The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Crazy Horse repeats as a motif in several stories. Historically, Crazy Horse is remembered for mobilizing the Lakota Sioux tribe into battle against federal soldiers in the late 1800s, a time when nearly all America’s Indigenous nations had been conquered or had surrendered. His party defeated General Custer in the Battle of Little Bighorn, causing widespread fame and mythologizing among Indigenous and white Americans alike. Crazy Horse is the ultimate Indigenous warrior figure and therefore serves as a yardstick for the protagonists’ sense of success or failure in dealing with their own internal and external conflicts.

The most obvious use of the Crazy Horse motif occurs in the fourth story, “Crazy Horse Dreams.” Victor struggles with disillusionment in matters of romance and suffers from imposter syndrome, longing to be “authentic” in his Indigenous identity (37). After his sexual encounter, his disappointed love interest is “still waiting for Crazy Horse” (40). The first line in “Imagining the Reservation” begins “Imagine Crazy Horse” (149), followed by a set of alternate historical realities in which Indigenous nations are victorious. In “Somebody Kept Saying Powwow,” Junior’s game-winning basketball play causes an admiring spectator to state, “I think he was Crazy Horse for just a second” (206).