Editing Crow people (section)

====1850–1874====
[[File:De Smet map of the 1851 Fort Laramie Indian territories (the light area). PNG.png|thumb|upright 1.3|De Smet map of the 1851 Fort Laramie Indian territories (the light area). Jesuit missionary De Smet drew this map with the tribal borders agreed upon at Fort Laramie in 1851. Although the map itself is wrong in certain ways, it has the Crow territory west of the Sioux territory as written in the treaty, and the Bighorn area as the heart of the Crow country.]]
[[File:Crow Indian chief Big Shadow (Big Robber), signer of the Fort Laramie treaty (1851). Painting by Jesuit missionary De Smet.jpg|thumb|Crow Indian [[Chief Big Shadow]] (Big Robber), signer of the Fort Laramie treaty (1851). Painting by Jesuit missionary De Smet.]]
[[File:Lone Dog's Sioux winter count, 1870. Thirty Crows killed in battle.jpg|thumb|Lone Dog's Sioux winter count, 1870. Thirty Crows killed in battle.]]
[[File:DeadCrowIndians1874.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|right|1874 photograph of Crow Indians killed and scalped by Piegan Blackfeet in winter of 1873]]

Fort Sarpy (I) near Rosebud River carried out trade with the Crow after the closing of Fort Alexander.<ref name=Hox1995/>{{rp|67}} River Crow went some times to the bigger [[Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site|Fort Union]] at the confluence of the Yellowstone and the Missouri. Both the "famous Absaroka [[Amazons|amazon]]" Woman Chief<ref name=Kurz1937>Kurz, Rudolph F. (1937): ''Journal of Rudolph Friederich Kurz.'' Smithsonian Institution. Bureau of American Ethnology. Bulletin 115. Washington.</ref>{{rp|213}} and River Crow chief Twines His Tail (Rotten Tail) visited the fort in 1851.<ref name=Kurz1937/>{{rp|211}}

In 1851, the Crow, the Sioux, and six other Indian nations signed the Fort Laramie treaty along with the U.S. It should ensure peace forever between all nine partakers. Further, the treaty described the different tribal territories. The U.S. was allowed to construct roads and forts.<ref name=Kapp1904>Kappler, Charles J. (1904): Indian Affairs. Laws and Treaties. Vol. II. Washington.</ref>{{rp|594–595}} A weak point in the treaty was the absence of rules to uphold the tribal borders.<ref name=Hox1995/>{{rp|87}}

The Crow and various bands of Sioux attacked each other again from the mid-1850s.<ref name=Greene2015>Greene, Candace: Verbal Meets Visual: Sitting Bull and the Representation of History. ''Ethnohistory''. Vol. 62, No. 2 (April 2015), pp. 217–240.</ref>{{rp|226, 228}}<ref name=Stirling1938>Stirling, M. W. (1938): ''Three Pictographic Autobiographies of Sitting Bull''. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections. Vol. 97, No. 5. Washington.</ref>{{rp|9–12}}<ref name=Paul1997>Paul, Eli R. (1997): ''Autobiography of Red Cloud. War Leader of the Oglalas''. Chelsea.</ref>{{rp|119–124}}<ref name=Beckwith1930>Beckwith, Martha Warren: Mythology of the Oglala Dakota. ''The Journal of American Folklore''. Vol. 43, No. 170 (Oct.-Dec., 1930), pp. 339–442.</ref>{{rp|362}}<ref name=McGinnis1990>McGinnis, Anthony (1990): ''Counting Coups and Cutting Horses. Intertribal Warfare on the Northern Plains, 1738–1889''. Evergreen.</ref>{{rp|103}} Soon, the Sioux took no notice of the 1851 borders<ref name=White1978>White, Richard: The Winning of the West: The Expansion of the Western Sioux in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. The Journal of American History. Vol. 65, No. 2 (Sept. 1978), pp. 319–343.</ref>{{rp|340}} and expanded into Crow territory west of the Powder.<ref name=Calloway1982>Calloway, Colin G.: The Inter-tribal Balance of Power on the Great Plains, 1760–1850. ''The Journal of American Studies''. Vol. 16, No. 1 (April 1982), pp. 25–47.</ref>{{rp|46}}<ref name=Ewers1975>Ewers, John C.: Intertribal Warfare as a Precursor of Indian-White Warfare on the Northern Great Plains. ''Western Historical Quarterly''. Vol. 6, No. 4 (Oct. 1975), pp. 397–410.</ref>{{rp|407–408}}<ref name=MedCrow1992>Medicine Crow, Joseph (1992): ''From the Heart of the Crow Country. The Crow Indians' Own Stories''. New York.</ref>{{rp|14}} The Crows engaged in "… large-scale battles with invading Sioux …" near present-day [[Wyola, Montana]].<ref name=MedCrow1992/>{{rp|84}} Around 1860, the western Powder area was lost.<ref name=White1978/>{{rp|339}}<ref>Serial 1308, 40th Congress, 1st Session, Vol. 1, Senate Executive Document No. 13, p. 127.</ref>

From 1857 to 1860, many Crow traded their surplus robes and skin at Fort Sarpy (II) near the mouth of the Bighorn River.<ref name=Hox1995/>{{rp|67–68}}

