"Indians!" ****** 89 



catch them, especially if they took refuge behind the Absaroka Range in 

 what is now Yellowstone. Nevertheless, they were regarded as the 

 friends of the whites, and never went to war against the settlers. They 

 helped John Colter, the early explorer, 

 and Crow scouts were guides for Cus- 

 ter's army and were with him in 1876 

 when he and his troops were massacred 

 on the Little Big Horn by Sitting Bull 

 and the Sioux. 



The traditional enemies of the Crows 

 were the Blackfeet, the Indians of Gla 

 cier Park. Whenever roving bands of 

 Crows and Blackfeet met, a battle in 

 variably ensued, in which the Blackfeet 

 were usually victorious. The Blackfeet 

 were regarded as the enemies of the whites, though they never went on 

 the warpath as did the Sioux. The Blackfeet, by "pot-shooting" every 

 white man they could find, probably killed more settlers than any of the 

 tribes that took to the warpath. The relations of the Crows and the 

 Blackfeet to the white men have been traced back to a comparatively 

 small incident in the life of John Colter. 



When the Lewis and Clark Expedition returned from the Pacific 

 Coast in 1806, passing within one hundred miles of Yellowstone Park, 

 Colter, one of the scouts, asked permission to stay in the Rockies and 

 accompany two other fur traders working up the Missouri River. He 

 had been away from civilization four years, yet he was ready for more 

 of the wilderness and hardship in order to explore virgin country. In 

 1807, Colter, in the employ of a Spanish fur trader named Manuel Lisa, 

 pushed up the Yellowstone River, seeking to make friends with the 

 neighboring Indians for the fur trader. He fell in with a band of Crows 

 and accompanied them south on a hunting expedition. The Crows met 

 a band of Blackfeet and a battle followed. Colter quite naturally fought 

 on the side of his friends, the Crows, and this time, contrary to the usual 

 outcome of Crow-Blackfoot battles, the Crows were victorious. This 

 increased the enmity of the Blackfeet for the white men, but helped 

 establish friendly relations with the Crows. Thereafter the Crows were 

 the friends of the white traders pushing into the Yellowstone. 



The third tribe of Indians was known as Shoshones. This great 

 nation lived south and southeast of the park. The Shoshone tribes living 

 on the border of Yellowstone were peaceful Indians. They were known 

 derisively by the Crows and the Blackfeet as "fish-eaters" and "root- 

 diggers," because of the manner in which they garnered their food. 

 They dug their roots, dried them, and ground them into flour, from 



