Section 23

Frank Bird Linderman was told of an old rusty gun which was found on the plains by some Crow boys. Later, while playing at war with it, the gun discharged and kiUed one of the boys. Men of the tribe thereafter regarded it as a sacred medicine. They kept it, carried it to war with them, and invariably whipped the enemy when a battle ensued. (Linderman, 1932, p. 82).
Thomas Leforge, who served as official interpreter at Crow Agency in the 1870s, recalled still another instance of Crow Indian trust in the white man's magic. At that time a number of Indians were afraid to travel a trail along the Stillwater because there were two scaffold burials close to it. Funloving Leforge wrote a pass for one of the Indians which he said would command the ghosts not to harm him when he traveled that route. Another government employee adopted Leforge's pass idea, charging each Indian a buffalo robe for providing this type of written guarantee fo freedom from harm. However, the grafting employee was found out and dismissed. (Marquis, 1928, p. 116).
These several stories illustrate the remarkable readiness of the Crow Indians to adopt strange materials from alien cultures and to look upon them as medicines and to integrate them into their pre-existing medicine bundle pattern. It is noteworthy that in the majority of cases cited these to them mysterious objects from the white man's culture — the tail of a Spanish cow, the decorated
HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE SURVEY 169
glass of a magic lantern, Father De Smet's matches, and the deadly, rusty gun — were adopted by the Crows as war medicines. In the light of the demonstrated Crow tendency to accept curious and inexplicable objects, regardless of origin, as powerful medicines, it is not surprising that they should have regarded a Haida slate carving in Little Nest's bundle as a rock medicine of the greatest sacredness. Whether this carving reached the Crow country in the baggage of a white trader who knew the weakness of these Indians for rocks resembling animals and humans, whether it was carried over the Rockies in the pack of some friendly Nez Perce who had obtained it from coastal Indians in trade, or whether it found its way to the Yellowstone Valley in some other way, we shall never know. But that the Crow Indians should have accepted this aHen piece of carving as a rock medicine and should have interpreted the strange figures carved upon it as creatures well known to them, seems little more remarkable than their adoption of the white men's "magic" on their own terms.
CONCLUSIONS
The medicine bundles of the Crow Indians, as described by William Wildschut and illustrated by the specimens he collected for the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, provide a key to the better understanding of some of the basic religious beliefs and practices of the most conservative tribe of the Upper Missouri. A century and a quarter ago Prince Maximilian learned that the Crows "are said to have more superstitious notions than the Mandans, Manitaries [Hidatsa], and Arikkaras." (Maximilian, 1843, p. 175). Two decades later Edwin T. Denig wrote of the Crows: "They are the most superstitious of all the tribes, and can be made to beHeve almost any story however improbable if the same is of a superhuman nature. Thus they ascribe powers to the Whites, and to their own conjurers, far beyond those admitted by any other nation. Residing as they have and stiU do in the isolated regions of the Rocky Mountains, they have not had the opportunity to improve themselves in any branch of knowledge, even in the most simple things, that those who reside on the Missouri have. They seldom see any white persons in their own country except the fur traders, who are with them part of the winter and who only attract their attention to matters relating to the trade." (Denig, 1953, p. 39).
170 CROW INDIAN MEDICINE BUNDLES
Their isolation from the main stream of white penetration of the Upper Missouri, and the fact that permanent mission sta- tions were not established upon the Crow Reservation until the middle 1880 's, encouraged the retention of conservative religious beliefs and practices among the Crows until the present century. By the I920*s, when William Wildschut was engaged in field work among them, the older full-bloods still retained their steadfast beliefs in the traditional tribal religion and their faith in the supernatural origins and powers of medicine bundles.
Nevertheless, our comparative data show conclusively that none of the major types of medicine bundles employed by the Crow Indians was peculiar to that tribe. The people of neigh- boring tribes of the Upper Missouri were beset by the same in- security and motivated by the same desire to gain control over the uncertainties of life through faith in the powers of supernatural helpers as were the Crows. If the Crow Indians had faith that their medicine bundles would protect them from their enemies and bring them success in war, would help them to win the af- fections of beloved members of the opposite sex, to wreak venge- ance upon a personal enemy, to cure the sick and heal the wounded, and to gain success in hunting, wealth in horses, and to delay death until old age was attained, so did the other Indians of the Upper Missouri.
Some of the types of medicine bundles found among the Crow Indians were so widely used by other tribes in the early historic period that it is impossible to determine their tribal origin. Doubt- less the origins of war medicines, rock medicines, doctoring and hunting medicines lie deep in the prehistoric past. Of the several classes of Crow medicine bundles described by Wildschut, only the medicine pipe is known to have been introduced among them since the opening of the historic period in the 19th century. Yet the Crows continued to conduct a constant search for more ef- fective medicines throughout that century, fasting in lonely places and deliberately seeking the aid of the "Without Fires," or adopting strange articles from the white man's culture which appeared to them to be embued with supernatural powers.
