Crow people

Crow Tribe of Montana

Apsáalooke
Pauline Small on horseback. She carries the flag of the Crow Tribe of Montana. As a tribal official, she is entitled to carry the flag during the Crow Fair parade.
Total population
12,000 enrolled citizens
Regions with significant populations
United States (Montana)
Languages
Crow, English, Plains Sign Talk
Religion
Christianity, Crow Way, Tobacco Society
Related ethnic groups
Hidatsa

Apsáalooke "children of the raven"
People	Apsáalooke
Language	Apsáalooke aliláau Apsáalooke iiéhkuua
Country	Apsáalooke Issawua

Crow Indians, c. 1878–1883

The Crow, whose autonym is Apsáalooke (Crow pronunciation: [ə̀ˈpsáːɾòːɡè]), are Native Americans living primarily in southern Montana. Today, the Crow people have a federally recognized tribe, the Crow Tribe of Montana, with an Indian reservation, the Crow Indian Reservation, located in the south-central part of the state.

Crow Native Americans are a Plains tribe, who speak the Crow language, part of the Missouri River Valley branch of Siouan languages. Of the 14,000 enrolled tribal citizens, an estimated 3,000 spoke the Crow language in 2007.

In historical times, the Crow lived in the Yellowstone River valley, which extends from present-day Wyoming, through Montana, and into North Dakota, where it joins the Missouri River. During the United States' expansion into the West, the Crow allied with the Americans against their neighbors and rivals, the Dakota, Lakota, and Cheyenne.

Since the 19th century, Crow people have been concentrated on their reservation established south of Billings, Montana. Today, many also live in major Western cities. Their tribal headquarters are located at Crow Agency, Montana. The tribe operates the Little Big Horn College.

Name

The autonym of the tribe, Apsáalooke or Absaroka, means "children of the large-beaked bird" and was given to them by the Hidatsa, a neighboring and related Siouan-speaking tribe. French interpreters translated the name as gens du corbeau ("people of the crow" or raven), and they became known in English as the Crow. Other tribes also refer to the Apsáalooke as "crow" or "raven" in their own languages. The identity of the bird this name was meant to refer to originally is lost to time, but many Apsáalooké people believe it references the mythical Thunderbird.

History

Into the Northern Plains

Landscape on the Crow Indian Reservation, Montana

The Crow and related Hidatsa originated in the Ohio Country, south of Lake Erie. They migrated west through Illinois, Minnesota, and settled south of Lake Winnipeg in the 12th or 13th centuries. They grew crops and hunted bison in settled villages, until the mid-16th century when the Ojibwe and Cree drove them further west to the Upper Missouri River.

Later the Crow moved to the Devil's Lake region of North Dakota before the Crow split from the Hidatsa and moved westward in the late 17th century. The Crow were largely pushed westward due to intrusion and influx of the Cheyenne and subsequently the Lakota, also known as the Sioux.

To acquire control of their new territory, the Crow fought against Shoshone bands, such as the Bikkaashe, or "People of the Grass Lodges", and drove them westward. The Crow allied with local Kiowa and Plains Apache bands. The Kiowa and Plains Apache bands later migrated southward, and the Crow remained dominant in their established area through the 18th and 19th centuries, the era of the fur trade.

Their historical territory stretched from what is now Yellowstone National Park and the headwaters of the Yellowstone River (E-chee-dick-karsh-ah-shay in Crow, translating to "Elk River") to the west, north to the Musselshell River, then northeast to the Yellowstone's mouth at the Missouri River, then southeast to the confluence of the Yellowstone and Powder rivers (Bilap Chashee, or "Powder River" or "Ash River"), south along the South Fork of the Powder River, confined in the SE by the Rattlesnake Mountains and westwards in the SW by the Wind River Range. Their tribal area included the river valleys of the Judith River (Buluhpa'ashe, or "Plum River"), Powder River, Tongue River, Big Horn River and Wind River as well as the Bighorn Mountains (Iisiaxpúatachee Isawaxaawúua), Pryor Mountains (Baahpuuo Isawaxaawúua), Wolf Mountains (Cheetiish, or "Wolf Teeth Mountains") and Absaroka Range (also called Absalaga Mountains).

