History's Toughest Heroes: The Ballad of Crazy Horse

History's Heroes

BBC

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.8 • 704 Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When European American settlers begin displacing the indigenous Lakota from their ancestral lands, one enigmatic warrior refuses to surrender. He gathers his people for an epic standoff with the military.

In History's Toughest Heroes, Ray Winstone tells ten true stories of adventurers, rebels and survivors who lived life on the edge.

In the depths of the Wild West Crazy, when tensions between Native American tribes and the US military were running high and native people were losing their lives, their land and their heritage, Crazy Horse (along with other notable warriors like Sitting Bull) would become a legend. A stunning horseman, empowered by a vision, he led the Lakota tribe to a rousing victory at the Battle of Little Bighorn against General George Custer. A BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. Producer: Michael LaPointe Development Producer: Georgina Leslie Executive Producer: Paul Smith Written by Imogen Robertson Commissioning editor for Radio 4: Rhian Roberts

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:07.0	They call themselves Evil Corps, a cybercrime gang accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars.
0:13.8	And at the center of it all, one of the FBI's most wanted.
0:17.6	They ran their operations out of the back of an Italian restaurant in Moscow.
0:22.0	How does a man hunted by the world's top law enforcers still manage to grow an empire?
0:26.6	These guys were going to town on small businesses across America.
0:30.9	They anger, the frustration, the fear.
0:33.5	Cyberhack, Evil Corps. Listen first on BBC Sounds. Picture it. 10,000 ponies, 7,000 people, nearly 2,000 warriors.
0:47.8	This village had circles of teepees and campfires that stretch for well over a mile.
0:55.4	For the first time in known history,
0:57.6	all the tribes of the Lakota
0:59.2	are gathered together on the vast northern plains.
1:04.1	Tribes never come together like that.
1:06.7	The whole nation pretty much is there.
1:11.5	It was the 25th of June, 1876.
1:16.8	This was a meeting of old friends and celebration of the old ways,
1:22.1	but it was also about sticking together in dark times.
1:26.2	So these people were from the Lakota and Cheyenne tribes,
1:30.3	and they were determined to live freely for as long as they could.
1:34.3	These guys had forced white settlers back time and time again,
1:39.3	but the settlers kept coming.
1:43.3	The United States government told them
	...

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