Crazy Horse's Life

Early Life
Crazy Horse was a great American Indian leader. He led several different battles and raids. He was also admired by many different people. Crazy Horse had a mostly normal childhood. Crazy Horse was born in approximately the fall of 1840. He was named “in the Wilderness”, which was pronounced Cha-O-Ha. Crazy Horse was a Sioux. The Sioux is divided up into three different groups, the Dakota, Lakota, and the Nakota. From here the Sioux were divided up even more into smaller groups. Crazy Horse’s father was an Oglala Lakota. He was also an American Indian holy man, also named Crazy Horse. Crazy Horse’s mother was a Brule Lakota, and died while Crazy Horse was still young. With his mother gone, his older sister, younger brother, and aunt helped raise him. Growing up, Crazy Horse was an unusual child. He was very quiet, thoughtful, and liked to listen more than he spoke. He also had an odd appearance. He had a slender, narrow face, and light skin. He had brown wavy hair, which is why his nickname was “Curly” growing up. Because of his overall appearance, when white people saw him, they thought he might be a white child captured by Indians.


Vision Quest
Before a Sioux boy could become a man, he had to go on a vision quest. Being a Sioux, this meant that young Curly had to go on a vision quest. On a vision quest you go to a deserted place, alone. Throughout life, your vision is supposed to help guide and protect you. Vision quests are taken very seriously. The boy was supposed to prepare for a long time, usually with the help of a holy man. Curly went on his vision quest when he was about thirteen, however, he didn’t prepare. For two days he sat on a hilltop, not eating or sleeping. By then he was ready to leave. When he stood up to mount his horse, he felt dizzy, and weak. Then he saw a man sitting on a horse. This man was not wearing a war bonnet, but had just a single hawk feather in his hair. When the man spoke, he told Curly how to prepare for battle. He said that he should never wear a war bonnet or paint his horse. He said to instead, just sprinkle some dust on himself, and his horse. He also warned Curly to never take anything from his defeated enemies. Also in the vision, Curly saw arrows and bullets hit the rider, yet he did not die. He also saw large, white hail spots appear on his body, and a small lightning bolt on his cheek. When he returned home he told his father what he had seen. His father wasn’t happy about this, and thought that Curly should have prepared more. Nevertheless, he knew the vision was important to Curly, so his father told him to do as the rider had said, and dress as the rider had.


Growing Up
There were all sorts of things that Curly went through while growing up. As a child, his father had taught him how shoot a bow and arrow. He also learned how to ride horses and hunt. In the summer of 1855, Curly discovered first hand what the whites could do when he visited his Brule relatives at their camp. When he arrived he found that the camp had been burnt to pieces, and dead bodies everywhere. Curly didn’t go out with a war party until he was seventeen. He and some other Indians raided an Arapaho Indian Village. The Arapahos had some horses that the Sioux wanted. When the fight was over, the Sioux took the horses back to their village. Curly had fought very bravely that day. Because of this, Curly’s father, Crazy Horse, decided to pass his name on to his son. He then went by worm, and Curly went by Crazy Horse. Crazy Horse then took part in a number of raids. The other children around the village admired and wanted to be like Crazy Horse. Crazy Horse was also an outstanding hunter, as well as a fighter. Because of his great hunting skills, he often caught more buffalo then he needed. He gave this buffalo to the elderly, and to widows. In 1865 the Sioux conducted a number of raids. Crazy Horse often would act as a decoy in these raids. In a July raid, Crazy Horse fooled the 11th Calvary into an ambush over the Platte Bridge Station, where the soldiers had no chance to escape. Because of this performance, Crazy Horse was made a “shirt wearer.” He was given a special sheepskin shirt with 240 locks of hair sewn onto it. These stood for each of his brave deeds.

Love Life
Crazy Horse only had one true love on his life. When he was about twenty years old, he fell in love with a woman named Black Buffalo Woman. The problem was that a lot of other men wanted to marry her, too. Her uncle was Red Cloud. In the summer of 1862, Red Cloud led a raid against the Crow. This raid took about two weeks. When Crazy Horse returned back to the village, Black Buffalo Woman had already married a man named No Water. Some say that Red Cloud tricked Crazy Horse because he wanted Black Buffalo Woman to marry into a rich and important family. Years went by, but Crazy Horse still loved Black Buffalo Woman. In 1871, she agreed to run away with him. No water found out about this, and chased after them. When he found them, No Water shot Crazy Horse in the face. Crazy Horse however, had only been wounded, so his family nursed him back to health. In 1872, Crazy Horse accepted the fact that he would never be with Black Buffalo Woman. He ended up marrying a woman named Black Shawl. A year later they had a daughter named They-Are-Afraid-Of-Her. Unfortunately, she died of cholera while she was still young. Crazy Horse the kept to himself even more.


