On a ridge west of Crow Agency, Montana, there are the graves of Custer’s command, tombstones on the very spots where they fell. Once upon a time, I might have taken a greater interest in their history. But not this time. I had come to the Crow Nation for a different reason: the Centennial Crow Fair. As I stood there looking at the graves, I felt it interesting that this meeting engagement of a tribal people and an industrial civilization was in such close proximity to a contemporary display of Indian culture. Again, had I come at an earlier point in my life, I might have focused on the battlefield and thought that was the more significant part of this place. But in truth, that dichotomy of tribal versus industrial is the past and the intervening time has produced a something else. It was not the Crow’s victory at Little Big Horn; indeed, their submission to the United States had come long before the battle. Yet even though they did not engage in violent resistance, the Crow Nation had survived as a people with a distinct way of life. And what was more, paradoxically, the Crow today carry on the best parts of the country that once tried to destroy their way of life.
The Centennial Crow Fair: 100 years of the Crow people gathering celebrate and share their culture and traditions. When I first heard that it was that summer, I knew my wife and I would go. I am a sucker for commemorations, anniversaries, or once in a lifetime events. Something in me is always searching for connection beyond mere time and place, grasping for that rare but beautiful instance of sublime awareness where I can see as others have. I desire to live a thousand lives and am blessed with just this one, so I make the leap to the other as I can.
And as much as anything, this Crow Fair was a worthy excuse to get out of crowded, noisome Jackson Hole at the peak of tourist season. A long drive across the great open West, sleeping out, and cooking rice and beans over a camp stove: time dissolves and you realize this is all you should really want.
Our late-day trek up to Montana was memorable enough. In the northwestern corner of Yellowstone, there were wild fires burning that inaccessible region of the park just beyond the shoulder of the road, turning the sky a sickening brown. The clouds of mayflies in the newly-fallen night were so thick that as the truck scythed through them, their innards coated the windshield like whitewash, and I had to stop and scrub them off just to see. Like all Western trips, you must be prepared for anything from the moment you start the engine.
Even disappointment. When we showed up at the Tipi Capital of the World in Crow Agency the next morning, we expected events all day, but other than a lone announcer welcoming people to a looping track of tribal drums, there was nothing going. It seemed like everyone was still setting up. After wandering around, we went back to our campsite and tried to take naps in the tent. As I lay on top of my sleeping bag, its nylon blistering hot under the summer sun, I wondered if we had come this whole way on a wild goose chase. Was it like the time my grandparents, brother, and I went marching all around Paris trying to find the Bastille, only to have a Frenchman on the street tell us it was torn down centuries ago? Disappointment before it had even begun — a sure sign that I was just looking to milk the experience for something, that maybe I had come expecting something I shouldn’t have.
When we returned to Crow Agency that evening, my concern for the wild goose chase was allayed. This was indeed a special event.
And a special people, too. I have been to a fair number of Indian reservations. I have visited tribal peoples around the world. The Crow strike me as special, perhaps even more so because they are so very much themselves in the midst of a country that is, to its core, so unlike the things it values.
Elders first.
The next morning, we arrived bright and early for the parade through the Tipi City. Now everyone was here and there was feeling in the air, like the heavy haze from summer fires, that the party was really about to begin. There were tourists, of course, the inevitable Germans with their camera gear, here to capture the real West, and the pseudo-tribal white Americans who were itching for opportunities to take part in the Crow’s activities themselves. We had to jostle around a bit until we found a good spot. And then it started, not like some wild pagan ceremony, but like any down-home parade in any small town in America. A color guard of veterans of almost all America’s recent wars led the parade. The floats followed. One float carried a World War Two veteran who had been married to his wife since 1945. Hauled down the parade route to a cacophony of cheers and shouts, the veteran and his wife did not break their stoic poise the entire time. The retired county sheriff, a Crow, rolled past in full police regalia. Every local organization — tribal government, youth associations, language preservation groups — had floats and the kids on the back threw handfuls of candy with skin-breaking velocity. Then at last the Crow in traditional dress came down the parade route.
Man and woman, young and old, on horseback and foot, the Crow made a circuit of the tent city, showing off their regalia. There was a stunning variety to their traditional dress, from colors to patterns to number of articles and ornaments. They are a good-looking people, too. Handsome, confident, proud faces. Quiet dignity in the men, radiant strength in the women.
It was a magnificent display and it alone was worth the trip up. But we stayed another day and the more time we spent in the Tipi City and around Crow Agency, subtle but important elements beyond the immediate tribal spectacle of dance and costume began to emerge.
