The last war chief of the Crow Nation has died, two years past the century mark.
Crow chief, World War II veteran and historian Joe Medicine Crow died Sunday morning in a Billings hospice center, according to Big Horn County Coroner Terry Bullis.
Medicine Crow, 102, was the last Crow war chief as the result of his military accomplishments. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor awarded to a civilian in the United States.
lane batot says
How I love the Crows(of course I love all their enemies, too–the Blackfeet, Sioux, Cheyenne, etc.!)–they really have got a bum rap from Hollywood, in most of their portrayals on film–always the bad guys to the now heroic Sioux and Cheyenne, or the Indian scout turncoats helping the soldiers against their own race. Ironic, in that the Crows WERE allies of the whites(they very likely might have been entirely exterminated by the other tribes, severely outnumbered as they were, if they HAD NOT allied themselves with the whites. If nothing else, it helped them stay in their original territory!…..), but are so commonly portrayed as villians in white filmmaking! Anyone who has read those two Linderman CLASSICS–“Plenty Coups, Chief Of The Crows”, and especially “Pretty Shield, Medicine Woman of the Crows” knows what a fascinating, honorable, and noble people they were/are! We REALLY NEED some films portraying the heroic underdog Crows/Absarokees in a more positive perspective! It could start with screen plays from those two books!
lane batot says
….checking the Crow section in my Injun library–I actually have a book BY this fellow, too!
Breaker Morant says
I found a little gem of a book at the Little Bighorn bookstore when we visited there in 2014. “Counting Coups” about intertribal warfare.
One factoid that sticks in my mind is that the Lakota raided whites as far west as the Teton Valley at some point. I had never really thought of them as going that far west.
JimC says
The excellent “Killing of Crazy Horse,” by Tom powers, notes that intertribal warfare remained the priority of the northern plains warriors even when they were locked in their death struggle with the U.S.
Saddle Tramp says
Could anyone be more AMERICAN? I think not.
Jim, thanks for keeping your ear to the ground for the rest of the tribe. Chief Joe Medicine Crow, may your Happy Hunting Grounds be plentiful!
JimC says
My “job” — and I love it.