Where do the Crow Indians Tribe Live?

Answer 1

Absaroke (also spelled Apsáalooke) is the original tribal name of the Crow people used by the Hidatsa. In English, it means Big Bird People or Children of the Big Bird. When first asked their name by Europeans, they said "big bird people," referring to the Eagle. The Europeans saw big crows eating carion around the camp perimeter, and mistakenly thought they meant the Crow.

The Absaroke were once a Siouan tribe forming part of the Hidatsa group living on the Missouri river. When two chiefs had a dispute, one chief and his followers split off and migrated to the vicinity of the Rocky mountains about 1776. This splinter group eventually became known as the Crow tribe.

Some historians believe the early home of the Crow-Hidatsa ancestral tribe was near the headwaters of the Mississippi River in either northern Minnesota or Wisconsin; others place them in the Winnipeg area of Manitoba. Later the people moved to the Devil's Lake region of North Dakota before the Crow split from the Hidatsa and moved westward.

Once established in Montana and Wyoming, the Crow eventually divided into two groups: the Mountain Crow and River Crow. The former was so called because of their custom of hunting and roaming near the mountains away from the Missouri river, and the latter from the fact that they left the mountain section about 1859 and occupied the country along the river. There was no ethnic, linguistic, or other difference between them other than the locations where they lived.

Since their separation from the Hidatsa, their history has been similar to that of most tribes of the plains, one of a nomadic people following their food sources at different times of the year, and perpetually at war with the surrounding tribes, with their chief enemies being the Siksika (Blackfoot) and the Dakota Sioux.

At the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition (in 1804) the Crow dwelt chiefly on Bighorn river; Brown (in 1817) located them on the Yellowstone and the east side of the Rocky mountains; Drake (in 1834) placed them on the south branch of the Yellowstone, in lat. 46º long. 105º. Hayden (in 1862) wrote: "The country usually inhabited by the Crows is in and near the Rocky mountains, along the sources of Powder, Wind, and Bighorn rivers, on the south side of the Yellowstone, as far as Laramie fork on the Platte river. They are also often found on the west and north side of that river, as far as the source of the Musselshell and as low down as the mouth of the Yellowstone."

In 1743, near present-day Hardin, Montana, the Absaroka first encountered people of European descent - the two La Vérendryes brothers from French Canada. The explorers called the Apsáalooke beaux hommes (handsome men). Today, the Crow reservation headquarters is located at Crow Agency, Montana, six miles from Hardin.

The Crow Indian Reservation in south-central Montana is a large reservation covering approximately 2,300,000 acres (9,300 km2) of land area, the fifth-largest Indian reservation in the United States. The reservation is primarily in Big Horn and Yellowstone counties with ceded lands in Rosebud, Carbon, and Treasure Counties. The Crow Indian Reservation's eastern border is the 107th meridian line, except along the border line of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation. The southern border is from the 107th meridian line west to the east bank of the Big Horn River. The line travels downstream to Big Horn National Recreation Area and west to the Pryor Mountains and north-easterly to Billings. The northern border travels east and near Hardin, Montana, to the 107th meridian line.

Answer 2

Historically no tribe acknowledged any boundaries - state and national boundaries had no meaning at all to them. The Crow heartland was a huge area including most of what became southern Montana and northern Wyoming, but Crow warriors and hunters also ventured far to the west and north.

A treaty with the Crow in 1851 allocated practically all of these traditional lands to the Crows; its boundaries were the Missouri and Musselshell rivers in the north, the Powder river in the east and all of the Bighorn river area into Wyoming.

Over time, large parcels of this land were ceded to the US government until by the early 1900s the reservation had been reduced to its present size and location around Pryor, St Xavier, Wyola and Crow Agency Montana, just south of Billings and Hardin.