The Battle of Little Bighorn
The Battle of Little Bighorn is probably one of the most known about Indian battles, and Crazy Horse helped lead it. In 1875, the government said that they wanted Sioux land. In that same year the government declared that the Sioux had to go live on a reservation. They said that anyone that was not there by January 31, 1876 would be considered an enemy. Crazy Horse refused to go to the reservation. He and his people joined forces with sitting bull, and a lot of Sioux bands. By June 1876 they had over 10,000 Indians together. This large group of people set up camp in valley of Little Bighorn. The Indians had spotted Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer leading the 7th Calvary that day. Custer was known to hate Indians. He was also desperate for glory, and took foolish risks. He had been ordered not to attack if he found Indians, but to wait for more soldiers. Custer however wanted this victory badly because he thought it would help his career. Custer decided to divide the 7th Calvary up into three groups. The first group was lead by Major Marcus A. Reno, and was to attack from the south. The second group was led by Captain Fredrick Benteen. His group would scout the surrounding area, and make sure no Indians escaped. Custer led the third and final group. He and his men would travel along a steep ridge and down a ravine to a river. Once they crossed the river they would be in the northern half of the camp. Around 3:00pm, Reno and his men struck. They entered from the south, but didn’t make it to far into the camp. Within 20 minutes, many of Reno’s men were killed, and even more had been injured. Reno and his remaining men retreated. After this Crazy Horse quickly rode up north to defeat Custer. The Indians reached Custer before he even had crossed the river. The Indians spread out going in all directions. They had Custer’s men surrounded. The Indians killed all of Custer’s men, including Custer himself. After the battle the Indians split up and headed off in different directions, knowing that more soldiers would be on their way.


Later Life
Crazy Horse went on fighting the whites until the end. He would sometimes raid the miners in the Black Hills. In December of 1876, a man named Colonel Nelson Miles asked Crazy Horse to surrender. There had been several blizzards, and game was scarce. Crazy Horse’s people were cold and hungry. Crazy Horse wanted to hear what Miles had to say, so he sent 8 men to his fort. As the men approached the fort, the guards fired, only 3 survived. A peaceful agreement was now impossible for Crazy Horse, but things got worse. As the days passed the temperature dropped, sometimes below zero. Crazy Horse’s people were now desperate for food. In February of 1877, General George Crook urged Crazy Horse to surrender. He promised that Crazy Horse and his people would have their own reservation by Powder River. Crazy Horse agreed to this and surrendered. His people gave up all of their weapons. When they arrived at Fort Robinson, where Crook was, they were all ready to leave for their reservation. Unfortunately, this was just a broken promise; there was no reservation for them. Crazy Horse ended up living in a lodge outside of Fort Robinson. Many Indians, and white soldiers admired Crazy Horse at the fort. This made some of the other Indians leaders there jealous. They didn’t want Crazy Horse getting any special treatment. Because of this, they started a rumor saying that Crazy Horse was planning on running away, then fighting them. Also, No Water still despised Crazy Horse for running away with his wife, so he told General Crook that Crazy Horse was plotting to kill him. At word of this, Crazy Horse fled to his wife’s uncle’s reservation. Crazy horse wanted to tell Crook the truth that he hadn’t actually said any of that. Crook, however, no longer cared about what Crazy Horse had to say. The moment Crazy Horse arrived back at the fort; four Indians grabbed him and took him to the guardhouse. At this, Crazy Horse drew his knife, but before he could do anything, a white soldier stabbed him with a bayonet. Crazy Horse cried to the Indians, “Let me go, my friends. You have hurt me enough.” Crazy Horse died soon after that. Crazy Horse really was a great American Indian leader.

Lindy The Turtle Part 2

The frog quickly jumped in to save her. The frog had to swim farther down, and down. He finally grabbed hold of Lindy. After several seconds they emerged from the water. The frog pulled Lindy to the shore. It didn’t look like Lindy was breathing. The frog was starting to worry. He paced around. The frog started yelling for help. When no one answered, the frog was getting very worried. Then the frog remembered something he had learned in health class, CPR! The frog started to do the ‘heart part’ of CPR. By now he was getting even more worried.

He heard something rattling in the bushes. One of the teachers, Mrs. Colors (she was a chameleon), walked out. The frog ran over to her and asked her for help. When they had gotten back over to Lindy, she had rolled over on her belly. The frog was astonished at this sight. Mrs. Colors just laughed. The frog looked up at her and said, “Why are you laughing?”

