The name Tashunkewitko, or Crazy Horse, is a poetic simile.
This leader was likened to an untrained or untouched horse, wild,
ignorant of domestic uses, splendid in action, and unconscious of
danger.

The name of Two Strike is a deed name. In a battle with the
Utes this man knocked two enemies from the back of a war horse.
The true rendering of the name Nomkahpa would be, "He knocked off
two."

I was well acquainted with Two Strike and spent many pleasant
hours with him, both at Washington, D. C., and in his home on the
Rosebud reservation. What I have written is not all taken from his
own mouth, because he was modest in talking about himself, but I
had him vouch for the truth of the stories. He said that he was
born near the Republican River about 1832. His earliest
recollection was of an attack by the Shoshones upon their camp on
the Little Piney. The first white men he ever met were traders who
visited his people when he was very young. The incident was still
vividly with him, because, he said, "They made my father crazy,"
[drunk]. This made a deep impression upon him, he told me, so that
from that day he was always afraid of the white man's "mysterious
water."

Two Strike was not a large man, but he was very supple and
alert in motion, as agile as an antelope. His face was mobile and
intelligent. Although he had the usual somber visage of an Indian,
his expression brightened up wonderfully when he talked. In some
ways wily and shrewd in intellect, he was not deceitful nor mean.