Hidatsa Tribe

The origin of the Crow Indians, also called the Absaroka or Apsaalooke, started with the Hidatsa tribe. The Hidatsa, a Siouan tribe, lived in semipermanent villages on the upper Missouri River in what is now North Dakota. The Crow or “people of the large-beaked bird” were once part of the Hidatsa tribe, but split into to two divisions that separated from the Hidatsa at different times and for unrelated reasons. These two divisions of Crow are known as the Mountain Crow and the River Crow. ("Tribal History of the Hidatsa (Gros Ventre) Tribe As Told to Col. A. B. Welch | Welch Dakotah Papers”) ("Crow or Absaroka Tribe”) ("Crow Nation - New World Encyclopedia”) ("Historical Timeline Library @ Little Big Horn College”) The Mountain Crow

The story goes that the wife of Bad Heart Bear, one of the Hidatsa faction leaders, was indignant over the dispersal of buffalo meat, feeling that she had not received her fair share. The following argument between the two leaders led to a permanent split of the tribe. As a result, the River Crow were formed and went on to settle along the Yellowstone River, Musselshell River and the river valleys of the Big Horn, Wind River and Powder River in Montana. ("Historical Timeline Library @ Little Big Horn College”) ("Crow Nation - New World Encyclopedia”) The Crow did not encounter Europeans until 1743 when they met a French-Canadian explorer and trader by the name of Pierre La Verendrye. La Verendrye and his party had been on several expeditions in hopes of discovering the western sea, stories of which he had heard from the Mandan tribe and upon meeting, were repeated by the Crow. La Verendrye made multiple journeys in search of the Western Sea but never found it and this introduction to Europeans did little for the enrichment of the Crow people, in fact quite the opposite. It should come as no surprise that the Europeans had brought with them new diseases, including smallpox, which devastated the Crow population.

("Biography – GAULTIER DE VARENNES ET DE LA VÉRENDRYE, PIERRE – Volume III (1741-1770) – Dictionary of Canadian Biography”) ("Crow Nation - New

Chief Plenty Coups believed that the United States would win the war and that the survival of his tribe, which by the mid 1800s was still much depleted by ongoing outbreaks of smallpox and surrounded on all sides by enemy tribes, hinged on this cooperation. He had been made Chief of his tribe at 28, following a vision quest, the meaning of which he interpreted and concluded that his people would be the only tribe the survived if they aided the United States. Chief Plenty Coups was the last Chief of his tribe which switched over to rule by governing council following his death in 1932. Unfortunately, the aid that the Crow people provided during the Indian Wars, as well as future wars, where they would continue to side with the United States was not