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The Apsaalooke, Or Crow, People Arrived in Southeastern Montana

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The Apsaalooke, Or Crow, People Arrived in Southeastern Montana ‘EVERYTHING GOOD IS THERE’: EXPLORING THE MATERIAL CULTURE AND HISTORIC LANDSCAPES AT CHIEF PLENTY COUPS STATE PARK Jessica G. Reeves A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in History with an Emphasis in Public History Middle Tennessee State University May 2017 Thesis Committee: Dr. Carroll Van West, chair Dr. Ashley Riley Sousa ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Rob, without whose love and support this would not have been possible. Thank you for pushing me when I thought I couldn’t go on. Holly, who was always there to commiserate and who had an uncanny ability to know when I was procrastinating. My friends in Montana, who introduced me to Crow culture and showed me so much kindness and generosity while we worked together: Wendy Red Star, Kaneeta Red Star Harris, Virgil Buffalo, Bernadette Smith, Doug Habermann, Michael Hunsaker, Michael Norton, Ruth Ferris, Miriam Smith, Angela Russell, Jonathan and Raylene Pretty On Top, Tim Bernardis, and Jon Ille. And those friends I haven’t even met in person, but who have provided me invaluable information about the collection, Aaron Kind and Chris Dantic. I would’ve been lost without you! And of course, Dr. Van West and Dr. Ashley Riley Sousa, who both provided guidance, wisdom, and boundless amounts of patience. I feel incredibly honored to have worked with both of you over the past four years, and am more grateful to you than you could possibly know. ii ABSTRACT Alaxchiiaahush, Plenty Coups, was the final chief of the Crow people. His spiritual vision quest as a young man showed him that cooperation with the coming White settlers was the only way to survive, and he led the Crow people through the assimilation of the reservation period. He died at age 84, and requested that his land and house be dedicated as a park for all people. In 1965, it became a Montana State Park, and it tells the story of Plenty Coups and of the Crow people to thousands of visitors each year. This thesis examines how material culture and landscape analysis can enhance the existing narrative, and center Crow voices in discussions about Crow culture. It analyzes the collection of artifacts at Chief Plenty Coups State Park and shows how deliberate Plenty Coups was in his assimilation efforts; giving a little when necessary to maintain his and his people’s cultural integrity. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ….……………………………………………….………….……v CHAPTER ONE: HISTORIOGRAPHY, OR: HOW PLENTY COUPS FITS INTO THE LARGER HISTORICAL NARRATIVE OF HOW TO BE A “GOOD INDIAN” ………………...………………………………………………………….….2 CHAPTER TWO: MATERIAL CULTURE, OR: WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM NON-WRITTEN SOURCES? .………………………………….…………33 CHAPTER THREE: THEORY IN PRACTICE, OR: INTERPRETTING THE LIFE OF PLENTY COUPS AT A STATE PARK ….…………………….………55 BIBLIOGRAPHY ………………................................................................81 iv LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1 Tshidiapas Absaroka……………………………………………….….…….1 Fig. 2 Plenty Coups [A], Apsaroke……………………………………….…..…....1 Fig. 3 Side view of Plenty Coups’ house……………….……………………….10 Fig. 4 Plenty Coups’ house and front porch…………………………….…….10 Fig. 5 Inside the front room of Plenty Coups’ home…………………………11 Fig. 6 Interpretive sign outside of Plenty Coups’ house…………………….11 Fig. 7 Object 001-002b, Medicine Bundle……………………………….…….56 Fig. 8 Object 001-002c, Medicine Bundle……………………………….…….56 Fig. 9 Object 001-079, Rosary Beads…………………………………….…….60 Fig. 10 Object 001-075, Dance Bells, also called Ankle Bells…………….62 Fig. 11 Object 001-055, Stetson Hat……………………………………………65 Fig. 12 Object 001-056, Stetson Hat……………………………………………65 Fig. 13 Plenty Coups and Grandmother’s Knife…………………….….……68 Fig. 14 Rodman Wanamaker and Indian Chiefs………………………….….68 Fig. 15 Object 2004-01, Allotment Certificate……………………………..…69 Fig. 16 Illustration from “In the Lodge of the Chickadee: Architecture and Cultural Resistance on the Crow Indian Reservation, 1884-1920”.…….70 Fig. 17 Object 001-126, Seed Packet……………………………………...……71 Fig. 18 Present day view of the house and general store………………….72 Fig. 19 View of the front porch of the Chief’s house..………………………73 Fig. 20 Honor Room, upstairs in Chief Plenty Coups’ house……….…….74 v Fig. 21 Sacred spring at Chief Plenty Coups State Park……………………75 Fig. 22 Replica sweat lodge in front of Plenty Coups’ house…………..….76 Fig. 23 Playground equipment at the park……………………………………78 Fig. 24 Parading during the Day of Honor…………………………………....78 Fig. 25 View of the park from Google Maps, 2016…………………….…….79 Fig. 26 Map of reservation from Google Maps, 2016…………….……….