Crazy Horse saw history as integrated in the present, incorporated into daily life.

Ambrose’s line contrasts a modern, often archival sense of “history” with an Indigenous, lived sense of time. To say Crazy Horse “saw history as integrated in the present” suggests that the past was not a distant record but an active presence shaping obligations, identity, and decision-making in everyday life—through stories, places, kinship, and ritual. The phrasing also implies a critique of historical consciousness that separates “then” from “now”: for Crazy Horse, memory and tradition are not merely commemorative but practical, informing how one acts, fights, negotiates, and endures. In this reading, history becomes a continuous moral and communal framework rather than a detached narrative.