Mrs. Colors said, “I am laughing because she doesn’t need CPR. She is just asleep, and if you put your ear close to her nose, you can hear her snoring.”

Right then the bell rang signaling that lunch was over. “Come on, lets get you two back to class,” said Mrs. Colors. They walked back to the school, with Mrs. Colors carrying Lindy. “I’m going to take Lindy to the nurse just to make sure she’s okay,” said Mrs. Colors. When Mrs. Colors got Lindy to the nurses office, the nurse told her to set Lindy down on a bed.

To Be Continued.....

Making it to State

Everyone has problems or challenges to overcome
What obstacles are you proud to have faced and conquered?

One challenge for me is training my horse. He is still fairly young and doesn’t always listen. This past year in 4-H, my goal was to make it to state fair. I knew very well that this was going to be difficult. In order to qualify for state you have to get at least one blue ribbon in every class and get a certain amount of points. This was going to be my second year working with Dakota (my horse), and my first year we didn’t do to well.

I started a normal schedule of riding late in January. Every Sunday and Wednesday I took lessons. My biggest challenge with him was picking up his correct lead, and not breaking. Some other things were going slower, keeping his head down, and just listening. I also had to work on my equitation. As the weeks progressed we got better and better.

However, when track season came around, this caused a dilemma. With track practice every day after school, I could no longer ride every day after school. Now, even though I couldn’t ride on school days, I still rode on the weekends.

Once track and school had ended, I rode almost every day. I did pretty well at the shows. When Fair came around I was so proud of Dakota. We won Grand Champion in both English and Western Pleasure. When I heard I had qualified for state, I was so happy.

I did good at state, and want to go back this year. I know, though that I have to work even harder this year.

Clay Animation Rflection Essay

In social studies this year for first quarter we had to do a stop frame animation. Our animation was on an explorer. My explorer was Vasco Nunez de Balboa. In this project there were some ups and downs. There were some things I had fun doing like making the clay people, and some things that were hard like doing all of the computer things, and just spacing out our time wisely. At the beginning of this project I thought it was going to be easy, but I was wrong.

To me the part of this project that was the most fun was making the clay people, and working with Linden. I really enjoyed being creative with making the little people. It was fun mixing the colors, and putting them together. I liked seeing what the people looked like once they were all done. I think the clay animation project was much more fun than if we would have had to just write a report. I also liked being able to work on this project with a friend. It made the project extra fun.

I think the hardest part of this project was shooting the scenes, and putting it all together on the computer. When we were shooting the scenes the clay people would fall over or something. This was frustrating because we would have to put them back up and they would just fall over again. This made shooting the scenes longer than we had hoped. Also, all of the things we had to do on the computer were kind of hard. For example doing the audio was hard because we had to find the right distance away from the microphone, and talk clearly when we were doing the narration and dialog. It also took us a little bit of time to figure out how to use iMovie.

While doing this project I learned that I had to space my time out better. In the beginning I thought it would be easy to shoot a scene and put it on the computer in one day. I soon found out that that is not how it worked. It ended up taking one day for my partner and me to shoot a scene, and another to put it on the computer. It was then hard to turn the scene in on time because we hadn’t spaced our time well. I think if we would have known how to space our time in the beginning, we would have been better at spacing it throughout the project. I think this project helped me learn how to space my projects better, and I will use this knowledge now throughout the year.

In conclusion this project was fun and hard. I learned that I had to space my time out more wisely when doing a project like this. There were also difficult parts and fun parts to it. I really enjoyed making the clay people and working with Linden (who happens to be one of my best friends). The hard parts for me were shooting the scenes and putting everything together on the computer. Even though there were some difficult parts to this project, I would still do another one if I were offered too.

Lindy the Turtle part 1

Once upon a time there was a turtle named Lindy. Lindy was a very lonely turtle. She went to school at AFES (Animals of the Forest Elementary School) in Edmonds, Washington. At lunch she sat by pond, alone. No one would ever talk to her. Even in class when she would raise her hand, teachers would call on someone else. She was very excluded.

One day she was eating her peanut butter and leaf sandwich when she heard a plop, into the pond. She immediately looked up, but she didn’t see anything. She went back to eating her sandwich. A few minutes later she thought she heard what sounded like sobbing. Lindy looked, but still didn’t see anything. She knew something must be out there, so she decided to explore. Lindy started to slowly walk around the pond. After about 5 minutes she saw something. It was out in the middle of the pond sitting on a lily pad. Lindy looked very hard to try and identify it, but seeing as she had bad eyesight, it was kind of hard. She called out, “Are you okay?” to the green figure on the lily pad, but got no answer. “Is every thing alright?” she tried again.

