Crow

North American Indians of Siouan linguistic stock, historically affiliated with the village-dwelling Hidatsa of the upper Missouri River. They occupied the area around the Yellowstone River and its tributaries, particularly the valleys of the Powder, Wind, and Bighorn rivers in what is now Montana.

Perhaps lured by the trade in horses, and putatively in response to a dispute over the distribution of meat from a slain buffalo, the Crow broke with the Hidatsa and moved westward sometime between the mid-17th and the early 18th century. Traditional Crow social organization included three bands, which were known as Mountain Crow, River Crow, and Kicked-in-Their-Bellies; the last was most likely an offshoot from the Mountain Crow and remained closely allied to that band.

Much of traditional Crow life revolved around the buffalo and the horse. From the former they made food, clothing, robes, tepee covers, sinew thread, containers, and shields. The latter provided transportation and, through horse racing and trading, a means of entertainment and exchange. By 1740 the Crow had emerged as middlemen engaged in the trading of horses, bows, shirts, and featherwork to the Plains Village tribes for guns and metal goods; these they traded in turn to the Shoshone in Idaho.

In Crow society women's responsibilities included the processing and preparation of food, housing, and clothing; women also occasionally engaged in raiding parties, particularly when avenging the death of a close relative. Generally, however, warfare was carried on by men and was largely a matter of raiding for horses. For a man to be ranked as a chief, performance of four insults to the enemy, or coups, was required: leading a war party without losing a Crow life, taking a tethered horse from an enemy camp, striking an enemy with a coupstick (a type of club), and wresting a weapon from an enemy. One man from among a camp's chiefs became the head of the camp.

A basic element in traditional Crow religious life was the vision quest. Through a process involving prayer, solemn vows, fasting in isolation, and, sometimes, piercing the body, a man who attained a vision was “adopted” by a supernatural guardian who instructed him in gathering objects into a medicine bundle. He was permitted to share part of his power with other men who had not received visions and to create replica bundles for them. Women also engaged in vision quests, though we know less about traditional women's rituals because few were recorded in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Crow grew tobacco for ritual use; according to their traditions, it had been given to them to overcome their enemies. Unlike other clubs and societies among the Crow, Tobacco Societies involved an entrance fee and an elaborate initiation rite, and they were joined by married couples rather than individuals.

The Crow began to suffer high losses from the Blackfoot and Dakota Sioux as the American colonial frontier expanded and drove those tribes into Crow country. In response to constant threats from these enemies, the Crow sided with the U.S. military in the Plains wars of the 1860s and '70s. In 1868 they accepted a reservation carved from former tribal lands in southern Montana.

In the early 21st century, population estimates indicated some 15,000 individuals of Crow descent.

Copyright © 1994-2009 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. For more information visit Britannica.com.