…80 Fig. 27 Enlarged map showing Chief Plenty Coups State Park and surrounding area, Google Maps, 2016…………………………………………80 vi 1 Fig. 1 Tshidiapas Absaroka, C.M. Bell (National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, 1880) Fig. 2 Plenty Coups [A], Apsaroke, Edward S. Curtis (Library of Congress, 1908) 2 CHAPTER ONE: HISTORIOGRAPHY, OR: HOW PLENTY COUPS FITS INTO THE LARGER HISTORICAL NARRATIVE OF HOW TO BE A “GOOD INDIAN” The Apsaalooke, or Crow, people arrived in southeastern Montana, after splitting with the Mandan-Hidatsa tribe near the Missouri River in present-day North Dakota.1 The exact date of separation of the tribes is not known, but per tribal historian Joe Medicine Crow, it occurred around 1600 to 1624.2 For hundreds of years, they traveled, hunted and lived on the sacred land given to them by the Great Spirit. This land stretched for 33 million acres, covering the modern-day areas of Billings, Bozeman, and Red Lodge in Montana, and stretching all the way to the Black Hills of South Dakota. In 1868, Chief Sits in the Middle of the Land described the boundaries of the land at the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 negotiations as this: I have but one tipi. It has but four poles. It is held to the ground by big rocks. My east lodge pole touches the ground at the Black Hills; my south, the ground at the headwaters of the Wind River; my west, the snowcapped Absaroke and Beartooth Range; the north lodge pole rests on the Bearpaw Mountains.3 1 Rodney Frey, The World of the Crow Indians: As Driftwood Lodges (Norman: OK, University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), 11. 2 Ibid., 11-12. Others place the date anywhere from 900 to 1500, depending on whom you ask and what sources they use, but I will use this number since it is quoted from a Crow historian. 3 Peter Nabokov, Two Leggings: The Making of a Crow Warrior (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), xvii. 3 There are three divisions of the Crow tribe: River Crow, Mountain Crow and Kicked in the Belly. The River Crow lived between the Milk River near the Canadian border and the Yellowstone River near present- day Billings. Chief Plenty Coups State Park—and Plenty Coups’ homestead—is in River Crow territory. The Mountain Crow lived in the Big Horn Mountains, in southern Montana and northern Wyoming. The Kicked in the Bellies spent their summers in the Big Horn Mountains and their winters near the Wind (Bighorn) River in central Wyoming.4 Although there are divisions and each group is proud of its individual heritage as Kicked in the Belly, River or Mountain Crow, all the Crow people stand together as one united tribe, albeit one with a varied and interesting past. In the mid-1700s, the Crow controlled a large portion of land, but enemy tribes surrounded them: the Sioux to the east, Assiniboine and Blackfeet to the north, Salish to the west, and Arapaho and Cheyenne to the south. Despite the small size of the Crow tribe in comparison to some of the other tribes, they fought off their enemies and retained their lands. The biggest challenge to Crow land came during the mid-nineteenth century, as American settlers moved west and the American government pushed the native peoples onto smaller and smaller areas of land to 4 “Apsaalooke Writing Tribal Histories,” Little Big Horn College Tribal Histories Project, https://perma.cc/FX5U-EMWT (accessed November 30, 2012, permalink created June 6, 2016). 4 make room for railroads, roads, and the inevitable population influxes they would bring. The United States government made numerous treaties with the various tribes of the West and Pacific Northwest; these treaties were negotiated through translators and were often broken or reconfigured later by the United States Congress. The Crow tribe signed treaties with the United States on numerous occasions, including many land cessions in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Crow Friendship Treaty was signed in 1825 and defined the peaceful relationship between the United States and the Crow. Twenty-six years later, the Crow Reservation, and reservations for the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Assiniboine, Gros-Ventre, Mandan and Arikara tribes, was established through the 1851 Ft. Laramie Treaty. The final treaty, signed in 1868 also at Ft. Laramie, finalized the United States/Crow relationship, and the jurisdiction of the land.5 Throughout the decades following this final treaty, tribal leaders signed other agreements, mostly selling off portions of the reservation land back to the government. 5 “Tribal Government,” Official Site of the Crow Nation, https://perma.cc/9VCC-J8BY (accessed December 1, 2012, permalink created June 6, 2016); Charles Kappler, ed., “Treaty with the Crow Tribe August 4, 1825 7 Stat., 266” in Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties Vol. II (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1904) 244-46; Charles Kappler, ed., “Treaty of Ft. Laramie, September 17, 1851 11 Stats., 749” in Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties Vol. II (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1904) 594-96; Charles Kappler, ed., “Treaty with the Crows, May 7, 1868 15 Stats., 649” in Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties Vol. II (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1904) 1008-11. 5 Today, the Crow reservation is 2.3 million acres, located on the southern border of Montana, south of Billings and the Yellowstone River.
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