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'Dances With Wolves' Actor Allegedly Instructed Wives To Shoot At Police, Commit Suicide If He Was Arrested
Police allege that Nathan Chasing Horse was leading a cult and raped and sex trafficked his wives, including several who were underage.
More details are emerging about the investigation into an actor from the movie "Dances With Wolves" that led to a SWAT team raid of his Las Vegas home this week and his arrest on sexual assault and sex trafficking charges.
Nathan Chasing Horse, 46, was arrested on Tuesday evening and charged with first degree child abuse or neglect, two counts sexual assault, sexual assault of a child under 16 and two counts of sex trafficking of an adult, according to Clark County court and jail records reviewed by Oxygen.com on Thursday.
He was taken into custody by a SWAT team at a two-story home in Las Vegas that he reportedly shares with five people he refers to as wives, the Associated Press reported. An arrest report seen by the Las Vegas Review Journal states that, during a search of the residence, police recovered "a Samsung phone with six minutes of pornographic videos of a child, several unknown narcotic substances, a shotgun and three 9mm handguns."
The AP reports that police further recovered "memory cards with videos of the sexual assaults" as well as "41 pounds of marijuana and psilocybin mushrooms in the home."
Officers said in the arrest report that Chasing Horse had ordered his wives to shoot the police in the event they tried to arrest him, and provided them with "suicide pills" to take in the event of his arrest or death.
“Nathan Chasing Horse trained his wives how to manipulate and shoot firearms, in the event law enforcement were to attempt to take them into custody they can ‘shoot it out,’” the report said, according to the Review Journal.
They allege that he leads a cult called "The Circle," targeting Indigenous girls without fathers by recruiting their mothers. The investigation in Las Vegas reportedly began with a tip in October 2022.
“Much of this stems from Nathan’s practice of acquiring multiple wives, many of whom investigators believe were forced to engage in sexual intercourse with Nathan as minors,” detectives wrote in the documents, according to Las Vegas CBS affiliate KLAS.
None of the marriages were legal or documented, police said, but the women were forced to change their names and get matching spider tattoos. All three of the current victims in whose assaults Chasing Horse has been charged were recruited to the cult via their single mothers.
One woman told police in January that her mother joined The Circle in 2006, when the girl was 14. She allegedly said Chasing Horse raped her around 20 times, and gave her a diamond ring to make her his wife after she turned 16, according to the Review Journal.
A woman told Canadian authorities four years ago that Chasing Horse had raped her in California in 2010, after her family sent her to him to be healed from an illness, the Review Journal reported. She moved with him and his wives to Las Vegas, but left after allegedly witnessing him commit acts of domestic violence in 2015.
Another victim reported that she'd met Chasing Horse before he moved to Las Vegas when seeking assistance for her mother's cancer in 2011, according to KLAS. She ultimately joined The Circle and was made his spiritual granddaughter in a ceremony he performed. She met three of his wives and allegedly witnessed a ceremony in which a 15-year-old girl was presented to him as his fourth wife.
In 2012, he allegedly invited the then-14-year-old to visit him in Las Vegas, instructing her to bring him cash and gifts and to cook for him when she arrived. She was then instructed to bring the food to his bedroom, where he told her that she needed "to offer her body to the spirits" or else her mother would die.
“He told me my body was no longer mine… he said I needed to say ‘yes,’ or my mom was going to die,” the victim told police, according to documents reviewed by KLAS and the Review Journal. “He told me my virginity was the last pure part of me and that needed to be given.”
The victim said he then raped her and forced her to take an emergency contraceptive. He continued to rape then then-teen repeatedly over the course of several months, sometimes on camera and, when she was 16, told her she was his wife. Years later, when she attempted to leave, he allegedly beat her and forced her into sex trafficking. She ultimately left him in 2021, the paper reported.
Another victim reported that Chasing Horse had raped and impregnated her in 2014, when she was 19 years old, and when she tried to speak to him about the pregnancy, raped her again, the paper reported.
In 2014, another victim reported being raped by Chasing Horse, but the case was dropped when he could not be located, the paper reported.
In 2015, another victim reported to police that Chasing Horse had repeatedly raped her, but detectives closed the case without speaking to him, according to documents in the case seen by KLAS. She told police that she'd seen Chasing Horse as a father figure before he began raping her.
In closing the case, the detective wrote, "Because during the sexual incident [the victim] did not say no, push away, yell or run away, I found that I did not believe it could be prosecuted in court.”
On Jan. 23, a woman reported to Las Vegas Police that she had been sex trafficked by Chasing Horse, who had repeatedly beat her when she refused to comply with his demands, KLAS reported. (It is unclear if she is the same woman who told police in January that, after he mother joined The Circle, he'd raped her at age 14 and married her when she was 16.)
He was arrested eight days later. The residents in the home reportedly told police they became Chasing Horse's wives as teenagers, and one allegedly said she'd joined "the schedule" — which is what he termed his sexual rotation — at age 12, the Review Journal reported.
Allegations against Chasing Horse go even further back, as Oxygen.com previously reported.
Fort Peck Reservation tribal leaders voted to ban Chasing Horse from the area in July 2015, the Fort Peck Journal reported at the time.
“The federal government fell asleep on this but I’m not,” Councilwoman Roxanne Gourneau said before the vote, the paper reported. “Will I protect our people from that? In a heartbeat.”
The Review Journal reported that the FBI had investigated after two teen girls, ages 13 and 14, reported being raped by Chasing Horse on the reservation in 2003. Authorities ended the investigation after Chasing Horse allegedly denied raping the teens and no charges were ever brought.
Community members had testified to a council committee in 2015 about "incidents of alleged sexual abuse, human trafficking, threats to tribal members, intimidation, guns being used to keep tribal members out of ceremonies and disrespecting the land on and around where the [ceremony] was previously held," the paper reported, and the executive board heard about what was then an open investigation into allegations of sexual abuse by the actor against a "young female follower" in South Dakota in 2013. No charges were apparently ever brought in that case.
Chasing Horse is currently being held without bail, pending a Monday hearing at which Las Vegas police detectives, FBI special agents, victims and Chasing Horse's relatives are expected to testify, the AP reported.
Authorities say they expect more victims to come forward in the wake of the arrest.
