Exploits of Plenty Coups, Chief of the Crows

By Willem Wildschut

This volume contains the personal recollections of Apsaalooke Chief Plenty Coups as he described them to Willem Wildschut in the early 1920s. The individual narratives focus on Plenty Coups's early years as a warrior when he rose to prominence within the tribe and conclude before he came to be regarded as the principal chief of the entire Apsaalooke Nation in 1907, a position he held after the death of Chief Pretty Eagle in 1904 until his own death in 1932. Autobiographical information of Native leaders of Plenty Coups's status is rare, and without such direct personal narratives, scholars are forced to use external sources in an attempt to reconstruct and contextualize major events as well as the minutiae of daily activities that an individual considered to be pivotal in his or her life. In this particular instance, Plenty Coups's recollections contain information not just about his personal exploits but also provide a wealth of cultural information about the Apsaalooke at the apex of the Plains Indian horse culture in the nineteenth century shortly before the onset of the reservation period.

Bill Mercer

As former Crow Historian Grant Bulltail noted, "This book records the acts of Plenty Coups who stood in the front ranks of battle to protect our sacred lands and culture."

Grant Bulltail

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781637106891

Book preview

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Introduction by Willem Wildschut

Introduction by Bill Mercer

Buffalo Bull Who Comes Facing The North Wind (Plenty Coups)

Chapter 1: Birth to First War Party

Chapter 2: Insignias, First Medicine Fast

Chapter 3: My Second Medicine Fast

Chapter 4: My Third Medicine Fast

Chapter 5: Stealing of Wives

Chapter 6: Sun Dance of White On The Side Of His Neck

Chapter 7: War Party after the Disastrous Results of the Sioux and Crow Fights on Rotten Grass Creek

Chapter 8: Camp Movements and Enemy Encounters

Battle near Huntley

Chapter 9: On the Warpath

Chapter 10: Another War Party

Chapter 11: War Party with Old Crow and Others

Chapter 12: Camp Police and War Party to the Sioux

Chapter 13: On the Warpath

Chapter 14: A War Party in Which We Killed Seven Enemies

Chapter 15: Hunting Experiences

Chapter 16: Fourth and Fifth Medicine Fasts

Fifth Medicine Fast

Chapter 17: Making a Nez Perce Indian My Servant

Chapter 18: I Let Another Enemy Escape

Chapter 19: I Allow Another Enemy to Escape

Chapter 20: Plenty Coups Is Made Chief

Chapter 21: My First Journey to Washington

Chapter 22: The Sun Gives Me a Vision, Followed by a Successful War Party

Chapter 23: Wraps Up His Tail

Autumn 1887 (Age 39)

Chapter 24: With Pretty Eagle to the Piegans

Epilogue

Appendix

Bibliography

Additional Resource Reading

Index

List of Illustrations

Plenty Coups and the author, Willem Wildschut

Plenty Coups laying a coup stick on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Plate 1.1: Plenty Coups, ca. 1880

Plate 1.2: Grey Blanket and Has A White Horse

Plate 1.3: Tree, aka Lone Tree

Plate 1.4: Crows making sausage

Plate 1.5: Three scouts were sent ahead…to scan the country.

Plate 2.1: Plenty Coups wearing decorated shirt and leggings

Plate 2.2: White Swan

Plate 2.3: Crow warriors

Plate 2.4: Plenty Coups with scalp tied to coup stick

Plate 2.5: Crazy Mountains

Plate 3.1: Plenty Coups, ca. 1930, shown with missing index finger

Plate 3.2: Rocky Mountain Chickadee

Plate 4.1: Plenty Coups and Big Shoulder Blade

Plate 4.2: Bull Snake

Plate 5.1: Crow dancers

Plate 5.2: Crow women in their elk tooth dresses

Plate 6.1: We were camped in the timber along the Big Horn River…

Plate 6.2: Two Leggings

Plate 6.3: Short Bull

Plate 6.4: Medicine Crow, Iron Bull, Bird In The Ground, Stands On The Clouds, and Crane In The Sky

Plate 6.5: Wet and Plenty Coups

Plate 6.6: Crow burial platform

Plate 7.1: Bell Rock

Plate 7.2: Snake and Half Yellow Face

Plate 7.3: Sharp Horn

Plate 8.1: Bear Rectum, aka Standing Bull

Plate 8.2: Fellows D. Pease

Plate 8.3: Spotted Rabbit

Plate 8.4: Ties His Knees

Plate 8.5: Good Luck

Plate 8.6: Here I saw many Crow horses.

