The Crow Indian Reservation is the homeland of the

Crow Tribe The Crow, whose Endonym and exonym, autonym is Apsáalooke (), are Native Americans in the United States, Native Americans living primarily in southern Montana. Today, the Crow people have a List of federally recognized tribes in the United St ...

. Established 1868, the reservation is located in parts of Big Horn,

Yellowstone Yellowstone National Park is a List of national parks of the United States, national park of the United States located in the northwest corner of Wyoming, with small portions extending into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the 42nd U ...

, and Treasure counties in southern

Montana Montana ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota to the east, South Dakota to the southeast, Wyoming to the south, an ...

in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. The Crow Tribe has an enrolled membership of approximately 11,000, of whom 7,900 reside in the reservation. 20% speak

Crow A crow is a bird of the genus ''Corvus'', or more broadly, a synonym for all of ''Corvus''. The word "crow" is used as part of the common name of many species. The related term "raven" is not linked scientifically to any certain trait but is rathe ...

as their first language. The reservation, the largest of the seven Indian reservations in

, is located in south-central

, bordered by

Wyoming Wyoming ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States, Western United States. It borders Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho t ...

to the south and the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation to the east. The reservation includes the northern end of the

Bighorn Mountains The Bighorn Mountains ( or ) are a mountain range in northern Wyoming and southern Montana in the United States, forming a northwest-trending spur from the Rocky Mountains extending approximately northward on the Great Plains. They are separa ...

, Wolf Mountains, and Pryor Mountains. The Bighorn River flows north from the Montana-Wyoming state line, joining the Little Bighorn just east of Hardin. Part of the reservation boundary runs along the ridgeline separating Pryor Creek and the Yellowstone River. The city of Billings is approximately northwest of the reservation boundary. It has a land area of and a total area of , making it either the fifth or sixth-largest reservation in the country (alternating with the Standing Rock Reservation depending on whether water areas are counted). Reservation headquarters are in Crow Agency, Montana.

History

The reservation is located in old Crow country. In August 1805, fur trader Francois-Antoine Larocque camped at the Little Bighorn River and traveled through the area with a Crow group. The contemporary reservation lies at the center of the Crow Indian territory described in the 1851 Fort Laramie treaty. Pressure from Europeans north of Yellowstone River and a

Lakota Lakota may refer to: *Lakota people, a confederation of seven related Native American tribes *Lakota language Lakota ( ), also referred to as Lakhota, Teton or Teton Sioux, is a Siouan languages, Siouan language spoken by the Lakota people of ...

(Sioux) invasion into Crow treaty guaranteed land from the east (the lead-up to

Red Cloud's War Red Cloud's War (also referred to as the Bozeman War or the Powder River War) was an armed conflict between an alliance of the Lakota people, Lakota, Cheyenne, Northern Cheyenne, and Northern Arapaho peoples against the United States and the Crow ...

) made the 1860s a trying time for the Crow. " Oglalas under

Crazy Horse Crazy Horse ( , ; – September 5, 1877) was a Lakota people, Lakota war leader of the Oglala band. He took up arms against the United States federal government to fight against encroachment by White Americans, White American settlers on Nativ ...

and Red Cloud and

Hunkpapa The Hunkpapa (Lakota: ) are a Native American group, one of the seven council fires of the Lakota tribe. The name ' is a Lakota word, meaning "Head of the Circle" (at one time, the tribe's name was represented in European-American records as ...

s and Minneconjous under

Sitting Bull Sitting Bull ( ; December 15, 1890) was a Hunkpapa Lakota people, Lakota leader who led his people during years of resistance against Federal government of the United States, United States government policies. Sitting Bull was killed by Indian ...

continued to follow the dwindling buffalo herds west from the Powder River, while gold seekers travelled north into the rowregion along the Bozeman rail" Steamboats on the

Missouri River The Missouri River is a river in the Central United States, Central and Mountain states, Mountain West regions of the United States. The nation's longest, it rises in the eastern Centennial Mountains of the Bitterroot Range of the Rocky Moun ...

brought additional prospectors into the Yellowstone area. The situation called for a new Crow treaty. On May 7, 1868, the Crow sold around 30 million acres of their 1851 territory and agreed to live in a reservation.Hoxie, Frederick E.: Parading Through History. The making of the Crow Nation in America, 1805-1935. Cambridge, 1995, p. 92. The border to the south was the 45th degree of north latitude, while the 107th degree of longitude west was the eastern border. Both borderlines met the Yellowstone at a point. The connection of these two points followed the course of the river and made up the last border of the 1868 reservation. It comprised about eight million acres. Major F. D. Pease was the first civil agent at the Crow reservation, from 1870 to 1874. Land cessions to the United States approved in 1882, 1892 and 1906 cut the western and northernmost part of the 1868 reservation. Crow chief Plenty Coups, Robert Yellowtail and others stopped efforts to open the reservation in 1917. In a hotel room in Washington, D.C., they opened a bundle over the

incense Incense is an aromatic biotic material that releases fragrant smoke when burnt. The term is used for either the material or the aroma. Incense is used for aesthetic reasons, religious worship, aromatherapy, meditation, and ceremonial reasons. It ...

