Letters from the American Empire: August 1, 2026

Letters from the American Empire August 1, 2026

Near the end of The Journey of Crazy Horse, the late Joseph Marshall III distills an entire Lakota worldview into six words: we do this so that the people may live. Though Marshall leaves the Lakota language phrasing unwritten—and it remains beyond my own abilities to translate it—its weight anchors his closing reflection on the reasons behind the climactic tragedy of Crazy Horse’s life. He introduces this credo immediately after describing the tense aftermath of Crazy Horse’s 1877 surrender at Fort Robinson, where—in a bitter turn of imperial tactics—Lakota warriors who once rode alongside the famed war leader donned the uniforms of the enemy and helped to assassinate him. Just a year after Custer’s catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Greasy Grass and Sitting Bull’s flight to Canada, the armed path to freedom suddenly collapsed on the last generation of truly free Lakotas.