In the Spirit of Crazy Horse
Shorts—brief commentary, reminders to pay attention and/or postscripts to other posts
My son recently purchased a favorite book of his, a pristine German edition (even though he doesn’t speak German) of the Polish journalist, Ryszard Kapuściński’s, Imperium, about his travels to the Soviet Union spanning from 1939 to 1993. We then joked about how my son’s small, eclectic used book collection might set him up for early retirement, which at this point wouldn’t even support him for a week.
He told me that he had his eye on a first edition of Peter Matthiessen’s In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, signed by the author. I offered that the first editions of that book were special because many, if not most, of the books were destroyed by the publisher. My son, a journalist himself, exclaimed, “What? That can’t be true.”
It made me think of the myriad important bits of information that get lost in our unrelenting 24-hour news cycles and endless social media feeds, what’s important to remember, what’s important to honor and protect. And what we can let slip away. This was a tidbit that I never forgot.
For those who don’t know, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse was written about the 1975 shoot-out between FBI agents and Native Americans near Wounded Knee, South Dakota, where 85-years before hundreds of Lakota Souix had been massacred by the U.S. Army. The book also chronicles the historical abuse and horror’s inflicted on the Indians. Leonard Peltier, the only person convicted in the incident, is still imprisoned forty-nine years later, despite many attempts for clemency and pardons. Through the years, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Coretta Scott King, Harry Belafonte, Pete Seeger, Amnesty International, a working group of the U.N. Human Rights Council, Pope Francis, former FBI agent Jack Carr, and others have called for Peltier’s clemency and release. In 2017, the Guardian reported that James Reynolds, a top US Federal prosecutor in the case, claimed that Peltier “was wrongfully convicted of the 1975 murders of two FBI agents” and “wrote to the president that clemency for the 72-year-old would be ‘in the best interest of justice in considering the totality of all matters involved’”. President Obama did not heed his words.
The event and the book were politically charged. Matthiessen’s book was published in 1983 by Viking/Penguin. Shortly after, the governor of South Dakota and an FBI agent filed defamation suits against Matthiessen and Viking. In a shocking move, Viking did not wait for court decisions, but destroyed the warehoused books. The book would remain out of print for seven years.
The court cases and appeals were finally found in favor of the author and publisher on First Amendment grounds, much to the relief of journalists and authors. The book was then released in paperback. If you happen to have a hard copy, it is one of the originals. Hold onto it or sell it to someone who will treasure it and appreciate it’s importance both for its First Amendment victory and its documentation of history that should not be forgotten. I have had my prized, slightly tattered copy for forty years.
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, Peter Matthiessen
Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance, Leonard Peltier