Many Crow medicine bundles resembled those of other Upper Missouri tribes so closely that it would be impossible to identify their tribe of origin simply by examination of the contents of these bundles. As might be expected Crow medicine bundles appear to have been most closely related to those of other Siouan tribes,
HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE SURVEY I71
particularly their Hidatsa kismen, and the Mandan and Teton Dakota. Nevertheless, the nomadic Crows of the historic period lacked the complex medicine shrines of the sedentary Hidatsa and Mandan. They also possessed no such elaborate bundles as the beaver bundles of their nomadic neighbors to the north, the Blackfoot tribes. And both the Crow sun dance bundles, and medicine pipe bundles were relatively simple ones compared with the large and complex Naioas and medicine pipe bundles of the Blackfoot. (Wissler, 1912, pp. 209-220; 136-167).
Crow medicine bundles tended to be relatively small and compact, each containing a limited number of sacred objects and usually but one major one, and usually serving a single, well- defined purpose. This relative simpHcity of Crow medicine bundles cannot be ascribed to their economic poverty. The Crows were the wealthiest Indians on the Upper Missouri. With their large herds of horses they could have transported with ease much more bulky bundles in their nomadic wanderings had they cared to do so. The Crows must have been conservative in the elaboration of their medicine bundles through preference rather than necessity. And apparently this same moderation governed their medicine bundle rituals. Curtis (1909, Vol. IV., p. 178) observed that Crow religious ceremonies "were more lacking in ritual than were similar ones among other plains tribes." Their medicine bundle rituals, in so far as they are known, contrast sharply with the involved and prolonged medicine bundle rituals of the Blackfoot and the rich ceremonial rituals of the horticultural tribes on the Missouri.
However, the Crows, perhaps more than neighboring tribes, indulged in artistic representation to depict their supernatural helpers in paintings, carvings, rawhide cutouts and dolls. The religious art of the Crow Indians, as revealed in their medicine bundles, appears to be more extensive and more varied than that of other Upper Missouri tribes.
Another marked Crow tendency was that of preserving im- portant medicine bundles after their owners* deaths, rather than burying them with their owners. This is proven by the apparent survival into the present century of the personal medicines of such outstanding chiefs of the early 19th century as Rotten Belly and Long Hair.
Perhaps the most prominent characteristic of the medicine bundle complex among the Crow Indians was the predominance
172 CROW INDIAN MEDICINE BUNDLES
of war medicines. The very great majority of Crow medicine bundles appear to have functioned to bring protection from enemies or to obtain revenge against them. Among them we must include both the sun dance bundle and the pipe-holder's pipe, as well as the shield, hoop medicine, arrow medicine, and the great variety of other personal war medicine bundles. Both skull med- icines and rock medicines also served as war medicines as well as being useful for other purposes. Among the Crows only the med- icine pipe bundles (of known foreign origin), love, heahng, and hunting bundles appear to have been free of war medicine func- tions.
This predominance of war medicine bundles among the Crow Indians appears to me to have been directly influenced by this tribes' really desperate mihtary position in the days of intertribal warfare. The Crows were a relatively small tribe, yet they occupied one of the finest hunting territories in the west, and they were richer in horses than any of the other tribes of the Upper Missouri. They were almost constantly harrassed by the more numerous and aggressive Blackfoot tribes from the north and the Teton Dakota from the east. Not occasionally, but repeatedly for a period of many generations they were forced to fight desperately for their lives against great odds.
White men who were familiar with the desperate plight of the Crows in the period 1 830-1 860 predicted the extermination of this courageous people by their more powerful enemies. In 1832, Cathn predicted that the Crows would be "entirely destroyed" by the Blackfoot "in a few years." (Catlin, 1841, Vol. I. pp. 42-43). Two decades later the knowledgeable fur trader, Edwin T. Denig, feared that the Crows "warred against by the Blackfeet on the one side and most bands of the Sioux on the other. . . "cannot long exist as a tribe." (Denig, 1953, p. 71). So dangerous was the Crow country, due to its frequent invasion by enemy war parties, in the middle 1850s, that even the traders abandoned their posts among the Crows. Again, in 1859, Gen. W. F. Raynolds, who explored the Yellowstone Valley, declared that the Crows were "great warriors", but added: "Their numerical inferiority will, however, undoubtedly result in their ultimate extermination in the interminable war waged among the hostile tribes in this region." (Raynolds, 1868, p. 51).
Nevertheless, the Crow tribe did survive. Undoubtedly, their alliance with the whites during the period of the Sioux Wars in
HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE SURVEY I73
the 1860'sand 1870 's, and the pacification of the hostile Sioux and Blackfoot by the United States Army helped to prevent the ex- termination of the Crow Indians. But it would have been im- possible to convince Crow warriors, who lived through the harrow- ing days of intertribal warfare on the Upper Missouri, that their tribe's survival was not due to the potency of their many and varied war medicine bundles.
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