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Show THE CROW WOMEN. 175 horses than any other tribe of the Missouri, and to send them in the winter to Wind River, to feed on a certain shrub, which soon fattens them. The Crow women are very skilful in various kinds of work, and their shirts and dresses of bighorn leather, embroidered and ornamented with dyed porcupine quills, are particularly handsome, as well as their buffalo robes, which are painted and embroidered in the same manner. I shall speak, in the sequel, of their large caps of eagles' feathers, and of their shields, which are ornamented with feathers and paintings (Plate XLVIII. Figs. 5 and 6), and other articles. The men make their weapons very well, and with much taste, especially their large bows, covered with the horn of the elk or bighorn, and often with the skin of the rattle-snake. I have represented a beautiful quiver of this nation, adorned with rosettes of porcupine quills, in Plate XLVIII. Fig. 10. In stature and dress these Indians correspond, on the whole, with the Manitaries, both having been originally one and the same people, as the affinity of their languages proves. Long hair is considered as a great beauty, and they take great pains with it. The hair of one of their chiefs, called Long Hair, was ten feet long, some feet of which trailed on the ground when he stood upright. The enemies of the Crows are the Chayennes, the Blackfeet, and the Sioux ; their allies are the Mandans and Manitaries. With the latter they bartered their good horses for European goods, but the American Fur Company has now established a separate trading post for them on the Yellow Stone River, which is called Fort Cass. Though the Crows look down with contempt upon the Whites, they treat them very hospitably in their tents, yet their pride is singularly contrasted with a great propensity to stealing and begging, which makes them very troublesome. They are said to have many more superstitious notions than the Mandans, Manitaries, and Arikkaras; for instance, they never smoke a pipe when a pair of shoes is hung up in their tent; when the pipe circulates none ever takes more than three puffs, and then passes it in a certain manner to his left-hand neighbour. They are skilful horsemen, and, in their attacks on horseback, are said to throw themselves off on one side, as is done by many Asiatic tribes. They have many bardaches,* or hermaphrodites, among them, and exceed all the other tribes in unnatural practices. As among all the Missouri Indians, the Crows are divided into different bands or unions. A certain price is paid for admission into these unions and their dances, of which each has one peculiar to itself, like the other Missouri tribes; on which occasion the women are given up to the will of the seller in the same manner, as will be more particularly mentioned when speaking of the other tribes. Of the female sex, it is said of the Crows, that they, with the women of the Arikkaras, are the most dissolute of all the tribes of the Missouri. This people have a superstitious fear of a white buffalo cow; when a Crow meets one he addresses the sun in the following words: " I will give her («. e. the cow) to you." He then * The bardaches will be spoken of when we are treating of the customs of the Mandans. |
