Crow people
The Crow, whose autonym is Apsáalooke, 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, 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
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 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, 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, Powder River, Tongue River, Big Horn River and Wind River as well as the Bighorn Mountains, Pryor Mountains, Wolf Mountains and Absaroka Range.
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
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, 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 ; Nez Perce, Kutenai, Shoshone, Kiowa, and Plains Apache. The powerful Iron Confederacy, 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, Awaxaawaxammilaxpáake, or Ashkúale. The Ashalaho or Mountain Crow, the largest Crow group, split from the Awatixa Hidatsa and were the first to travel west.., 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 ; the Black Hills comprised the eastern edge of their territory.
- Binnéessiippeele, today called River Crow or Ashshipíte 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 or Ammitaalasshé. 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.
Gradual displacement from tribal lands
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 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 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.