Once established in the Valley of the Yellowstone River and its tributaries on the Northern Plains in Montana and Wyoming, the Crow divided into four groups: the Mountain Crow, River Crow, Kicked in the Bellies, and Beaver Dries its Fur. Formerly semi-nomad hunters and farmers in the northeastern woodland, they adapted to the nomadic lifestyle of the Plains Indians as hunters and gatherers, and hunted bison. Before 1700, they were using dog travois for carrying goods.

Enemies and allies

1880 Ledger drawing of a Cheyenne war chief and warriors (left) coming to a truce with a Crow war chief and warriors (right)

From about 1730, the Plains tribes rapidly adopted the horse, which allowed them to move out on to the Plains and hunt buffalo more effectively. However, the severe winters in the North kept their herds smaller than those of Plains tribes in the South. The Crow, Hidatsa, Eastern Shoshone, and Northern Shoshone soon became noted as horse breeders and dealers and developed relatively large horse herds. At the time, other eastern and northern tribes were also moving on to the Plains, in search of game for the fur trade, bison, and more horses. The Crow were subject to raids and horse thefts by horse-poor tribes, including the powerful Blackfoot, Gros Ventre, Assiniboine, Pawnee, and Ute. Later they had to face the Lakota and their allies, the Arapaho and Cheyenne, who also stole horses from their enemies. Their greatest enemies became the tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy and the Lakota-Cheyenne-Arapaho alliance.

In the 18th century, pressured by the Saulteaux and Cree peoples (the Iron Confederacy), who had earlier and better access to guns through the fur trade, the Crow had migrated to this area from the Ohio Eastern Woodland area of present-day Ohio, settling south of Lake Winnipeg. From there, they were pushed to the west by the Cheyenne. Both the Crow and the Cheyenne were pushed farther west by the Lakota, who took over the territory west of the Missouri River, reaching past the Black Hills of South Dakota to the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming and Montana. The Cheyenne eventually became allies of the Lakota, as they sought to expel European Americans from the area. The Crow remained bitter enemies of both the Sioux and Cheyenne. They managed to retain a large reservation of more than 9300 km² despite territorial losses, due in part to their cooperation with the federal government against their traditional enemies, the Sioux and Blackfoot. Many other tribes were forced onto much smaller reservations far from their traditional lands.

The Crow were generally friendly with the northern Plains tribes of the Flathead (although sometimes they had conflicts); Nez Perce, Kutenai, Shoshone, Kiowa, and Plains Apache. The powerful Iron Confederacy (Nehiyaw-Pwat), an alliance of northern plains Indian nations based around the fur trade, developed as enemies of the Crow. It was named after the dominating Plains Cree and Assiniboine peoples, and later included the Stoney, Saulteaux, and Métis.

Historical subgroups

By the early 19th century, the Apsáalooke fell into three independent groupings, who came together only for common defense:

• Ashalaho ('Many Lodges', today called Mountain Crow), Awaxaawaxammilaxpáake ('Mountain People'), or Ashkúale ('The Center Camp'). The Ashalaho or Mountain Crow, the largest Crow group, split from the Awatixa Hidatsa and were the first to travel west. (McCleary 1997: 2–3)., (Bowers 1992: 21) Their leader No Intestines had received a vision and led his band on a long migratory search for sacred tobacco, finally settling in southeastern Montana. They lived in the Rocky Mountains and foothills along the Upper Yellowstone River, on the present-day Wyoming-Montana border, in the Big Horn and Absaroka Range (also Absalaga Mountains); the Black Hills comprised the eastern edge of their territory.
• Binnéessiippeele ('Those Who Live Amongst the River Banks'), today called River Crow or Ashshipíte ('The Black Lodges') The Binnéessiippeele, or River Crow, split from the Hidatsa proper, according to tradition because of a dispute over a bison stomach. As a result, the Hidatsa called the Crow Gixáa-iccá—"Those Who Pout Over Tripe". They lived along the Yellowstone and Musselshell rivers south of the Missouri River and in the river valleys of the Big Horn, Powder and Wind rivers. This area was historically known as the Powder River Country. They sometimes traveled north up to the Milk River.
• Eelalapito (Kicked in the Bellies) or Ammitaalasshé (Home Away From The center, that is, away from the Ashkúale – "Mountain Crow"). They claimed the area known as the Bighorn Basin, from the Bighorn Mountains in the east to the Absaroka Range to the west, and south to the Wind River Range in northern Wyoming. Sometimes they settled in the Owl Creek Mountains, Bridger Mountains and along the Sweetwater River in the south.

