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.