Crow Flies High

Crow Flies High (ca. 1830s-1900) was a North American Hidatsa Indian. He became chief for a group of dissident Hidatsas and was one of the last Indians in the United States to settle on a Indian reservation. A North Dakota State Park is named after him.

Hidatsa chief and rebel Crow Flies High (also called Crow Fly, Raven Ascending and Heart). He and his followers were among the last Indians in the United States to settle on a reservation

In 1870, Crow Flies High left the joint Hidatsa, Mandan and Arikara Indian reservation at Fort Berthold in North Dakota due to conflict with the orthodox chiefs. He and his followers settled near the military post Fort Buford. Ordered away in 1884, they built a new village of sheds near the mouth of Little Knife River. By keeping a low profile while hunting small game in the area, the band managed largely to stay outside the reservation system until 1894.

Crow Flies High's people, the Hidatsa Indians

The Hidatsa lived in villages of earth lodges near the Upper Missouri in present-day North Dakota. They grew corn and other vegetables. Bison and smaller game were hunted on the plains. The Hidatsas used tipis on their long hunting expeditions.

Each Hidatsa belonged to a certain clan. The ceremonial life of the tribe revolved around sacred clan and village bundles, which promised good hunting, fine crops and victories over Indian enemies like the Assiniboine and the Sioux. The bundle keeper would open and stimulate or revitalize his bundle in a specified manner when required. In due time, an old keeper would sell his bundle to a new custodian, so it remained active and helped the village generation after generation.

Smallpox, Like-a-Fishhook Village and a reservation

Smallpox struck in 1837 and decimated the Hidatsas. Together with the remnants of the friendly Mandan tribe, they built the common Like-a-Fishhook Village further up the Missouri around 1845.

Joined by a third village tribe, the Arikara, they signed the Fort Laramie treaty of 1851. It should ensure a lasting peace among the warring tribes in the area. Further, it described the different territories of the eight participating Indian nations (see the little map in the lower, right part of the maps used here).

By the end of 1862, the Sioux had driven the village tribes out of their 1851 treaty territory south and west of the Missouri. For common protection, all three tribes lived in Like-a-Fishhook Village on the north bank.

On April 12, 1870, the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation was established. It included both a large part of the 1851 territory (more or less controlled by the Sioux) and additional land around Like-a-Fishhook Village and up the bank of the Missouri.

Crow Flies High

Losing his nearest relatives during the smallpox epidemic, Crow Flies High was raised by Eats-From-The-Line clan members. As an adult, he could not obtain any of the costly bundles with just a few clan relatives to assist him in the accumulation of hides and goods to equal the expected payment. Although tribal wisdom advocated the buying of bundles as the way to success and recognition, Crow Flies High tried to compensate for the missing bundles by fasting and receiving visions. Relying on his personal bundle, he made a fine war record.

By and by, he and other people turned away from the tribal bundle owners and the elders in power. This heretical faction or band gathered around the leader Bobtail Bull, a Hidatsa. Crow Flies High functioned as military chief.

Around 1870, a severe conflict “approaching civil war” emerged in Like-a-Fishhook village. Crow Flies High and Bobtail Bull accused some leaders of unfair distribution of government rations. Tension grew between the rival groups. Persistent rumors about a plan to murder Crow Flies High circulated. Urged to leave at least for a time, Crow Flies High and Bobtail Bull headed up river. From 140 to 200 discontented Hidatsas and Mandans went along. The Hidatsa dissidents came from every clan.

The outcome of the conflict

Away from Like-a-Fishhook Village and outside the reservation, Crow Flies High and Bobtail Bull were no longer judged by people placing bundle ownership higher than individual achievements. They could seek out better hunting grounds westward. The authority of the Indian agent, representing the U.S. government, was hampered.

Thus, the Crow Flies High and Bobtail Bull fraction was “conservative” while rebuffing the integration into white society, and “radical” when it questioned the value of age-old tribal customs.