Apsaalooke oral history describes a fourth group, the Bilapiluutche ("Beaver Dries its Fur"), who may have merged with the Kiowa in the second half of the 17th century.

Gradual displacement from tribal lands

Crow Indian territory (areas 517, 619 and 635) as described in Fort Laramie treaty (1851), present Montana and Wyoming

When European Americans arrived in numbers, the Crows were resisting pressure from enemies who greatly outnumbered them. In the 1850s, a vision by Plenty Coups, then a boy, but who later became their greatest chief, was interpreted by tribal elders as meaning that the whites would become dominant over the entire country, and that the Crow, if they were to retain any of their land, would need to remain on good terms with the whites.

By 1851, the more numerous Lakota and Cheyenne were established just to the south and east of Crow territory in Montana. These enemy tribes coveted the hunting lands of the Crow and warred against them. By right of conquest, they took over the eastern hunting lands of the Crow, including the Powder and Tongue River valleys, and pushed the less numerous Crow to the west and northwest upriver on the Yellowstone. After about 1860, the Lakota Sioux claimed all the former Crow lands from the Black Hills of South Dakota to the Big Horn Mountains of Montana. They demanded that the Americans deal with them regarding any intrusion into these areas.

The Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1851 with the United States confirmed as Crow lands a large area centered on the Big Horn Mountains: the area ran from the Big Horn Basin on the west, to the Musselshell River on the north, and east to the Powder River; it included the Tongue River basin. But for two centuries the Cheyenne and many bands of Lakota Sioux had been steadily migrating westward across the plains, and were still pressing hard on the Crows.

Red Cloud's War (1866–1868) was a challenge by the Lakota Sioux to the United States military presence on the Bozeman Trail, a route along the eastern edge of the Big Horn Mountains to the Montana gold fields. Red Cloud's War ended with victory for the Lakota. The Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868 with the United States confirmed the Lakota control over all the high plains from the Black Hills of the Dakotas westward across the Powder River Basin to the crest of the Big Horn Mountains. Thereafter bands of Lakota Sioux led by Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Gall, and others, along with their Northern Cheyenne allies, hunted and raided throughout the length and breadth of eastern Montana and northeastern Wyoming, which had been for a time ancestral Crow territory.

On 25 June 1876, the Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne achieved a major victory over army forces under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in the Crow Indian Reservation, but the Great Sioux War (1876–1877) ended in the defeat of the Sioux and their Cheyenne allies. Crow warriors enlisted with the U.S. Army for this war. The Sioux and allies were forced from eastern Montana and Wyoming: some bands fled to Canada, while others suffered forced removal to distant reservations, primarily in present-day Montana and Nebraska west of the Missouri River.

In 1918, the Crow organized a gathering to display their culture, and they invited members of other tribes. The Crow Fair is now celebrated yearly on the third weekend of August, with wide participation from other tribes.

Crow Tribe history: a chronological record

1600–1699

A group of Crow went west after leaving the Hidatsa villages of earth lodges in the Knife River and Heart River area (present North Dakota) around 1675–1700. They selected a site for a single earth lodge on the lower Yellowstone River. Most families lived in tipis or other perishable kinds of homes at the new place. These Indians had left the Hidatsa villages and adjacent cornfields for good, but they had yet to become "real" buffalo hunting Crow following the herds on the open plains. Archaeologists know this "proto-Crow" site in present Montana as the Hagen site.

