Crow

The Crow are a Siouan tribe who in the mid-16th century lived in southeastern Manitoba. Historically related to the Hidatsa, the tribe began migrating westward, eventually meeting the Mandan people and settling near them along the Missouri River in what is now North Dakota. Perhaps as early as 1735, they acquired horses and became buffalo hunters. The tribe still maintains a small herd of buffalo. The nomadic ways of the Apsáalooke, as the tribe refer to themselves, brought them into conflict with other tribes, most notably the Blackfeet and the Lakota (Sioux). Heavy losses led the Apsáalooke to side with the U.S. Army in the Plains wars of the 1860s and 1870s.

White men called the tribe “Crow,” probably because of a misinterpretation of Apsáalooke, which means “children of a large-beaked bird.” In 1868, the Crow agreed to move to a reservation, beginning a series of moves and ever-increasing loss of land area. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that 5,322 American Indians lived on the Crow Reservation and Off Reservation Trust Land in 2010, compared to 4,724 in 1990 and 3,954 in 1980. Tribal records of membership put their number at approximately 11,000 in 2012; 7,900 reside on the Crow Indian Reservation. Unlike many Native American tribes who are [Page 626]struggling to preserve their language, 85 percent of the tribe speak Crow as their first language.

When the Crow began their westward migration, they moved with the Hidatsa tribe. Archaeological, linguistic, and oral history fail to agree about when the tribes separated, but the Apsáa-looke became a separate tribe. Sometime between the mid-17th century and the early 18th century, they also became nomadic. The tribe itself became divided into the Mountain Crow, who settled north of the Yellowstone River in the Rocky Mountains, and the River Crow, who settled farther south along the Bighorn, Powder, and Wind River valleys. Their new lifestyle revolved around the buffalo and the horse. The buffalo provided food, fuel, tools, clothing, and tepee covers. Well over a century after the vanishing of the great herds of buffalo, the Crow still maintain a small herd, and on rare occasions, buffalo meat is served at the feast following a Sun Dance or for some other celebration. The horse provided transportation, entertainment, and increasingly a means of trade. The Crow established themselves as the middlemen, trading horses, bows, and clothing decorated in the quill work for which they were famous to the Plains village tribes for guns and metal goods, which they traded in turn to the Shoshone in Idaho.

Losses in battle and disease posed a real threat not only to the survival of a clan but to the entire tribe. Greatly outnumbered by their enemies and suffering hundreds of deaths from smallpox, the Crow were in danger of extinction. Between 1830 and 1870, non-Indian observers questioned the tribe's ability to survive. One account placed the number of families at 800 in early days but found them reduced to 460 by 1862. It may have been such losses that prompted the Crow to aid the U.S. military. In 1865, they assisted the U.S. military in protecting travelers on the Bozeman Trail, named for John Bozeman, who used the trail as a shorter route to the Montana gold fields. More than a decade later, they were still serving as scouts for the military. In 1876, Crow scouts were primarily responsible for preventing a more serious defeat of General George Crook at the Rosebud Battle with the Lakota and Cheyenne.

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