During the mid-1860s, the Sioux resented the emigrant route [[Bozeman Trail]] through the Powder River bison habitat, although it mainly "crossed land guaranteed to the Crows".<ref name=Hox1995/>{{rp|89}}<ref name=Utley2003>Utley, Robert M.: The Bozeman Trail before John Bozeman: A Busy Land. ''Montana, the Magazine of Western History''. Vol. 53, No. 2 (Sommer 2003), pp. 20–31.</ref>{{rp|20}}<ref name=SIT1972>Stands in Timber, John and Margot Liberty (1972): ''Cheyenne Memories''. Lincoln.</ref>{{rp|170, note 13}} When the Army built forts to protect the trail, the Crow cooperated with the garrisons.<ref name=Hox1995/>{{rp|89 and 91}}<ref name=Dunlay1982/>{{rp|38–39}} On 21 December 1866, the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho defeated Captain [[William J. Fetterman]] and his men from [[Fort Phil Kearny]].<ref name=Hox1995/>{{rp|89}} Evidently, the U.S. could not enforce respect for the treaty borders agreed upon 15 years before.<ref name=Hox1995/>{{rp|87}}

The River Crow north of the Yellowstone developed a friendship with their former Gros Ventre enemies in the 1860s.<ref name=Hox1995/>{{rp|93}}<ref name=McGinnis1990/>{{rp|105}} A joint large-scale attack on a large Blackfoot camp at the [[Cypress Hills (Canada)|Cypress Hills]] in 1866 resulted in a chaotic withdrawal of the Gros Ventres and Crow. The Blackfoot pursued the warriors for hours and killed allegedly more than 300.<ref name=McGinnis1990/>{{rp|106}}<ref name=Grinnell1911>Grinnell, George Bird (1911): ''The Story of the Indian''. New York and London.</ref>{{rp|140}}

In 1868, a new Fort Laramie treaty between the Sioux and the U.S. turned 1851 Crow Powder River area into "unceded Indian territory" of the Sioux.<ref name=Kapp1904/>{{rp|1002}} "The Government had in effect betrayed the Crows…".<ref name=Dunlay1982>Dunlay, Thomas W. (1982): ''Wolves for the Blue Soldiers. Indian Scots and Auxiliaries with the United States Army, 1860–1890''. Lincoln and London.</ref>{{rp|40}} On 7 May, the same year, the Crow ceded vast ranges to the US due to pressure from white settlements north of Upper Yellowstone River and loss of eastern territories to the Sioux. They accepted a smaller [[Crow Indian Reservation|reservation]] south of the Yellowstone.<ref name=Kapp1904/>{{rp|1008–1011}}

The Sioux and their Indian allies, now formally at peace with the U.S., focused on intertribal wars at once.<ref name=Deloria1975>Deloria, Vine Jr. and R. DeMallie (1975): ''Proceedings of the Great Peace Commission of 1867–1868''. Washington.</ref>{{rp|175}} Raids against the Crows were "frequent, both by the Northern Cheyennes and by the Arapahos, as well as the Sioux, and by parties made up from all three tribes".<ref name=Hyde1987>Hyde, George E. (1987): ''Life of George Bent. Written From His Letters''. Norman.</ref>{{rp|347}} Crow chief Plenty Coups recalled, "The three worst enemies our people had were combined against us …".<ref name=Lin1962/>{{rp|127 and 107, 135, 153}}

In April 1870, the Sioux overpowered a barricaded war group of 30 Crow in the Big Dry area.<ref name=Stirling1938/>{{rp|33}} The Crow were killed to either last or last but one man. Later, mourning Crow with "their hair cut off, their fingers and faces cut" brought the dead bodies back to camp.<ref name=Koch1929>Koch, Peter: Journal of Peter Koch – 1869 and 1870. ''The Frontier. A Magazine of the Northwest''. Vol. IX, No. 2 (Jan. 1929), pp. 148–160.</ref>{{rp|153}} The drawing from the Sioux winter count of Lone Dog shows the Crow in the circle (the breastwork), while the Sioux close in on them. The many lines indicates flying bullets. The Sioux lost 14 warriors.<ref name=Mall1896>Mallory, Gerrick (1896): The Dakota Winter Counts. ''Smithsonian Institution. 4th Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1882–'83''. Washington.</ref>{{rp|126}} Sioux chief Sitting Bull took part in this battle.<ref name=Stirling1938/>{{rp|33}}<ref name=Vestal1932>Vestal, Stanley (1932): ''Sitting Bull, Champion of the Sioux. A Biography''. Boston and New York.</ref>{{rp|115–119}}

In the summer of 1870, some Sioux attacked a Crow reservation camp in the Bighorn/Little Bighorn area.<ref>Serial 1449, 41st Congress, 3rd Session, Vol. 4, House Executive Document No. 1, p. 662.</ref> The Crows reported Sioux Indians in the same area again in 1871.<ref name=Lubetkin2002>Lubetkin, John M.: The Forgotten Yellowstone Surveying Expeditions of 1871. W. Milnor Roberts and the Northern Pacific Railroad in Montana. ''Montana, the Magazine of Western History''. Vol. 52, No. 4 (Winter 2002), pp. 32–47.</ref>{{rp|43}} During the next years, this eastern part of the Crow reservation was taken over by the Sioux in search of buffalo.<ref name=Bradley1896/>{{rp|182}} In August 1873, visiting Nez Percé and a Crow reservation camp at Pryor Creek further west faced a force of Sioux warriors in a long confrontation.<ref name=Hox1995/>{{rp|107}} Crow chief Blackfoot objected to this incursion and called for resolute U.S. military actions against the Indian trespassers.<ref name=Hox1995/>{{rp|106}} Due to Sioux attacks on both civilians and soldiers north of the Yellowstone in newly established U.S. territory ([[Battle of Pease Bottom]], [[Battle of Honsinger Bluff]]), the [[Bureau of Indian Affairs|Commissioner of Indian Affairs]] advocated the use of troops to force the Sioux back to South Dakota in his 1873 report.<ref name=Kvasnicka1979>Kvasnika, Robert M. and Herman J. Viola (1979): ''The Commissioners of Indian Affairs, 1824–1977''. Lincoln and London.</ref>{{rp|145}} Nothing happened.