1700–1799

Some time before 1765, the Crow held a Sun Dance, attended by a poor Arapaho. A Crow with power gave him a medicine doll, and he quickly earned status and owned horses as no one else. During the next Sun Dance, some Crow stole back the figure to keep it in the tribe. Eventually the Arapaho made a duplicate. Later in life, he married a Kiowa woman and brought the doll with him. The Kiowas use it during the Sun Dance and recognize it as one of the most powerful tribal medicines. They still credit the Crow tribe for the origin of their sacred Tai-may figure.

1800–1824

The trading posts built for trade with the Crows

The enmity between the Crow and the Lakota was reasserted from the start of the 19th century. The Crow killed a minimum of thirty Lakota in 1800–1801 according to two Lakota winter counts. The next year, the Lakota and their Cheyenne allies killed all the men in a Crow camp with thirty tipis.

In the summer of 1805, a Crow camp traded at the Hidatsa villages on Knife River in present North Dakota. Chiefs Red Calf and Spotted Crow allowed the fur trader Francois-Antoine Larocque to join it on its way across the plains to the Yellowstone area. He traveled with it to a point west of the place where Billings, Montana, is today. The camp crossed Little Missouri River and Bighorn River on the way.

The next year, some Crow discovered a group of whites with horses on the Yellowstone River. By stealth, they captured the mounts before morning. The Lewis and Clark Expedition did not see the Crow.

The first trading post in Crow country was constructed in 1807, known as both Fort Raymond and Fort Lisa (1807–ca. 1813). Like the succeeding forts, Fort Benton (ca. 1821–1824) and Fort Cass (1832–1838), it was built near the confluence of the Yellowstone and the Bighorn.

The Blood Blackfoot Bad Head's winter count tells about the early and persistent hostility between the Crow and the Blackfoot. In 1813, a force of Blood warriors set off for a raid on the Crow in the Bighorn area. Next year, Crows near Little Bighorn River killed Blackfoot Top Knot.

A Crow camp neutralized thirty Cheyenne bent on capturing horses in 1819. The Cheyenne and warriors from a Lakota camp destroyed a whole Crow camp at Tongue River the following year. This was likely the most severe attack on a Crow camp in historic time.

1825–1849

The Crows put up 300 tipis near a Mandan village on the Missouri in 1825. The representatives of the US government waited for them. Mountain Crow chief Long Hair (Red Plume at Forehead) and fifteen other Crows signed the first treaty of friendship and trade between the Crows and the United States on 4 August. With the signing of the document, the Crows also recognized the supremacy of the United States, if they actually understood the word. River Crow chief Arapooish had left the treaty area in disgust. By help of the thunderbird he had to send a farewell shower down on the whites and the Mountain Crows.

In 1829, seven Crow warriors were neutralized by Blood Blackfoot Indians led by Spotted Bear, who captured a pipe-hatchet during the fight just west of Chinook, Montana.

In the summer of 1834, the Crow (maybe led by chief Arapooish) tried to shut down Fort McKenzie at the Missouri in Blackfeet country. The apparent motive was to stop the trading post's sale to their Indian enemies. Although later described as a month long siege of the fort, it lasted only two days. The opponents exchanged a few shots and the men in the fort fired a cannon, but no real harm came to anyone. The Crows left four days before the arrival of a Blackfeet band. The episode seems to be the worst armed conflict between the Crows and a group of whites until the Sword Bearer uprising in 1887.

The death of chief Arapooish was recorded on 17 September 1834. The news reached Fort Clark at the Mandan village Mitutanka. Manager F.A. Chardon wrote he "was Killed by Black feet".

The smallpox epidemic of 1837 spread along the Missouri and "had little impact" on the tribe according to one source. The River Crows grew in number, when a group of Hidatsas joined them permanently to escape the scourge sweeping through the Hidatsa villages.

Fort Van Buren was a short-lived trading post in existence from 1839 to 1842. It was built on the bank of the Yellowstone near the mouth of Tongue River.

In the summer of 1840, a Crow camp in the Bighorn valley greeted the Jesuit missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet.

From 1842 to around 1852, the Crow traded in Fort Alexander opposite the mouth of the Rosebud.