The Garden Coulee village

Map 1. Garden Coulee village of Hidatsa chief Crow Flies High. The little map shows the 1851 treaty territory of the Hidatsa, Mandan and Arikara

The separatists settled on the north bank of the Missouri, about two miles above the mouth of Yellowstone River on an outlying part of the Fort Buford Military Reservation (see Map 1). The area was alive with game. Nearby Fort Buford reduced the risk of attacks on the small village from the Sioux and it provided a market for furs and robes.

The Hidatsas had never fought the U.S. Army and the garrison accepted them in the area. It looks as if the villagers warned the fort about hostile Sioux, and the soldiers viewed them as sentinels.

The new village consisted mostly of log cabins and then some earth lodges of a kind. A number of families dug storage pits.

Life of the villagers

In 1886, Crow Flies High described the early years in the village near Garden Coulee. “We subsisted ourselves by hunting Buffalo and Deer ... and selling our hides at Fort Buford”. Gardens were laid out as bison became rare. Some of the villagers enlisted early as scouts and hunters at the fort and had a regular pay. Prostitution and begging at the fort occurred when game went scarce. Captain Charles A. Coolidge provided for a number of aged and needy villagers in 1880. On one occasion, Crow Flies High quickly paid damages for a few heads of domestic cattle butchered by young men from the village.

Regularly, families resettled at Like-a-Fishhook Village, while new ones joined the dissidents and moved into vacated log houses. The average population was around 150 when the village was inhabited. It served mainly as a place for the winter and as a stopover for Hidatsa hunting camps going up Yellowstone River. The Garden Coulee villagers received government rations during visits to Like a Fishhook village. With time, Crow Flies High was recognized chief of the village.

Unwanted near Fort Buford

Map 2. Crow Flies High village (1884) and the Fort Berthold reservation

Generally, for most of a decade the interactions between the villagers and the garrison at Fort Buford was all right. Things changed in 1883. The Sioux were no longer a threat to the fort and the soldiers. The village population climbed to 240 inhabitants. The commander wanted the settlement closed.

A few earlier attempts to motivate Crow Flies High to leave Fort Buford Military Reservation and stay on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation had failed. On September 20, 1884, commanding officer J.N.G. Whistler finally reported the villagers on their way, “... although many of them have been living here for fifteen years”.

Fort Buford bought the abandoned Indian log cabins for firewood. The migrants spent the 44 dollars thus made on supplies for the movement downstream.

Crow Flies High village

The villagers started a new village on a site near some valleys where they already had small gardens. About twenty-five rectangular cabins were built close to the Missouri River a few miles above the mouth of Little Knife River (see Map 2). A single and simple earth lodge used as a “dance hall” stood in the southern quarter of the village. The settlement was inside the reservation, but more than 50 miles from Like-a-Fishhook Village and “the agency-mission complex”.

The Fort Berthold Indian Reservation was reduced late in 1886. Once again, the dissidents lived outside its borders (see Map 3). No children attended the reservation school, which was a major concern for the different Indian Agents. Some believed they had persuaded Crow Flies High to consent to reservation rules, just to be disappointed.

Map 3. The village of Hidatsa chief Crow Flies High and the 1886 boundaries for the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota

Crow Flies High lived in the village with his two wives. A son of his had his own cabin. The village Indians hunted deer and small game and raised crops. They sold firewood to steamboats on the Missouri. Once accused of killing beef cattle by ranchers in the area, Crow Flies High went to the Agency and defended himself and the village. Indian Agent Abram J. Gifford accepted the explanation of Crow Flies High, so the case ended with defeat to the stockgrowers.

The last years of Crow Flies High

In 1894, Crow Flies High resigned as chief. It happened just before Fort Buford soldiers and Hidatsa scouts escorted him and 125 Hidatsas, 23 Mandans and 1 Arikara to the agency. Some Hidatsas would later blame the soldiers for seemingly ignoring “all our men who had gone out and been scouts for them”. The people travelled in a long line. They used both pack and travois horses as well as Red River carts on the move.

Although assigned allotments all over the reservation, the group slowly assembled in the Shell Creek area.

Crow Flies High died of pneumonia in 1900. The Crow Flies High State Recreation Area in North Dakota is named after him.