crow

Any of 35 species of omnivorous birds in the genus Corvus, family Corvidae, order Passeriformes, which also includes choughs, jays, and magpies. Crows are usually about 45 cm/1.5 ft long, black, with a strong bill feathered at the base. The tail is long and graduated, and the wings are long and pointed, except in the jays and magpies, where they are shorter. Crows are considered to be very intelligent. The family is distributed throughout the world, though there are very few species in eastern Australia or South America. The common crows are C. brachyrhynchos in North America, and C. corone in Europe and Asia.

It is estimated that there are only 11 birds of the species Corvus hawaiiensis, the wild Hawaiian crow, left in the wild.

Crow

Member of an American Indian people who migrated from North Dakota to Montana in the 1600s. Formerly part of the Hidatsa (a Plains Indian people), they comprised three bands: Mountain, River, and Kicked-in-Their-Bellies; and spoke a Siouan dialect. Like other nomadic Plains Indians, their lifestyle was based on buffalo hunting and raiding. They also traded horses for guns with the Shoshone. In the 19th century they helped the US Army against the Sioux and were granted a reservation in Montana, where many now raise cattle. Land, coal, gas, and oil leases provide important income. Their population numbers about 9,100 (2000).

Buffalo hunting provided the Crow with most of their material needs, including food, clothing, and tepee covers. They lived in matrilineal clans where descent was traced from a female ancestor. Status was achieved by acts of courage and daring during warfare. The Crow placed much importance on ‘counting coup’, getting close enough to an enemy to touch them; killing was not necessary to count coup. A major component of their religion was the attainment of a vision of one's supernatural guardian induced by fasting, and self-mutilation. The sun dance, held in the summer, was their most important ceremony. Today most Crow are Christian, but many follow the Native American Church, which uses the hallucinogenic peyote cactus in traditional sacred medical ritual. Crow language and many other traditions have been kept alive.

The Crow originally lived in the Knife River region of North Dakota, but separated from the Hidatsa and moved west to the Yellowstone River and its tributaries in Montana in the early 17th century. The Hidatsa called them Absaroka, meaning ‘children of the large-beaked bird’, and their signing of a bird in flight led early traders to call them the Crow. They first encountered Europeans in the early 18th century, and have maintained friendly relations with non-Indians since that time. The Crow suffered losses from smallpox and cholera in the first half of the 19th century, and were frequently at war with the Blackfoot and Dakota Sioux. Reservation treaties were signed with the US government in 1825 and 1851, and the current boundaries of their reservation in southeast Montana, by then much reduced, were established in 1880. During the Indian Wars of the 1860s and 1870s they allied themselves with the US government, acting as army scouts and fighting against the Sioux. In 1868 they accepted a reservation in southern Montana, and in 1869 Chief Plenty Coup insisted that the Indian Bureau of Affairs provide education for his people. Coal has been mined on the reservation since 1920, and oil and gas since the 1930s.

Their reservation includes the valley of the Bighorn and Little Bighorn rivers, the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876 between the Sioux and the 7th Cavalry.