What does her account reveal about the impact of white culture on those relations?
A Crow Medicine Woman on Teaching the Young (1932) “We were a happy people when I came onto this world, Sign-talker. There was plenty to eat, and we could laugh. Now all this is changed. But I will try to begin with the first things I remember.
“About the time when I came to live on this world my aunt, Strikes-with- an-axe, lost two little girls. They had been killed by the Lacota; and so had her man. This aunt, who was my mother’s sister, mourned for a long time, growing thinner, and weaker, until my mother gave me to her, to heal her heart. This aunt, Strikes-with-an-axe, was a River Crow. You know that because of a quarrel, just before my time [about 1832], the Crows divided into two tribes, the Mountain Crows, and the River Crows? Well, I was born a Mountain Crow, and this aunt was a River Crow.
“I can remember going away to live with my aunt, and the River Crows, although I could not have been three years old. This separation from my mother and my sisters was in fact not a very real one, because all the Crows
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Chapter 3 Evaluating Primary Sources74
came together often. These meetings gave me opportunities to see my fam- ily, so that I was happy, perhaps happier than I should have been at home. My aunt’s lodge was large, and she lived alone, until I came to stay with her. She needed me, even though I was at first too young to help her.
“I well remember the first time that the Crow clans gathered after I had left my mother to live with my aunt. It was in the springtime. A crier, on a beauti- ful bay horse, rode through the big village telling the people to get ready to move to the mountains. His words set thoughts of again seeing my mother and sisters and brothers dancing in my young head. I felt very happy. Almost at once my aunt began to pack up; and then she took down her lodge.
“How I loved to move, especially when the clans were going to meet at some selected place, always a beautiful one.” She turned to look out of the window at the wide plains, screened by the giant cottonwoods that sur- round Crow Agency, her eyes wistful.
“A crier would ride through the village telling the people to be ready to move in the morning. In every lodge the children’s eyes would begin to shine. Men would sit up to listen, women would go to their doors to hear where the next village would be set up, and then there would be glad talking until it was time to go to sleep. Long before the sun came the fires would be going in every lodge, the horses, hundreds of them, would come thundering in, and then everybody was very busy. Down would come the lodges, packs would be made, travois loaded. Ho! Away we would go, following the men, to some new camping ground, with our children playing around us. It was good hard work to get things packed up, and moving; and it was hard, fast work to get them in shape again, after we camped. But in between these times we rested on our traveling horses. Yes, and we women visited while we traveled. There was plenty of room on the plains then, so that many could ride abreast if they wished to. There was always danger of attack by our enemies, so that far ahead, on both sides, and behind us, there were our wolves who guarded us against surprise as we traveled. The men were ever watching these wolves, and we women constantly watched the men.