of buffalo chips from animals in the National Zoo and prayed for help. "The next day the attempted appropriation of their land was soundly defeated." Yellowtail made headlines when he became superintendent of his own tribe's reservation in 1934, the first Indian to do so. The reservation got its present shape after moderate land cuts in 1937 and in connection with the construction of the Bighorn Canyon Dam in the 1960s. During the 1960s, Pauline Small became the first woman Crow reservation tribal official. The value of the enormous amount of

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

under the surface in the old tribal territory became clear to the reservation Crows after the

Arab Oil Embargo In October 1973, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) announced that it was implementing a total oil embargo against countries that had supported Israel at any point during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which began after E ...

in the 1970s. The Crow Tribe owns 1.4 billion tons of coal, enough to supply the United States for a year. The reservation's Absaloka coal mine provides half of the tribe's nonfederal budget. The single-pit mine opened in 1974 and employs 170 people. The decline of

coal mining in the United States Coal mining is an industry in transition in the United States. Production in 2019 was down 40% from the peak production of in 2008. Employment of 43,000 coal miners is down from a peak of 883,000 in 1923. Generation of electricity is the l ...

has forced the tribe to lay off 1,000 of its 1,300 employees. Every tribal citizen receives a $225 coal payment every four months. Half of the reservation's adult population is unemployed. In 2013, the tribe and Cloud Peak Energy agreed to open the Big Metal mine, which would have brought the company $10 million in revenue over the first five years. President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...

blocked the mine and then imposed a moratorium on any new coal leasing on public lands. In March 2017, the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation sued Interior Secretary

Ryan Zinke Ryan Keith Zinke ( ; born November 1, 1961) is an American politician and businessman serving as the U.S. representative for since 2023. A member of the Republican Party, Zinke served in the Montana Senate from 2009 to 2013 and as the U.S. re ...

to stop his attempt to lift the moratorium. File:Crow Indian territory (area 517, 619 and 635) as described in Fort Laramie treaty (1851), present Montana and Wyoming.png, Crow Indian territory (area 517, 619 and 635) as described in Fort Laramie treaty (1851), present Montana and Wyoming File:Crow Indian Reservation, 1868 (area 619 and 635). Yellow area 517 is 1851 Crow treaty land ceded to the U.S.png, Crow Indian Reservation, 1868 (area 619 and 635). Yellow area 517 is 1851 Crow treaty land ceded to the U.S File:Crow Indian Reservation, 1880 (area 635). Area 619 ceded.png, Crow Indian Reservation, 1880 (area 635). Area 619 ceded. Ratified 1882. File:Crow Indian Reservation 1891 (area 715). Area 714 ceded.png, Crow Indian Reservation, 1891 (area 715). Area 714 ceded. Approved 1892. (Area 658 is the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in old Crow territory.)

Communities

* Crow Agency, Montana * Fort Smith, Montana (part) * Hardin, Montana (part) * Lodge Grass, Montana * Pryor, Montana * St. Xavier, Montana * Wyola, Montana

Historic places and attractions

The biggest attraction in the reservation is the Little Bighorn National Monument. On June 25, 1876, combined forces from the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and

Arapaho The Arapaho ( ; , ) are a Native American people historically living on the plains of Colorado and Wyoming. They were close allies of the Cheyenne tribe and loosely aligned with the Lakota and Dakota. By the 1850s, Arapaho bands formed t ...

tribes defeated the Seventh Cavalry Regiment commanded by

George Armstrong Custer George Armstrong Custer (December 5, 1839 – June 25, 1876) was a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars. Custer graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point ...

. Local Crow scouts defending their reservation guided Custer. Chief Plenty Coups (Alek-Chea-Ahoosh) State Park and Home is located near the town of Pryor. It has a small museum dedicated to Chief Plenty Coups and the Crow Tribe. The chief's two-floor lodge house and grocery store is preserved.

Notable events

Since 1904, the Crow have organized the big Crow Fair, forming the "Teepee Capital of the World". By tradition, it is held the third week in August.Medicine Crow, Joseph: From the Heart of the Crow Country. The Crow Indians' own Stories. New York, 1992, pp. 119-123.

Popular culture

The

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

TV series ''

Reading Rainbow ''Reading Rainbow'' is an American educational children's television series that originally aired on PBS and afterward PBS Kids from July 11, 1983 to November 10, 2006, with reruns continuing to air until August 28, 2009. 155 30-minute episodes ...

'' partially filmed its tenth episode, "The Gift of the Sacred Dog", on the reservation on June 17, 1983. The title was based on a book by Paul Goble and was narrated by actor Michael Ansara.

References

{{authority control American Indian reservations in Montana Crow Tribe of Montana Geography of Big Horn County, Montana Geography of Treasure County, Montana Geography of Yellowstone County, Montana 1868 establishments in Montana Territory