Flag of the Crow nation
'Spirit Warrior' credited for Crow victory
Associated Press
Oct. 3, 2004
http://billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2004/10/03/build/state/31-spirit-warrior.inc
Many tribes coveted the Crow homeland in Montana and Wyoming as Euro-American expansion forced them farther west in the mid-19th century. The Crow nation was in a precarious position. Its numbers had been decimated in a series of smallpox epidemics, and its enemies were closing in on Crow lands teeming with elk, bison and deer. The tribe's most powerful opponents - the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho - decided that the time was right to eradicate the Crow, according to Crow historian Elias Goes Ahead. In a major battle, they attacked a much smaller force of Crow on Pryor Creek. The Crow, fighting for their very existence, drove their foes back to the Bighorn River and claimed victory, he said.
Some attributed the turn of events to a Spirit Warrior who slashed through enemy lines as the battle raged around the Crow village. Goes Ahead said the battle took place in August 1864. Another tribal historian, Joe Medicine Crow, put the date at 1860 or 1861. Sioux ledger art set the date at 1863. Estimates of the size of the enemy alliance vary widely, too - from 3,000 to 10,000 warriors. Approximations of Crow numbers differ, but not so broadly. Some say there were as many as 1,500 warriors. Goes Ahead said the endangered Crow village above Pryor Creek probably totaled 2,000 people with 500 warriors. Chiefs Blackfoot, also called Sits In The Middle Of The Land, and Iron Bull would have been leading the Crow forces, he said.
Shortly before the enemy struck on East Pryor Creek, the Crow had learned they were about to be attacked, he said. War chiefs wanted to move the village across the Yellowstone River to where Billings now stands, figuring they would be in a more defensible position, Goes Ahead said. But the enemy was too close, and the best that could be done was to set up a fortified camp on high ground overlooking Pryor Creek near its confluence with East Pryor Creek. Looking across the valley to the east, Crow villagers saw "nothing but dark human figures and horses,'' Goes Ahead said. Ten of the best armed Crow warriors rushed at the enemy force to buy time while the rest dressed for battle and prepared the camp. Pack horses were hobbled on their sides around the village as breastworks and pits were dug in the camp circle to provide cover for women, children and the elderly, he said.
On East Pryor Creek, an army that Goes Ahead described as stretching for a half-mile made its first charge into a fusillade of Crow fire.
"They said the sky was darkened with arrows,'' he recounted. "It was snowing arrows.''
The Crow strategically placed their warriors on Pryor Creek to force the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho into a narrow crossing, he said. Because the creek banks were 15 feet high in places, enemy forces were compressed so that no more than 50 at a time could cross. That slowed their advance and made them easier targets, Goes Ahead said. Crow fighters, some armed with rifles, drove alliance warriors back across the creek, he said. Then they countercharged and chased the enemy up the hill on the other side. But as the mounted Crow warriors approached, they were surprised by a huge army of alliance foot soldiers hiding behind the hilltop.
"They said it was like the ice breaking up on the Yellowstone,'' Goes Ahead said.
Four Crow warriors charged into the foot soldiers to give their comrades a better chance at retreat. Only one of the four survived, Goes Ahead said. Combatants pushed one another back and forth across the creek until the enemy reached the Crow tepees. That's when the Spirit Warrior appeared. Crow warriors couldn't see him, but their women and children could, Goes Ahead said. So could the Sioux. Years later, when hostilities were past, Sioux survivors of the battle asked their Crow counterparts to identify this warrior. The Crow veterans, who had not seen him, could not provide any answers, Goes Ahead said. The Spirit Warrior was seen on 10 different ponies and in two different war bonnets, he said. The apparition zigzagged through the enemy, knocking warriors off their horses and fighting so fiercely that he terrified them into retreat.
"He came kind of like this wind,'' Goes Ahead said. "It kind of came out of nowhere.''
One by one, the alliance warriors started to leave the battleground, he said. As they pulled back, the Crow regrouped and gave chase. "They said it was like chasing a big buffalo herd,'' he continued. "They were moving slow, and they (the Crow warriors) were picking them off on the edges.''
The Crow harassed their enemy all the way to the Bighorn River, he said. On the way back, they reported the whole valley full of wolves, eagles and buzzards feeding on the dead. The Crow celebrated for three days, Goes Ahead said. But the battle had not vanquished their old enemies for good. The alliance of Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho had seized the Powder River Country and pushed the Crow back toward the Yellowstone. The battle convinced Crow leaders that the only way they could retain their hunting grounds was with the protection of the U.S. Army.
"They wanted them (the Army) there to police the territory,'' Goes Ahead said.
The Crow allied with the government when it sought to protect the Bozeman Trail to the Montana gold fields in the mid-1860s. Crow scouts were recruited for the 1876 Little Bighorn campaign. Crow warriors were crucial to the Army at the Battle of the Rosebud, fought a week before the Little Bighorn against the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho. A year before the 1876 campaign, the Crow confronted their old enemies again in a smaller but hard-fought battle near what is now Huntley.
Copyright © 2004 Associated Press
General Custer's Crow scouts
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