Crow Tribe History, Culture, and Facts

The Crow tribe is a unique band of Sioux Plains Native Americans living predominantly in southern Montana.

They share a mutual language and culture with their Plains Native relatives but are distinct enough and manage a specific territory to be considered different from the Sioux.

We, however, put into retrospect the history, culture, and facts about the Crow tribe.

Crow Tribe History

Pre-colonial contact

The primordial home of the Crow Hidatsa ancestral tribe was along Lake Erie in present-day Ohio.

Forced out from there by well-armed, violent neighbors, they shortly settled south of Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba.

After that, the people migrated to the Devil’s Lake area of North Dakota before the Crow separated from the Hidatsa and went westward.

The Crow were virtually pushed westward due to encroachment and influx of the Cheyenne.

The Crow battled against Shoshone bands, such as the Bikkaasha (People of the Grass Lodges), to gain control over their new territory and coerced them westward.

They allied with the Plains Apache and local Kiowa bands.

The Plains Apache and Kiowa bands later moved southwards, while the Crow remained dominant in their established region through the 18th and 19th centuries, the time of the fur trade.

The 1740s-1800s: Tribal war (Enemies and Allies)

Since 1740, the Plains tribes swiftly adopted the horse, which enabled them to move far into the Plains and hunt buffalo very efficiently.

However, the harsh winters in the Northern hemisphere curbed their herds more than those of the Plains tribes in the South.

The Crow, Eastern Shoshone, Hidatsa, and Northern Shoshone were soon noted as horse breeders and dealers and formed moderately large horse herds.

The Crows were suppressed with raids and horse thefts by horse-poor tribes, including the influential Blackfoot, Assiniboine, Gros Ventre, Pawnee, and Ute.

They later had to face the Lakota and their allies, the Cheyenne and Arapaho, who stole horses from their Enemies.

The greatest enemies of the Crow people were the Blackfoot Confederacy and the Lakota-Arapaho-Cheyenne alliance.

During the 18th century, pressured by the Saulteaux and Cree people (the Iron Confederacy), who had prior and better access to guns via the fur trade, the Crow had moved to this region from the Ohio Eastern Woodland area of today’s Ohio, settling south of the Lake Winnipeg.

From there, they were forced to the west by the Cheyenne.

The Cheyenne finally became allies of the Lakota, as they planned to remove the whites from the area.

The Crows, however, remained bitter enemies of both the Cheyenne and Sioux.

Despite territorial losses, they managed to protect a large reservation of more than 9,300 km².

The Crows were allied with the northern Plains tribes of the Flathead; Kutenai, Shoshone, Kiowa, Nez Perce, and Plains Apache.

The powerful Iron Confederacy (Nehiywa-Pwat), an alliance of the northern plains Indian nations centered on the fur trade, emerged as enemies of the Crow.

Their ancestral territory stretched from today’s Yellowstone National Park to the Powder Rivers.

Once they settled at the Yellowstone River valley and its tributaries on the Northern Plains of Montana and Wyoming, the Crow separated into four groups: the River Crow, Mountain Crow, Kicked in the Bellies, and Beaver Dries its Fur.

Previously semi-nomad farmers and hunters in the northeastern woodland, they adjusted to the nomadic way of the Plains Indians as gathers, hunters, and hunted buffalos.

They made use of dog travois for carrying goods.

1850s-1870s: Colonial contact

With the arrival of European Americans in their numbers, the Crows were repelling pressure from enemies who tremendously outnumbered them.

A revelation by Plenty Coups, who was a little boy by then, but who later became their greatest chief, was interpreted by the elders as meaning that the Europeans would become later dominant over the whole country and that if the Crows were to keep their land, they would need to be in good terms with the whites.

Around 1851, the Lakota and Cheyenne were established in Montana’s South and east of Crow territory.

These enemy tribes desired the lands of the Crow and warred against them.

By the law of conquest, they annexed the hunting lands of the Crow tribe, including the Powder and Tongue River valleys, and removed the Crow tribe to the west and northwest upriver on the Yellowstone.

After about nine years, the Lakota Sioux claimed to take over the former lands of the Crow tribe.

The Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1851, alongside the United States government, certified as Crow lands a vast portion focused on the Big Horn Mountains, Powder River on the east and north of the Musselshell River.

But for 200 years, the Cheyenne and several bands of Lakota Sioux had steadily been migrating westward over the plains and were still pressuring the Crows.

Today

As of 1918, the Crow had been organizing a gathering to showcase their culture, and they invited people of various tribes.

Crow Tribe Culture

Food

The primary source of food for the Crow tribe was the American bison which was hunted in different ways.

Before horses were used for hunting, the bison were hunted on foot, which required the hunters to stalk close to the bison.

Often they do this with a wolf-pelt disguise, then hunt down the animals quickly on foot before killing them with arrows or lances.

The use of horses allowed for easy hunting and more at one time.

In addition, the Crow also hunted mountain goats, deer, elk, bears, bighorn sheep, and other games.

Buffalo meat was usually boiled or roasted in a stew with prairie turnips.

The liver, tongue, rump, kidney, and heart were delicacies.

Dried meat was ground with fat and berries to make pemmican.

In addition to meat, they also gathered wild edibles such as wild turnips, elderberries, and Saskatoon berries.

Habitat and Transportation

Traditionally the Crow shelter is the tipi made with bison hides stretched over wooden poles.

They were known to construct some of the largest tipis.

Tipi poles were gotten from the lodgepole pine, which got its name from its use as support for tipis.

The tipi interior comprises mattresses and buffalo-hide seats arranged around the edge, with a fireplace at the center.

The smoke from the fire escapes through a smoke flap at the top of the tipi.

The tipis were easy to raise and collapse and were lightweight, ideal for nomadic people such as the Crow, who moved quickly and frequently.

The most common form of transportation used by the Crow was the horse. Horses were gotten through trading and raiding other Plain nations.

Tribes in the northern plains, like the Crow, generally got their horses from the Comanche and Kiowa people, who originally bought their horses from the Europeans, and southwestern Indians, such as the Pueblo people.

The Crow tribe had large horse herds, among the largest owned by the Plains Indians; in 1914, they possessed about thirty to forty thousand herds.

The horse made the Crow tribe powerful and skilled mounted warriors.

Attire

The Crow people wore clothing differentiated by gender.

Male clothing consisted of a shirt, a belt with trimmed leggings, a long breechcloth, and moccasins.

Females wore dresses of deer and buffalo hides adorned with elk teeth or shells.

They also cover their legs with leggings during the winter seasons and their feet with moccasins.

The women wore their hair in two braids, while the men wore their hair in two braids covered in the fur of beavers or otters.

The Crow tribe is known for often wearing their hair in a pompadour, usually colored with white paint.

Like many other plain Indians, the Crow wore feathers from crows, owls, eagles, and other birds in their hair for symbolic reasons.

They also wore various headdresses, including the popular eagle feather headdress, split horn headdress, and bison scalp headdress with horns and beaded rim.

Native clothing worn by the Crow people is still worn with different degrees of regularity.

Kinship system

Like many Native Americans, the Crow tribe had a matrilineal system.

After marriage, the husband would move to the wife’s mother’s house. The women held an important role in the tribe.

Crow Tribe Facts

1. The Crow tribe considered the birds entering the house as a bad omen. It is often believed that a family member may die if a bird is trapped inside the house.
2. Death was considered bad, and it was grieved by making cuts on one’s body so that the scars remained. Women cut their hair to mourn.
3. Crow people believe they possess seven senses, the additional two being intuitions and dreams. They take their dreams to be a sign from the creator.