to the finish line in a horse race of 400 buffalo hunters. On the first day of the hunt McLaughlin was thrown and Crazy Walking ran with the last herd of buffalo. His spirit was with them. Within 3 years the last herd of North American bison was destroyed by the Tongue and Hide Hunters, who would kill the buffalo, take their tongues and hides, and leave the meat to rot, while Sitting Bull’s people starved.

In a spiritual response, Sitting Bull welcomed a Christianized native called Wovoka, who preached the Book of Revelations, promised that Jesus would come destroy the evil men and bring back to life those slain and renew the earth, buffalo and all of the other animals.

Sitting Bull was ordered to stop the messiah craze. He asserted his right to believe. He asserted his First Amendment rights. And, in response, General Sheridan ordered Sitting Bull taken in. Buffalo Bill offered to do it peaceably. McGlaughlin ordered him arrested and brought in dead or alive.

After Sitting Bull resisted he was shot to death. The surviving leader(name to be furnished later) led those who prayed for the return of Jesus to Wounded Knee, where they were surrounded by the 7th Calvary and they were massacred. That most grevious wound to Native America was inflicted in 1890.

Western Hemisphere Natives Extermination Story Embodied

This sculpture presents the story of the genocide and resurrection of the Buffalo Peoples. Columber began the Western Hemisphere Genocide in 1492. The slide toward genocide of the North American Natives was finally halted in 1889. Nevertheless, massacres like Wounded Knee continued. The cultural genocide of the North American peoples has not ended.

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