Hearing tales of Little Bighorn
Historian and war chief Joseph Medicine Crow dies at 102.
Joseph Medicine Crow, an acclaimed Native American historian and last surviving war chief of Montana’s Crow Tribe, has died. He was 102.
Medicine Crow died Sunday, said Terry Bullis, director of Bullis Mortuary in Hardin, Mont.
A member of the Crow Tribe’s Whistling Water clan, Medicine Crow was raised by his grandparents in a log house in a rural area of the Crow Reservation near Lodge Grass, Mont.
His Crow name was “High Bird,” and he recalled listening as a child to stories about the Battle of the Little Bighorn from those who were there, including his grandmother’s brother, White Man Runs Him, a scout for Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.
His grandfather, Yellowtail, raised Medicine Crow to be a warrior. The training began when Medicine Crow was just 6 or 7, with a punishing physical regimen that included running barefoot in the snow to toughen the boy’s feet and spirit.
Medicine Crow in 1939 became the f irst of his tribe to receive a master’s degree, in anthropology. He served for decades as a Crow historian, cataloging his people’s nomadic history by collecting firsthand accounts of pre-reservation life from fellow tribal members.
“I always told people, when you meet Joe Medicine Crow, you’re shaking hands with the 19th century,” said Herman Viola, curator emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian.
During World War II, Medicine Crow earned the title of war chief after performing a series of daring deeds, including stealing horses from an enemy encampment and hand- tohand combat with a German soldier whose life Medicine Crow ultimately spared.
“Warfare was our highest art, but Plains Indian warfare was not about killing. It was about intelligence, lead- ership, and honor,” Medicine Crow wrote in his 2006 book “Counting Coup.”
Soon after returning from the European front, Medicine Crow was designated tribal historian by the Crow Tribal Council.
With his prodigious memory, Medicine Crow could accurately recall decades later the names, dates and exploits from the oral history he was exposed to as a child, Viola said. Those included tales told by four of the six Crow scouts who were at Custer’s side at Little Bighorn and who Medicine Crow knew personally.
Yet Medicine Crow also embraced the changes that came with the settling of the West, and he worked to bridge his people’s cultural traditions with the opportunities of modern society. His voice became familiar to many outside the region as the narrator for American Indian exhibits in museums across the country.
“He really wanted to walk in both worlds, the white world and Indian world, and he knew education was a key to success,” said Viola, who f irst met Medicine Crow in 1972 and collaborated with him on several books.
President Obama awarded Medicine Crow the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
During the White House ceremony, Obama referred to Medicine Crow as “a good man, a ‘ bacheitche’ in Crow.”
His “life ref lects not only the warrior spirit of the Crow people, but America’s highest ideals,” Obama said.
He was nominated for the Congressional Gold Medal and was awarded honorary doctoral degrees from USC and Montana’s Rocky Mountain College.
In the years leading to his death, Medicine Crow continued to live with his family in Lodge Grass. His wife died in 2009. Even after his hearing and eyesight faded, Medicine Crow continued to lecture into his 90s on the Battle of the Little Bighorn and other events in Crow history.