After several seconds she heard very faintly, “Go away, I don’t want to talk to anyone!”

“Why not, what’s wrong?” said Lindy.

“ I said go away!” shouted the green thing.

Lindy didn’t like to hear people sound upset like that. She decided to swim out to the lily pad to try and comfort the green thing. Lindy didn’t have much swimming experience, but she was going to try anyway.

Lindy stuck her front left foot into the pond. The water was cold, but Lindy didn’t really care though. She slowly emerged her entire body into the water. She started to swim out to the lily pad. The lily pad seemed farther away then it had on land. After a few minutes she reached the lily pad. When she looked up she discovered that the green thing had been a frog.

Lindy asked the frog, “What’s wrong?” She was breathing very hard. She hadn’t had a workout like that in a long time. The frog asked Lindy if she was all right. Lindy said yes, but then quickly started to sink.

to be continued.......

Rear Window

In the Movie Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock, a man named L.B. Jefferies is stranded in his apartment. Jefferies has a broken leg and is in a wheelchair unable to leave. In Rear Window, the camera does not leave Jefferies apartment. Three ways Alfred Hitchcock made this movie interesting were how he angled and zoomed the camera, the different stories through different windows, and the different characters that visited Jefferies. If Alfred Hitchcock had not done these things, this movie would have been very boring.
Alfred Hitchcock did a very good job of angling the camera, and zooming in and out at the right times in the movie. When he would zoom the camera in, it enabled you to see more details, which you wouldn’t be able to, if it had been at its normal distance. I also thought it was cool how he put a black circle around the picture when Jefferies was looking through the binoculars. This gave me the feeling I was actually looking through binoculars, spying on people through their windows.
Another thing that made the movie more interesting was the fact that instead of just focusing on one window, Hitchcock moved around, viewing other neighbors’ windows. Instead of just having the story of the murder, you also see the story of the piano player, Ms. Lonelyheart, the dancer, and other people. This made the movie more interesting and fun to watch. These characters added a little extra storyline to the movie.
Other characters that added some extra interest to the movie were the people that visited Jefferies in his apartment. Without Lisa, Detective Doyle, and Stella, this movie would have been very boring. Since these people didn’t have a broken leg, they could leave the apartment. This gave them the ability to do things that kept you hooked like digging up the garden, and exploring Thorwald’s apartment. Because these people could do these things and bring in information from outside the apartment it made the movie more interesting and kept you hooked.
In conclusion I thought this was a good movie. The little things Alfred Hitchcock did in this movie like zooming in and out and filming at different angles, having Jefferies look through not only Thorwald’s window, but other neighbors’ windows as well, and having other characters visiting and bringing in outside information to Jefferies all made this movie more interesting. Without these, this movie probably wouldn’t have been very exciting. Even though Alfred Hitchcock was know as the “Master of Suspense,” he was also very good at the little details that kept the viewers interested.

State Fair

It had been a long day, I had been waiting, and waiting for four hours when they announced, “ first call for lot six.” I was so happy to hear those words. It was almost 9:00 PM, and everyone was tired and ready for bed. Unfortunately I still had one class left, Trail. I put my saddle and bridle on my horse. Then I heard second call. I did all of my little finishing touches before third call. Then I finally headed out to the warm-up arena.
After about 20 minutes in the warm-up arena I got to go wait in line, where I then had to wait at the cone inside the arena. As soon as the person before me had left, the judge turned around and nodded her head, this was the signal to start. I walked my horse up to the first obstacle. I had to walk trough an “L” then turn my horse and back out of a “U”. My horse was fine at the walking, but then he saw it, a fake deer. He wouldn’t hold still. He kept trying to get away from the deer. I eventually got him to back out, but it took awhile. The next thing we had to do was sidepass a log. I had to put a little extra effort into that because he was paying too much attention to the deer. Then I had to lope him right past the deer, and he didn’t really like that so he just trotted really fast instead. After that my pattern was practically perfect. I trotted the barrels, walked over the bridge, moved the bucket, and opened the gate wonderfully.
In that class I got a red ribbon, but honestly I was surprised I didn’t get a white. I think “State” was a good experience for both my horse and me. I know very well what went wrong in that course and what went right. I know my horse spooked at the deer, but then again so did a lot of horses. I had a really good time at “State,” and made some new friends. I really hope I qualify next year because I want to go back.

Welcome

Welcome to my new blog. I will have some more posts soon.