When the first American explorers and fur traders began to move out onto the Northern Plains following the Corps of Discovery (i.e. Lewis and Clark) in the early nineteenth century, they encountered the tribe which they came to call the Crows hunting in Montana and Wyoming. At this time, the Crows were horse-mounted buffalo hunters with a good understanding of the ecology of the country.
The Crows were three separate and distinct groups: (1) the River Crow who ranged north of the Yellowstone River; (2) the Mountain Crow who lived south of the Yellowstone and farther west; and (3) the Kicked-in-the-Bellies (also known as Home-Away-from-the-Center) who lived in the Bighorn Basin.
Like many of the other Indian tribes living on the Northern Plains, the Crows had migrated into the Plains from the Eastern Woodlands. Oral traditions, linguistics, and archaeological data all suggest that the Crows began their migration onto the Northern Plains about three centuries earlier.
The Crows were once a part of the Hidatsas, a farming tribe living in permanent villages near the Missouri River. Linguistically, the Crow language belongs to the Siouan language family and is most closely related to the Hidatsa language. The linguistic data suggests that the Crows separated from the Hidatsas about 900-1000 CE. The archaeological data shows a later separation.
Archaeologists suggest that the Crow moved out onto the Great Plains in two migrations. The Mountain Crow moved out first, about 1550. Then a century later, the River Crow followed them.
In his chapter in We, The People: Of Earth and Elders—Volume II, Crow historian and elder Joseph Medicine Crow describes the migrations this way:
“Way back in the 1500s, what might be called our ancestral tribe, lived east of the Mississippi in a land of forests and lakes, possibly present day Wisconsin. They began migrating westward around 1580 until they crossed the Mississippi to follow the buffalo. As far as the Crows are concerned, they separated from this main band in about 1600-1625.”
When the Crows were living in the Woodlands, their subsistence was probably based on a combination of hunting forest animals such as deer, elk, and moose; fishing; gathering wild plants; and planting some crops, including corn. At this time, they were not living in the Plains Indian tipis, but in woodlands wigwams: dome-shaped structures covered with bark.
For some reason, they migrated to the west and settled along the Missouri River in North Dakota. Here they settled into a more agricultural way of life, raising corn, beans, sunflowers, tobacco, pumpkins, and squash in small, irregularly shaped fields. They adopted the more permanent earth lodge house common to the tribes along the river. From here, the ancestors of the Crow broke off from the ancestral tribe, moving onto the plains to become more dependent on the buffalo for their subsistence.
According to one oral tradition, there was a buffalo hunt at which the wives of two of the chiefs argued over the upper stomach of one of the cows. There was a scuffle and one of the women was killed. This escalated into a skirmish between the two bands led by the chiefs, and several more people were killed. As a result, one band left the Missouri and migrated to the Rocky Mountains. The band that followed along the rivers and streams came to be known as the River Crow (They Travel Along the Riverbanks) and the other band became known as the Mountain Crow. The Mountain Crow later divided, with part becoming the Kicked in the Bellies.
Another oral tradition tells that at one time there was a wandering tribe under the leadership of two brothers: No Intestines (No Vitals) and Red Scout. At what is now called Devil’s Lake, they did a vision quest together. During the vision, No Intestines was told to search for the seeds of the sacred tobacco and Red Scout was told to settle on the banks of the Missouri River and grow corn. No Intestines led his people to many parts of the Great Plains in search of the sacred tobacco seeds. In his entry on the Crows in The Encyclopedia of North American Indians, Barney Old Coyote writes:
“No Vitals and his small band of followers embarked on the first of two odysseys, which saw them journey to the eastern slopes of the Canadian Rockies, in present-day Alberta, to the upper reaches of the Arkansas River. To this day the Crows still sing lullabies of the mountains of Glacier Park and the fowls of Arkansas.”
The oral tradition tells of the Great Salt Lake, the geothermal features of Yellowstone National Park, of the Arkansas River in Oklahoma, and of the plains of Alberta, Canada. Finally, at Cloud Peak, the highest crest in the Bighorn Range, No Intestines received another vision. In the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains, the Crows found wild tobacco (Nicotiana multivalvis and Nicotiana quadrivalvis). Barney Old Coyote writes:
“The Crows quickly became nomadic hunters, their activities ranging from stalking large game to trapping small animals to staging elaborate buffalo jumps.”
The oral traditions also tell of another group of Crow—Bilápiiuutche, Beaver Dries Its Fur—which became lost during the journey. Several explanations are offered for the fate of this group. Some feel that it split in Canada and remained there. Others say it turned east and ended up at Lake Michigan. Still others feel that Beaver Dries Its Fur became a part of the Kiowa, who were closely associated with the Crow. In his University of Montana M.A. thesis Akbaatashee: The Oilers Pentecostalism Among the Crow Indians, Timothy McCleary reports:
“Still, other traditions relate that the Comanches located a group of massacred people in southern Colorado who were dressed like Crows.”
Like the other tribes of the Northern Plains, they did not receive horses until sometime in the 1700s, perhaps about 1750. It is likely that they first acquired horses from the Shoshone.
More American Indian stories
Indians 201: Cheyenne migrations
Indians 101: Tlingit Migrations
Indians 101: The Northern Plains vision quest
Indians 101: Traditional Northern Plains Warfare
Indians 101: When the Omaha and Ponca Indians were one people
Indians 101: The Comanche buffalo hunt
Indians 201: A very short overview of the Mandan Indians
Indians 101: A very short overview of the Gosiute Indians