The Crow seem to have their act together in a way that other tribes do not. There is poverty on the reservation, no doubt: the buildings of Crow Agency are, by modern America standards, shabby and there is a lot of trash on the sides of the road. Yet the Crow themselves did not seem affected by these conditions, as many peoples cursed with poverty are brought low by their surroundings. They are even-tempered, neither hostile nor erratic; friendly though not effusive; and very stoic. They have a quiet yet intense pride that says they know who they are, whatever the conditions they must endure.
Again, despite the apparent poverty, it does not seem to affect the Crow’s sense for organization. Even an event as large and chaotic event as the Crow Fair seemed to run without any visible hiccups. Things simply got done and seemingly on time. More interestingly, though, is that despite being organized and purposeful, the Crow seem to blessedly lack a time neurosis. They don’t have a sense of tidying, of mindless efficiency, attempting to order and control their environment. They let their kids run around the Tipi City in huge packs, completely unsupervised. Yet not once did I see those bands of children causing trouble and acting like hooligans. They were simply free kids running around, having fun, and then on their own initiative dropping their spontaneous play to help a friend prepare her costume for a dance. I saw no drinking and no fighting wherever we went on the reservation. It was one of the most congenial places I have ever been.
Taking all this in, I could not help but think, “Here is a people that can stand and flourish without any help, if they would only be left alone.” How could I see it otherwise? They know who they are, what they need, and how to let one lead the other. But how?
That became clearer when I at last saw the Litle Big Horn battlefield. Again, the old dichotomies of industrial manifest destiny and horse-borne nomads have faded. The Army does not prowl the plains on patrol and many of the Crow have become cowboys and ranchers. Perhaps this is the Crow becoming like the conquerors. Maybe the Crow were more inclined to do so, as they made peace early on with the U.S. and fought with the government against the Lakota. My perspective was that the Crow have adapted so they can keep their horse-borne way of life. Despite the loss of their traditional nomadic movement, they have found a way to persist in one of their deepest instincts as a people. This is a profound difference between the Crow and other peoples in American history, who were often objects in a scheme of transformation from an agrarian to an industrial world. I could see this in the experience of Southerners over the past 150 years. Southerners had fertile land, developed institutions, and a rich culture, and thus they were a rich prize to be wholly transformed, through war and reconstruction, into new consumers and laborers for industrial capitalism. In contrast, the Crow, out there on the fringe, neither possessing cities nor fertile deltas nor a large, impoverished workforce willing to work for a pittance, did not have value in the eyes of the growing nation. The United States could leave them largely to their devices and thus the Crow were able to make adaptations, within the limits imposed on them, that suited their traditional inclinations. In perverse sense, the Crow are blessed with forgotteness.
They are not forgotten by their own people, though. Their nomadic sense of return persists. I saw Crow from Seattle and Oregon leaving their city lives for a week to come back and celebrate with family in the middle of 104 degree heat. Other tribes came to join them. There were tribes folk from Oklahoma and Arizona who rode up on motorcycles for a visit. Old enemies, like the Cheyenne, were now friends and came gladly in support. Even Alberta dispatched a few of its best bronc riders to come entertain folks at the rodeo. The most interesting rider was part indigenous Mexican, part Crow, and part Apache. I was fascinated by such a lineage — I wanted to find him and learn the story of his family. I had so many questions. What magnetism draws such peoples together over space? How do such people move, breathe, persist in our world today? It seemed to defy all odds — like a secret history of America.
It is fair to say that the Crow know a fair bit about the history of America, secret or not. Like all peoples, they have their perspective, but then again they must, as they are a people. They know what has been done and especially done to them. And yet despite their bloody, tragic past, they embrace some of the most traditional American ways possible. The Crow gave invocations before every ceremony. Old Glory was held in high esteem. Veterans were honored and private associations were valued and promoted. The only real indication I saw of the modern America most of us experience daily was at the fair midway at night, where the ACLU and Montana State Law School were hawking their patronage from folding tables. The Crow Fair was like a time machine to past decades, a time within living memory even for me. And yet, while it was astonishing at first, as a Southerner, I understood. The Crow never wanted to be a part of America. They were brought in by force. And yet while the rest of the country is abandoning America’s spirit and traditions as quickly as possible, in their natural sense of reverence and loyalty, the Crow preserve them. But so it must be for peoples who remain themselves. Forced into a position unnatural to them, they take what is best from it and protect it. After all, regardless of the flag, the land is still the same.
However strange the times we live in, I am sure the Crow have seen stranger. I left the Crow Fair with confidence in them, though, confidence that I would not place in other peoples in America. The Crow are not rooted in ideologies or technologies or other artifices. They have their people and that is all. And their names tell the story, even the names of the young. The Central District Crow Fair Princess was Nanaani Holds The Enemy. For a young woman to carry such a family name is boon to her. She will always know what to do and where the line must be drawn. I believe that the Crow will indeed, with their sense of self and regal disposition, hold the enemy for a long time to come.