Plate 8.7: Crow camp

Plate 9.1: Spotted Horse

Plate 9.2: Crow sweat lodge

Plate 9.3: Bear In The Water

Plate 9.4: Bull Tongue #1

Plate 9.5: Bull Don’t Fall Down

Plate 9.6: Ledger drawing

Plate 10.1: Fort Parker (First Crow Agency)

Plate 10.2: Covers His Face

Plate 10.3: Long Otter

Plate 10.4: Fire Bear

Plate 11.1: Bear Wolf and Stays With Horses, his wife

Plate 11.2: Old Crow and his wife, Pretty Medicine Pipe

Plate 11.3: Medicine Crow

Plate 11.4: Big Shoulder Blade

Plate 11.5: Bull Don’t Fall Down

Plate 12.1: Lumpwood Society men singing

Plate 14.1: Long Horse, Blackfoot, and White Calf

Plate 14.2: Every high place…we climbed…

Plate 14.3: Shot In The Hand

Plate 14.4: Plenty Coups holding staff with scalp locks

Plate 15.1: Cuts The Bears Ears

Plate 15.2: Grizzly bear sow

Plate 16.1: Pryor Gap

Plate 16.2: The buttes at Pryor, Montana

Plate 17.1: Plenty Coups, ca. 1886

Plate 17.2: Curly

Plate 17.3: Far West, steamer

Plate 18.1: Bell Rock and Plenty Coups

Plate 18.2: Plenty Coups, 1905

Plate 19.1: Smoky Wilson

Plate 20.1: Crows in camp

Plate 20.2: Buffalo and calves

Plate 20.3: Crows in camp

Plate 20.4: A pair of rawhide parfleche

Plate 20.5: Chief Plenty Coups

Plate 21.1: 1880 Crow delegation to Washington, DC

Plate 21.2: Utah and Northern Rail Road

Plate 21.3: President Rutherford Hayes

Plate 21.4: Plenty Coups home at Pryor, MT

Plate 22.1: Conceptual drawing of shield

Plate 22.2: Plain Bull

Plate 22.3: Plenty Coups, ca. 1905

Plate 22.4: We came to a place where a white man had put up a lot of hay…

Plate 23.1: Wraps Up His Tail

Plate WPE.1: Arrow Rock

Plate WPE.2: Crow tipi

Plate WPE.3: Plenty Coups and Kills Together

Plate WPE.4: Bird All Over The Ground

Plate WPE.5 Wolf

Plate WPE.6: I was only taking my horses to drink.

Plate WPE.7: Pretty Eagle

Plate WPE.8: Gros Ventre Horse

Plate WPE.9: Plenty Coups photographed in 1880

Plate WPE.10: Bull Chief

Plate WPE.11: Pemmican, aka Pounded Meat

Plate WPE.12: I strung my arrow, aimed at the uninjured Piegan and let go.

Plate WPE.13: We entered camp, singing our songs.

Willem Wildschut engagement photograph

Preface

In 2000 I received an unsolicited manuscript about the Crow Chief Plenty Coups written by amateur anthropologist, Willem Wildschut. My interest in the Crow at that time was at its pinnacle, and the manuscript captivated my interest. I finished reading the manuscript the same day I received it, forgetting about eating, as it wasn’t as important as this information.

After a short time, I had decided that this needed to be published and made available to all who had an interest in the Plains American Indian prior to the time of reservations. While the text was dramatic, I felt that it could be enhanced with the photographs of the individuals who participated in the exploits with the Chief. It was at this point I decided to secure the photographs for such a publication.

