Crow
North Americahunter-gatherersMap
expand_more Description
The Crow are a Siouan-speaking people of the northern Great Plains whose descendants are a federally recognized nation with a reservation in south-central Montana. Originally sedentary farmers along the Missouri River, the Crow became nomadic hunters with their acquisition of the horse in the early 1730s. This changed during the latter half of the nineteenth century with the intrusion of non-Indian settlers, the near extinction of the buffalo, and confinement to a reservation, transitioning once more into a sedentary pattern based on farming and ranching, with participation in the wider cash economy. The Crow retain thirteen matrilineal clans, organized into six phratries, and into three regional groups or bands composed of all the clans. Egalitarian and non-stratified, the Crow recognized “chiefs” who performed coups—exceptional feats of war. Asserting their sovereignty after the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, the Crow adopted their own constitution in 1948, establishing a council of all adult tribe members, with four elected officers and various governing committees; tribal police and courts are under the jurisdiction of the council.
Identifier
Region
- North America
Subregion
- Plains and Plateau
Subsistence Type
- hunter-gatherers
Samples
Countries
- United States