Crow Chief Joseph Medicine Crow. Photo by Nick Wolcott.
Joseph Medicine Crow
with Brian Bull
Arlie Neskahi:
Arlie Neskahi: There are many definitions of warriors and what they represent to the Crow Nation. It’s a question that Crow elder and historian Joe Medicine Crow has examined for much of his 90 years, a lifetime which has spanned two world wars, conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and the Mid East. Medicine Crow’s own warrior legacy goes back to his grandfather, who served as one of Custer’s scouts. In today’s Elder Wisdom, Brian Bull presents Joe Medicine Crow and the warrior code of the Crow Nation.
Images below are from the National Gallery of Art: www.nga.gov
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George Catlin American, 1796 - 1872 A Crow Chief at His Toilette, 1861/1869 oil on card mounted on paperboard, 47 x 63.3 cm (18 1/2 x 24 7/8 in.) Paul Mellon Collection 1965.16.22
Brian Bull:
Joseph Medicine Crow carries his tribal history with care and pride, like an ancient pipe. Once asked to be a consultant for Hollywood’s 1942 Custer flick, “They Died With Their Boots On”, Medicine Crow was let go for not propping up Custer’s stature as a heroic figure. Instead, Medicine Crow would later draft a script for an annual June re-enactment which details the native perspective of the 1876 Battle of Little Big Horn. It has been a headliner event near Hardin, Montana for forty years.
Medicine Crow’s current passion is the keeping of Crow tradition, which begins with a respect for the Land.
Joseph Medicine Crow:
A Crow chief said that you have come to my country, the Maker made it just right, and put it in exactly the right place and gave it to the Crow Indians. Then he said summertime, when it’s hot down there, we come up here and where it’s nice and cool and cold streams and grass green all the time for our horses. Then in the fall, when it’s getting cold up here, we go down to the big rivers, Yellowstone, Missouri and there the grass is always high.
Then, in the spring, our women go up these creeks and the ravines and pick chokecherries, June Berries. Then, of course, there was always game – the buffalo, deer and a lot of game birds here, we call prairie chickens. And of course, there’s fish, trout, all over all these mountain streams. But the Crows rather eat, ha, ha, buffalo than sit and fish, you know.
But they asked one chief in 1868, “Where’s your land?”
And he said, “My land is where I set my tipi. I use 4 poles. One pole rests at the western foothills of Black Hills. One pole rests at the shores of the big lake in the mountains, Yellowstone Lake. One pole rests near the great falls of the Missouri River. And one pole rests at the junction of Yellowstone River and Missouri River. That’s my land – huge area.”
Bull:
Medicine Crow says his people have such a love for the land, that even the spirits of those long past yearn for it. He recalls a stranger’s phone call that lead to a significant homecoming for a Crow Chief.
George Catlin American, 1796 - 1872 Crow Chief, His Wife, and a Warrior, 1861/1869 oil on card mounted on paperboard, 46.3 x 62.1 cm (18 1/4 x 24 7/16 in.) Paul Mellon Collection 1965.16.19
Medicine Crow:
One day I got a phone call. And this woman from Virginia said, “I’ve been having dreams of a Crow Indian chief try to tell me that he wants to go home. And, one time I asked him his name and he said, uh, Bachay-chay, Bachay-chay. Do you know what that means?”
There’s a place in Wyoming called Meeteetse, supposed to mean Bachay-chay, referring to Sits in the Middle of the Land. His name Awe-Chualawaache. That’s the Crow way of saying it.
So I said I’d check up Meeteetse. They gave me an idea that this place is someplace out here in Wyoming and Montana. So, I turn it over to our tribal chairperson, a woman.
So they got together and organized this search party. And they looked for his remains and they think they found it, and took it back to Crow Agency there, where he was buried with full ceremony. Got a nice headstone and has become a shrine there. He wanted to go home, so we took him home.
Bull:
Medicine Crow says his tribe pays a lot of respect to their chiefs. That’s because of the honored role they have in Crow tribal history, beginning in matters of warfare. He says intertribal warfare among the Crows, Cheyenne, Lakota, and Blackfeet gave many opportunities to prove one’s courage and skill.
George Catlin American, 1796 - 1872 An Aged Minatarree Chief and His Family, 1861/1869 oil on card mounted on paperboard, 46.5 x 62.1 cm (18 5/16 x 24 7/16 in.) Paul Mellon Collection 1965.16.76
Medicine Crow:
And the Crows, by having acquired the horse and the white man’s guns, they started intertribal war. Where it started, it got bigger and bigger. And through military activities, Crow boys become chiefs, you know.
A warrior has to complete four dangerous war acts on a battlefield to become chiefs. But, one man is knocked off his horse on one side, he becomes a trophy, and the warriors on this side say that the Crows on this side want to go there and touch that man. The first man who goes up there and touch that fallen enemy with a coup stick or maybe a quirt… Don’t hurt him, just go back. You get a war deed.
But that’s a dangerous thing, because his buddies, his companions, are right there. They know that pretty soon the Crows are going to come, so they use him as a bait, you know. And maybe that man himself is just accidentally had fallen off his horse and his time’s come, so he’s loaded his 45-70 and waiting. (chuckles)
You must have a hand-to-hand encounter, fight with an enemy warrior and take his weapon away from him, you know, pistol, a knife, or tomahawk, or gun. Do that, you get a war deed.
And then, warriors organize a war party to go capture horses. Well, you go there into an enemy camp. And it’s dangerous to get in there, you know. They have watch dogs and, night time, they have sentinels. Then the horses are pretty well guarded, staked right close to the owner’s lodge. Good horses in there with a rope tied to his neck leading into the tipi tied to the owner’s arm, you know. So during the night, the horse moves around and wakes him up. So if the Crow were cunning enough to slip in that well-guarded camp and come to one of those things, cut the rope off of that horse, take it away, you get a war deed.
Now, the last one, after you have completed a number of these dangerous requirements, the council of old retired chiefs would select you to lead a war party. So having completed those four, why, you become a chief. TRACK 4
Bull:
Joseph Medicine Crow knows what he’s talking about. During World War II, he and another soldier helped their unit capture several S-S officers at a farm by sealing their horses.
Time and technology have changed the way wars are fought now. It’s hard to find any soldier counting coup today when most operations now use air strikes, smart bombs, and land mines – devoid of the brutal intimacy of hand-to-hand combat.
But Medicine Crow asserts that bravery and cunning can still exist in today’s warrior. It’s a matter of heart and principle he tries to take in all his endeavors.
Music:
Gathering Spirits
John Huling
Spiritlands
Red Feather
Medicine Crow:
The word ‘chief’ is a white man’s word. They called these men good men, good men. He’s a good man, meaning he’s brave enough to get a war deed.
Brian Bull:
For Wisdom of the Elders, I’m Brian Bull.
Neskahi:
Brian Bull is Assistant News Director for Wisconsin Public Radio, and is an enrolled member of the Nez Perce tribe. He lives with his wife, two kids, and three cats in Madison, Wisconsin.