For twenty years I searched for historic photographs of the Crow, which resulted in the 2,400 item Bud Lake and Randy Brewer Crow Photograph Collection now housed at the Montana Historical Society. Some of the photographs are from my original collection, and I have identified those in the captions as from the BL and RBCC.

Several years after Wildschut recorded the stories from Plenty Coups, Frank Bird Linderman sat with Plenty Coups and had him tell his stories. Plenty Coups began his conversation with Linderman asking him why he wanted to write down the Chief’s stories, whereby Plenty Coups responded, Because I do not believe there is any written story of an Indian chief’s life.¹ Plenty Coups did not tell Linderman that he had told his stories to Willem Wildschut years earlier.

Before publishing this manuscript, there first was the issue of who owned the manuscript, which had resided at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). Upon consultation with NMAI, they verified that they did not own the manuscript but advised that it was owned by the family of Wildschut. Willem had died in 1955, but I was able to locate the immediate family and received permission from them to publish this manuscript in March 2014.

Due to the various persons who previously handled, cut, marked, and copied the manuscript, it is somewhat difficult to determine the exact order of the chapters as originally organized by Wildschut, so it cannot be determined if they are intended to be placed in the chronological order of the events as told by Plenty Coups.

This book would not be possible without those who have so graciously assisted in providing photographs from their collections. Thank you to John R. Waggener, Archivist, American Heritage Center, The University of Wyoming, for his help with the Richard Throssel Collection. Thank you to Jeff Malcomson, Photo Archivist, and Sue Jackson at the Montana Historical Society for their courtesy in their research for requested photographs. Thank you to Aaron S. Kind, Park Manager, Chief Plenty Coups State Park, for his permission to publish some of their great collection of photographs of the chief. Thank you to Ellen Sieber, Chief Curator, Mathers Museum of World Cultures, for her assistance in the Joseph Dixon (Wanamaker) collection of photographs; Bob Martinka of Helena, Montana, for his wildlife photograph; and Mary Robinson, Housel Director at the McCracken Research Library, Buffalo Bill Center of the West for their permission to publish photographs from their collections. The Library of Congress, National Museum of the American Indian, Billings Public Library, National Park Service, National Anthropological Archives, and the National Archives graciously provided additional photographs.

To Bill Mercer, a huge thank-you for your guidance, expertise, and encouragement over the years to make this book happen. You are truly a mentor and friend.

Grant Bulltail, a Crow historian who contributed to this book both in writing and stories, passed away several months before its publication was a library of everything Crow. I could always pick up the phone and talk to him and he was willing to share his knowledge. I miss him dearly.

A special thank-you to the late Forrest Fenn of Santa Fe, New Mexico, who encouraged me to complete the book and who taught me to be bold with writing. He told me you could finish a sentence with a picture rather than a word. He told me to dare to be different. While Forrest hid a treasure, he was a treasure himself.

It must be noted that there may be some terms in this book that some today may find offensive, derogatory, or politically incorrect. I have elected to maintain the text as written by Wildschut as it gives a sense of the times. I am sure that twenty years after this is published, there will be more terms that will be offensive, derogatory, or politically incorrect. I will be true to Wildschut’s texts.

—Bud Lake

2021

---

¹ American, The Life Story of a Great Indian, Linderman, FBL, pg. 3–4.

Introduction by Willem Wildschut

Exploits of Plenty Coups, Chief of the Crows

Plenty Coups and the author, Willem Wildschut

Plenty Coups and the author, Willem Wildschut, ca. 1920, taken at Plenty Coups home in Pryor, Montana

Photograph from the Willem Wildschut photograph collection

Photograph courtesy of National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center, Smithsonian Institution (N31139)

Plenty Coups, Chief of the Crows, is one of the very few remaining Indian chiefs who obtained his title in the old days when the West was still a practically unknown country and but sparsely occupied by a few straggling settlers, trappers, and miners. He earned his chieftaincy by the daring of his many exploits and war parties against the hereditary enemies of the Crows. Foremost of these were the Sioux, the Blackfoot, or Piegans, and to a lesser degree, the Shoshones, Nez Perces, and Flatheads. His name is a fitting crown of the many honors he earned in battle and on the war trails—Plenty Coups meaning, many strikes. The greatest honor a warrior could earn in those day was to be the first one of his party to strike an enemy, dead or alive, on the field of battle. To do so, this warrior necessarily had to be foremost in the ranks of his comrades. Coups is the French word for strikes. The name Plenty Coups, therefore, clearly indicates the many honors, strikes, this chief earned in the early days on the Plains.

