Riv. BAS, Sur. 
Pie uNo 20) CROW-FLIES-HIGH VILLAGE—MALOUF 153 
and on this basis they obtained two steers. Instead of properly dis- 
tributing the meat, however, they merely consumed it themselves. 
This was regarded by some as antisocial behavior, and the news of the 
act soon spread throughout the reservation. The two men were even 
accused of having indulged in this practice on several previous 
occasions. 
In protest, a large group of Indians went in a body to the Agency 
where they set up a camp. Crow-Flies-High acted as their spokesman. 
They met with Agency officials and demanded to know what had been 
taking place between them and the two conniving subchiefs, Lean 
Wolf and Crow Paunch.? These agents were said to have been told at 
the meeting that these two Indians had been using the meat they had 
acquired for their own purposes. Besides, said the delegation, they 
were not really chiefs. The real chiefs, they remarked, usually stayed 
at home among the Indians, and seldom did they council with Whites. 
It was finally agreed that the agents would give these Indians some 
meat to eat while they were still camped at the Agency headquarters. 
After the delegation had delivered their complaints and had made 
their suggestions for improving the distribution of food and equip- 
ment, the Agency issued them some rations. Then they returned to 
their homes at Fort Berthold. 
As an aftermath the two rival chiefs, Lean Wolf and Crow Paunch, 
planned to assassinate Crow-Flies-High. They made efforts to engage 
four men, Sitting Elk, Cherries-In-The-Mouth, Chicken-Lies-All-The- 
Time, and Knife to do the killing. Knife, incidentally, later joined 
the band of Crow-Flies-High. Frequent rumors of the death plot had 
reached Crow-Flies-High, and it was often suggested that he should 
leave the reservation until the animosities against him subsided. 
A number of followers planned to depart with the chief if he de- 
cided to go. Finally a decision was made, and about 1870 they moved 
upstream. The official version of this movement was given a few 
years later by an Indian agent: 1° 
This band of Indians under the leadership of Crow Flies High, quite a noted 
Gros Ventre character, separated from the bands of Arikarees, Gros Ventres, and 
Mandans of this place several years ago, owing to a disagreement on the part 
of Crow Flies High and the present Gros Ventre chief in regard to the elevation 
of the former to the distinguished honor of chieftainship. Being defeated in 
®Lean Wolf, or Poor Wolf was said to have worn his hair with a forelock as did most 
others in his clan. He was a Water Buster, or as Lowie wrote, a ‘Real Water.” (Lowie, 
1917, p. 23.) Lean Wolf’s wife was a member of the Knife clan. He belonged to the 
award’wi community of Hidatsa who had a slightly different language before they com- 
bined with the other Hidatsa bands at Fort Berthold (Lowie, op. cit., p. 17). Wilson 
also remarks on the presence of Lean Wolf at Like-A-Fishhook village. (Wilson, 1917, 
p. 107, and 1934, p. 352.) 
10 Gifford (1885). It should be mentioned that Indian Service records and personnel 
refer to the Hidatsa as Gros Ventres. These are not to be confused with the Algonquian- 
speaking Gros Ventres hundreds of miles farther up the Missouri River, in Montana, 
known to anthropologists as the Atsina. 
