BREECHCLOTH
A very personal item is a breechcloth, also called breechclout or loincloth. These Crazy Horse artifacts were collected by Medicine Journey from Horn Chips people of the Rosebud reservation to pay funeral expenses. The documentation was lost, so Harold Thompson White Horse and Dwight Provancial, familiar with the items, volunteered the information provided below.
Crazy Horse normally wore a blue, wool breechcloth, but this tanned hide was made for ceremonial use, not daily wearing. This medicine breechclout is from about 1860-77 with protective medicine stones for Crazy Horse by his medicine man, Buffalo Horn Chips.
The Crazy Horse loin piece was cut narrow for the crotch area, and edges folded under, to fit snug without rubbing the groin. It came from a brain-tanned, yellow-smoked elk, an animal associated with male prowess and sexuality. The breechclout displays stain lines from dirt and sweat where it was tied to his waist with a g-string belt. The loincloth is slightly stiff from becoming wet, possibly by a thunderstorm. This would explain how the crotch region of elk hide became stretched to reveal an imprint of Crazy Horse’s private parts.
It is believed the five front medicine stones with white horsehair and three green fringes between were worn during ceremonies. Heyokas or Contraries, as were Horn Chips and Crazy Horse, did the opposite to the normal by not using the Lakota sacred number four, but instead had five bundles. Horsehair was a call to the Thunder Being, associated with the horse. The green-colored, twisted fringe signifies a tornado’s spin and green was the color of the sky before a bad storm. These forces were used to call on the Thunder Being (Wikinyan) for protection from hail, wind and lightning during storms. Likely it was worn in courting (wiiyape) because Oglala feared Double Woman who could entice a man with beautiful countenance, then turn her head to reveal an ugliness powerful enough to drive her lover insane or to suicide.
KNIFE and RED STONE CASE
The Lakota view a beaded knife case as a woman’s article, tied to her belt on the right side, along with a beaded awl and strike-a-long case. A man’s knife case, as this of Crazy Horse, was larger and of unadorned, heavy rawhide so a knife could not poke through it.
This heavy buffalo rawhide knife case is made for the left side, “heart side”, as well were Crazy Horse’s ear and heart stone medicines. For protection, a horse effigy is attached at the top and reddish horsehair tuft at the bottom. The belt loop is cleverly attached to pivot, allowing the knife case to shift so a knife would not injure a rider jumping on a horse.
In a separate case is a large and heavy, four-sided, bright-red stone used as a medicine item, used somehow to fashion various medicine objects for Crazy Horse, since it has a horse effigy and stone tied to the top of the case. Chips, as a Thunder Dreamer, avoided the use of white man’s metal since it attracted lightning which could kill during a storm. Not known is the process used by Chips to cut and form rigid rawhide intricately, using only historic Lakota stone tools. Today leather workers have trouble cutting rawhide with surgical tools, yet Horn Chips not only carefully cut, but also shaped and contoured his medicine figures.
GUN BARREL WAR WHISTLE
The front section of a rifle barrel, near the gun sight, was cut to make this war whistle for Crazy Horse to communicate with warriors in battle. A medicine man described its use as “to give discipline to the warriors”. This whistle is unusual because it normally requires a plug inside the air hole to make sound, but this has none. Around the barrel are old Italian beads wrapped on smoked buckskin, which deter beads from sliding on the smooth gun barrel. Long hair pipes are strung on buckskin using French brass spacers to wear around the neck to be hands-free, when not needed. For spiritual use, Crazy Horse also had a second whistle made from a wing bone of a red-tail hawk.
Compiled by Larry Belitz, Plains Indian Material Culture Consultant
January 4, 2024