From all the Indian chiefs, Plenty Coups was chosen as the most fitting person to represent the American Indians at the dedication of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington cemetery, to place on it the war bonnet, tribute of the braves of our native races to him who represented the bravest of the brave of our forces. For this tribute was chosen one who in his younger days had given proof of being no less brave than the most courageous of them all, Chief Plenty Coups.

Plenty Coups laying a coup stick on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Plenty Coups laying a coup stick on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Washington, DC, 1921.

Photograph from video at the National Archives, Washington, DC (Record Group 111, historic film no. 1137)

The author, in his capacity of field representative of the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, New York, has known Plenty Coups for more than ten years. In the many long talks he has had with the old chief, it was his privilege to have related to him many exploits which, starting at the age of barely twenty, gradually earned him the honors, which eventually gave him the rank of head chief of his tribe.

It is the author’s intention to relate the most important of these exploits in a series of articles and as related to him by Plenty Coups himself.

Plenty Coups, who is now in his seventy-eighth year (1926), lives at Pryor, Montana, one of the subagencies of the Crow Indian Reservation.

Introduction by Bill Mercer

This volume contains the personal recollections of Apsáalooke Chief Plenty Coups as he described them to Willem Wildschut in the early 1920s. The individual narratives focus on Plenty Coups’s early years as a warrior when he rose to prominence within the tribe and conclude before he came to be regarded as the principal chief of the entire Apsáalooke Nation in 1907, a position he held after the death of Chief Pretty Eagle in 1904 until his own death in 1932. Autobiographical information of Native leaders of Plenty Coups’s status is rare, and without such direct personal narratives, scholars are forced to use external sources in an attempt to reconstruct and contextualize major events as well as the minutiae of daily activities that an individual considered to be pivotal in his or her life. In this particular instance, Plenty Coups’s recollections contain information not just about his personal exploits but also provide a wealth of cultural information about the Apsáalooke at the apex of the Plains Indian horse culture in the nineteenth century shortly before the onset of the reservation period.

It was a traditional cultural practice for Apsáalooke warriors to recount their heroic deeds in a public setting with complete honesty and without embellishment. Once the narratives were accepted as factual, only then would those actions be acknowledged, and with it, a warrior’s standing in the tribe would increase. The manner in which Plenty Coups’s sparse, matter-of-fact narratives were recorded, in the presence of his longtime friend, Bird All Over The Ground, and without Wildschut offering any interjections or commentary, follows the traditional pattern. It is an approach that enables the reader to have a more-direct connection to the events being described and conjures images of Plenty Coups orally reciting the stories of his early life.

This literary approach is markedly different than a later publication that is also based on Plenty Coups’s recitation of many of the same stories. Those narratives were transcribed in 1927 by Frank Bird Linderman and first published in 1930 as American: The Life Story of a Great Indian, Plenty-Coups, Chief of the Crows. In that book, Linderman, a former newspaper writer, interjects often with his own literary voice and provides extensive commentary and opinions that, in some instances, were based on misguided stereotypes of the period and not based on fact or supported by historical research. By contrast, Wildschut was a self-trained anthropologist, and his transcription of Plenty Coups’s stories appears to be as true to what was being translated as possible. The footnotes were added by the editor of this volume simply for clarity, and the historic photographs were also additions that provide a visual reference to the people and places mentioned within the text.