The River Crows charged a moving Blackfeet camp near Judith Gap in 1845. Father Pierre-Jean De Smet mourned the destructive attack on the "petite Robe" band. The Blackfeet chief Small Robe had been mortally wounded and many killed. De Smet worked out the number of women and children taken captive to 160. By and by and with a fur trader as an intermediary, the Crows agreed to let 50 women return to their tribe.

1850–1874

De Smet map of the 1851 Fort Laramie Indian territories (the light area). Jesuit missionary De Smet drew this map with the tribal borders agreed upon at Fort Laramie in 1851. Although the map itself is wrong in certain ways, it has the Crow territory west of the Sioux territory as written in the treaty, and the Bighorn area as the heart of the Crow country.

Crow Indian Chief Big Shadow (Big Robber), signer of the Fort Laramie treaty (1851). Painting by Jesuit missionary De Smet.

Lone Dog's Sioux winter count, 1870. Thirty Crows killed in battle.

1874 photograph of Crow Indians killed and scalped by Piegan Blackfeet in winter of 1873

Fort Sarpy (I) near Rosebud River carried out trade with the Crow after the closing of Fort Alexander. River Crow went some times to the bigger Fort Union at the confluence of the Yellowstone and the Missouri. Both the "famous Absaroka amazon" Woman Chief and River Crow chief Twines His Tail (Rotten Tail) visited the fort in 1851.

In 1851, the Crow, the Sioux, and six other Indian nations signed the Fort Laramie treaty along with the U.S. It should ensure peace forever between all nine partakers. Further, the treaty described the different tribal territories. The U.S. was allowed to construct roads and forts. A weak point in the treaty was the absence of rules to uphold the tribal borders.

The Crow and various bands of Sioux attacked each other again from the mid-1850s. Soon, the Sioux took no notice of the 1851 borders and expanded into Crow territory west of the Powder. The Crows engaged in "… large-scale battles with invading Sioux …" near present-day Wyola, Montana. Around 1860, the western Powder area was lost.

From 1857 to 1860, many Crow traded their surplus robes and skin at Fort Sarpy (II) near the mouth of the Bighorn River.

During the mid-1860s, the Sioux resented the emigrant route Bozeman Trail through the Powder River bison habitat, although it mainly "crossed land guaranteed to the Crows". When the Army built forts to protect the trail, the Crow cooperated with the garrisons. On 21 December 1866, the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho defeated Captain William J. Fetterman and his men from Fort Phil Kearny. Evidently, the U.S. could not enforce respect for the treaty borders agreed upon 15 years before.

The River Crow north of the Yellowstone developed a friendship with their former Gros Ventre enemies in the 1860s. A joint large-scale attack on a large Blackfoot camp at the Cypress Hills in 1866 resulted in a chaotic withdrawal of the Gros Ventres and Crow. The Blackfoot pursued the warriors for hours and killed allegedly more than 300.

In 1868, a new Fort Laramie treaty between the Sioux and the U.S. turned 1851 Crow Powder River area into "unceded Indian territory" of the Sioux. "The Government had in effect betrayed the Crows…". On 7 May, the same year, the Crow ceded vast ranges to the US due to pressure from white settlements north of Upper Yellowstone River and loss of eastern territories to the Sioux. They accepted a smaller reservation south of the Yellowstone.

The Sioux and their Indian allies, now formally at peace with the U.S., focused on intertribal wars at once. Raids against the Crows were "frequent, both by the Northern Cheyennes and by the Arapahos, as well as the Sioux, and by parties made up from all three tribes". Crow chief Plenty Coups recalled, "The three worst enemies our people had were combined against us …".

In April 1870, the Sioux overpowered a barricaded war group of 30 Crow in the Big Dry area. The Crow were killed to either last or last but one man. Later, mourning Crow with "their hair cut off, their fingers and faces cut" brought the dead bodies back to camp. The drawing from the Sioux winter count of Lone Dog shows the Crow in the circle (the breastwork), while the Sioux close in on them. The many lines indicates flying bullets. The Sioux lost 14 warriors. Sioux chief Sitting Bull took part in this battle.