Volume XII Winter 2000 Issue #2

Giving voice to Crow Country-- the Crow place name project

By Carrie Moran McCleary

Interstate 90 follows the Little Big Horn River north from the Wyoming border through the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana. The 2.2 million-acre reservation is nearly twice as big as the state of Delaware, but it is filled with mountains and grasslands, not pavement. Except for the interstate and an occasional power line, the rolling grasslands offer few reminders of the 21st century. It is easy to imagine the Custer and Reno cavalry forces on the hilltops with their Crow scouts. From the Little Big Horn valley, the Wolf Mountains are visible 30 miles away. On the west side of the reservation near the Pryor Mountains, one can still follow the ruts of the Bozeman Trail while watching the deer and coyote wander in the coulees. Horses graze amongst the cottonwoods in downtown Crow Agency (the reservation's capital city), often with children clinging to their backs.

Except for one green sign stating, "Now leaving the Crow Indian Reservation," most people never realize they are in Crow Country at all as they drive down the interstate. With the exception of the occasional historic marker and the Little Big Horn Battlefield itself, visitors do not realize the rich, living history of the area. Few could imagine that Little Big Horn College is using sophisticated technology to preserve that history.

From the car window visitors see signs saying "Rest Stop" and "Mission Creek." There are no signs for Anmaalapammúua (Where the Whole Camp Mourned), Baáhpalohkahpe (The Place where the Crows first Celebrated the 4th of July), and Bisshíilannuusaau (Where They Laid Down Yellow Blankets). Travelers won't know the rest stop between Hardin and Billings is known as Anmaalapammúua because a war party that fought at Rainy Buttes in North Dakota returned with many dead in 1864. It is said that so many warriors were killed, not one family went unaffected.

Most visitors won't realize the spot between Reed Point and Big Timber was once a favorite camping site of Crows. It is also where the Crows celebrated the 4th of July for the first time. The Burlington Northern Railroad sponsored the celebration in 1882 and brought in Crows who were camped at Absarokee, Mont., on flat bed cars. The railroad workers named a child born during the celebration George Washington, and that child became a tribal leader, George Washington Hogan.

The area known on Euro-American maps as Mission Creek was the site of the first distribution of annuities to the Crows after the treaty of 1868. Part of the annuity included yellow army blankets, and to this day many Crows call the area Bisshíilannuusaau.

None of the English names for these places say much about their history. Even for the younger generation of Crows, the journey from Crow Agency to Bozeman, Mont., might be marked by the amount of gas money needed for the trip and by remembering where so and so's apartment is; "You know the place we stayed that one time on the way to the pow wow."

Chronicling stories

For Phenocia Bauerle, however, the 200-mile drive has become a living history because of the stories told by her grandfather, Dr. Barney Old Coyote. A Crow tribal member and decorated World War II veteran, Old Coyote is a humble man who possesses vast knowledge about his tribe's culture and language. Now retired, he has spent his entire adulthood passing that knowledge on to his children, grandchildren, and the next generation of Crow people, as well as students at Montana State University and Little Big Horn College.

Over the past two years, he and almost 20 other Crow elders have worked with Little Big Horn College General Studies instructor Timothy McCleary to document Crow place names across Montana and to chronicle the many stories behind the names. Their Crow place names list now boasts over 500 locations from the reservation and other places that Crow people historically visited across North America.

Old Coyote came to our home on a sultry July evening to talk about the project. He brought his grown daughter, Jackie Old Coyote, and sat with a cup of coffee in his hands, his graying hair slicked back. He told us about Crow names for far-away places like the Crow's Nest in Canada, the big woods in Minnesota, and even the Arkansas River. "They [the Crow] didn't like to go beyond the Crow's Nest [in Canada] because they heard it was poor country; too cold, poor animals, and bad heat."

As Old Coyote related his stories, Jackie listened intently. She has undoubtedly heard the stories before, but she must have been committing them to memory again. The tall, slender, young woman, a screen writer, actress, and model, lives on the reservation and commutes to Los Angeles for her work. None of her father's words were lost to her, and she was concerned that he seemed uncomfortable in the heat.

Crow place names refer to physical characteristics, such as a creek with a fork or a place to gather wild carrots. This can lead to repetition. For example, in the weeks before the annual Crow Fair, people will say they are going to Aliíliiluttuua to gather teepee poles. If the speaker is from the Pryor district of the reservation, the listener knows where he is going in the Pryor Mountains. If a person from the Black Lodge District says the same thing, he is most assuredly referring to a location in the Big Horn Mountains, Old Coyote told us. The "Chief of all Shade" (Alaatchiawacheeitche) can be found in both the Big Horn and Lodge Grass districts.