As with most people, Plenty Coups was a product of his cultural environment and heavily influenced by the historical era in which he lived. He was born in 1848, and as was custom, Plenty Coups was given a birth name, Chíilaphuchissaaleesh, which translates to Buffalo Bull Facing The Wind. At that time, the Apsáalooke had established a homeland centered around the Yellowstone River Valley from the Three Forks area eastward to the mouth of the Musselshell River, northward to the Judith Basin, and southward to the Big Horn Mountains of what is now Montana and adjacent areas of Wyoming. Oral traditions, supported by linguistic analysis, assert that the Apsáalooke were once a part of the Hidatsa tribe, an agricultural people living in permanent villages along the Missouri River in what is now North Dakota. Sometime, possibly six hundred to eight hundred years ago, two groups split from the Hidatsa and migrated in a southwestwardly direction to the Black Hills before ultimately settling farther west along the Yellowstone River Valley.²

Long Tail,³ an elder Apsáalooke, told the story of the creation of the Apsáalooke to Catholic Priest, Fr. Peter Paul Prando.⁴ Fr. Prando recorded the complete story in Crow in the late 1890s and translated it into the English language. This is only a small portion of the story:

The first man was called the First Maker of Things. He was also known as Old Coyote.

In the beginning there was nothing. There was no day, and the entire earth was all covered with water.

First Maker said, What shall I do? He said, Let there be light, and there was light over the whole earth."

First Maker found one plant, and he asked it, What are you doing, where did you come from? Not having a body, the plant did not answer him. First Maker knew that the water did not make it and that there had to be land somewhere, but he did not see any.

First Maker then took the plant and tore it into four pieces, sending a piece to the four quarters of the earth. Thinking to himself, he said, What shall I do? There is no boy animal. He calls for one, and it was done.

The first plant pieces he tore and threw away, and they came back as small ducks.

Eh! Eh! All of you ducks, come, First Maker said. He advised the four ducks that they shall work, and he sent them away to look for dirt. When they returned, he did not see any dirt, and he was concerned. One of the ducks said he had seen a rock, so he went with them to see it.

One duck said to the other, he had not seen the rock, so they went together to see it. Once the rock was reached, they stood on it.

The First Maker, having run with his supernatural power, was standing on the rock.

What are you doing? For a long time, you did not come," he said.

The duck which came back said to him, I went back to you, you were not there. This is the reason why, she said.

There were no people. First Maker placed dirt on the rock, and the water was gone. The earth was now dirt.

What shall we do? First Maker said to himself.

He made antelope, horses, birds, and fish and all the other animals. He made plants and grass and rivers and mountains.

The First Maker made people after he made all the other things.

He said to himself, First Maker, what are you doing? You are alone. You have made all kinds of animals. I will make your body different.

First Maker made women, and then, making mud, he made man. He made five women and five men as he had made ten animals.

When he was through making these people, he made the Crow Indians.

By the early eighteenth century the Apsáalooke, which translates to Children Of The Large Beaked Bird, had begun to acquire horses, and they soon adapted a nomadic bison-hunting lifestyle. Historically, the Apsáalooke were organized into three divisions: River Crow, Mountain Crow, and Kicked in the Bellies.⁵ The three divisions shared a common language, cultural traits, and cooperated as allies in the constant defense of their territory and communities against neighboring foes such as the Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Blackfeet. What developed among the Apsáalooke was a cultural system that enabled individuals to rise to prominent positions of leadership based on their accomplishments and community acclamation as to their good character, success at hunting, and valor as warriors.

As was typical, Plenty Coups began his training as a young boy and was taught important skills for survival, hunting, and warfare. Those lessons were also meant to build character and instilled in him a love for the Apsáalooke way of life, aspirations of great personal accomplishments, and a lifelong commitment to protect the Apsáalooke people. His training led him to be an outstanding horseman, scout, warrior, and war party leader. He earned the four major war honors (touching the enemy in battle by hand or with a coup stick, capturing a picketed horse from an enemy camp, taking an enemy’s weapons, and leading a successful war party) to become a chief four times over. At the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, at only twenty years of age, Plenty Coups stated that he had fought in more than one hundred skirmishes. At the same time, he was known as a wise leader and eloquent speaker who supported the Apsáalooke’s alliance with the United States. Ultimately, Plenty Coups came to be regarded as the chief of the Mountain Apsáalooke in 1876 before becoming the principal chief of the entire Apsáalooke Nation in 1907. During this period, he led his people through the end of the Indian Wars, the transition to reservation life, and