Old Fort Rob

Because it is so sad I don't visit Fort Robinson, Nebraska, very often. But since it was on my way I decided to drive past. It was a pilgrimage I did not relish, a little like a Christian going alone to Calvary, complete with the outrage of a senseless murder but without the neat justification that it was done for our salvation. Fort Robinson is the place Crazy Horse was murdered. In the latter 1870s it was a military post, established to protect whites moving into the Black Hills. It was also a depot for gathering and shipping the Indians to reservation compounds. The beauty of the land where the fort stands hides the shame of its history.

—Dan O'Brien, The Rites of Autumn

Quietly, his blanket folded over his arm as though he were going to his lodge between two friends, Crazy Horse let himself be taken past a soldier walking up and down with a bayoneted gun on his shoulder and in through a door. Only then did he see the barred windows , the men with chains on their legs, and realize it was the iron house.

—Mari Sandoz, Crazy Horse: Strange Man of the Oglalas

While Fort Robinson was an active post through the Second World War and served numerous purposes (cavalry post, quartermaster remount depot, artillery base, K9 training center, POW camp), it is best known for its role in the Indian Wars. The oldest portion of the fort lies to the east of Highway 20 (this stretch is designated as Crazy Horse Memorial Highway). Some of the buildings here are original, though their appearance has changed over the years; others, including the log buildings depicted here, are reconstructions based on archaeological information and sited where the originals stood.

The building in the foreground is the guardhouse, outside of which Crazy Horse was bayoneted. ("Stab the son of a bitch! Kill him!" screamed Captain James Kennington, officer of the day. "Not a hair of your head will be harmed," the charismatic Lakota had been assured by another officer shortly before.) In the middle is the adjutant's office, where Crazy Horse died under the care of post surgeon Valentine McGillicuddy. In the background is the cavalry barracks, which a couple of years later was used to house/imprison the Cheyennes who had left their reservation in Oklahoma to return home but were captured by the Army.

Inside the guardroom. In the foreground is an empty rack for rifles; behind the wall is the prison room.

Interior of the adjutant's office.

Parade ground, with officers' housing beyond. Dr. McGillicuddy's house, I believe, is the one at far left. Colonel Luther Bradley, post commander, occupied a larger house, no longer extant, to the left of that.

O'Brien isn't wrong about the beauty of the land, though...