Old Coyote is fully aware his non-Indian neighbors lack awareness of the culture that surrounds them. Euro-American maps of his reservation and of Montana show place names that do not mean much to the Crow people. For example, Old Coyote said, "Iichíilxaxxish" -- Spotted Horse Creek," with the hard double X guttural sound rolling out from the back of his throat. "Spotted Horse had become a great leader and chief among the Crow. He was such a great man that he was well respected even by his enemies. And yet over the loss of a horse to his little brother in a horse race, he lost his temper. He beat his little brother to a pulp, so from then on in [the ways of] Crow culture, there was no respect for him because he had beaten a little one, so far beneath his stature. This happened at Spotted Horse Creek." Old Coyote's non-Indian neighbors call the same place Sunday Creek, leaving no meaning or lesson in Crow etiquette for the 8,000 Crows still residing on their reservation.

Old Coyote said in some cases, English translations of Crow names corrupt them. "One thing I noticed is white people like colorful names of how they think of Indians, and they often don't match what they are." For example, he mentioned a place in Billings, Mont., Aashuúchoosalaho (Where there are Many Skulls). "White people call it Valley of Skulls, which gives the impression of human skulls," he said. To the Crows, however, the number of skulls indicates abundance of game, because you didn't take skulls with you when you butchered a buffalo. So what non-Indians think of as a graveyard, many Crow consider a place of prosperity. He refers to his children and grandchildren often, and he has told them many stories about the Creator, Old Man Coyote, and place names. "Maybe they won't remember them all, but they will know some."

As Old Coyote talked, McCleary was also eagerly listening, taking notes, and looking at maps, hoping to glean more information. Every time he talks with Old Coyote, he learns something new about Crow culture, world views, or language.

Although McCleary is a non-Indian, he has worked at the Crow community college for the past 10 years. He is now a competent Crow speaker, much of which he owes to language classes taken from Old Coyote. With his training as an anthropologist McCleary is constantly on the outside looking into the Crow world. Because of his long tenure here, however, this light-faced, red-headed man is considered by many to be a part of the Crow community. This gives him the unique opportunity to see things that others might take for granted. McCleary weaves this cultural knowledge into the curriculum at the college. In 1997 McCleary published a book on Crow star knowledge, which is used in classrooms across the reservation, including an astronomy class at the college. Both Old Coyote and his brother, the late Mickey Old Coyote, contributed to the book.

McCleary says the place-name project information can be incorporated into the college's Montana history class, Crow history class, and Global Information Systems (GIS) class, as well in Crow language classes. Bilingual instructors utilize the information to introduce language, history and culture into the classroom.

Old Coyote said the project keeps the place names among the Crow who he feels are losing their Crow language skills and history. "I like to see the project progress," Old Coyote said. "It gives hope for the future that we will not lose our Crow identity. When something is already in print [Euro-American maps] it is hard to change. This can correct those distortions of the past," he said. "I see LBHC as becoming a clearinghouse as well as a depository of this information."

Evolution of the project

A historic and battle sites tour given by the tribal college in the summer of 1991 gave birth to the place name project. When McCleary watched videos of the bus tour, he was immediately struck by the multitude of stories told by the four elders, Barney Old Coyote, Phil Beaumont, Joe Medicine Crow, and the late Mickey Old Coyote. The elders had so many stories to tell that they could not complete the story for one location before the bus was passing another site with cultural significance for the Crow people.

"They had descriptions of almost every little point and drainage as they traveled," he said. "They didn't always know the dates of events, like a Euro-history professor would, but they knew incredible details about what took place there. It became apparent to me that where it took place and what occurred are more important to the Crow people."

McCleary said the project has confirmed some beliefs about Crow culture and brought him a better understanding. When Crow people name something after a historical incident, it is usually an extraordinary event, he said. "Nearly two-thirds of the Crow place names are references to the way the land looks or the directions a stream flows, unlike Euro-Americans names which are named after people or events." McCleary said. As examples of topographic names, he mentioned Baa'hpakuhke (Short Butte) and Alasa'htapumme (Small Coulee). "This tells me the Crow see themselves as equal to the land and do not try to dominate it."

Last summer, McCleary received funding from the Learning Lodge Institute at LBHC (an initiative supported by the Kellogg Foundation) to interview more elders and record their information. The results from all of the interviews are now available on a database linked to the college's web site. The database contains GIS maps of each location and can be accessed by the English or Crow name and by reservation district. McCleary trained bilingual teachers from across the reservation how to access the site over the summer. LBHC Chief Information Officer Randy Falls Down created the web site and supervised student Collins Gaurdipee, who created the computer- based maps.

Falls Down said the project's potential for classroom use is important. "For a bilingual teacher to just look out the window and point at something and say its name in Crow makes it more interesting for students. Kids love their computers," he said. "With this, they can connect their culture into it. It's just a good deal all the way around."

You can see the place name information at www.lbhc.cc.mt.us/crownames.

Carrie Moran McCleary is a member of the Little Shell Band of Chippewa. She grew up in Washington and Montana and has lived and worked on the Crow Reservation for the past 10 years. A freelance writer for the Island Park News, Indian Country Today, and the Billings Gazette, she spends most of her time enjoying her family, Austin Denny, six, Katherine Nova, four, and her husband, Timothy McCleary.