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Canku Ota |
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(Many Paths) |
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An Online Newsletter Celebrating Native America |
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January 13, 2001 - Issue 27 |
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Project Preserves |
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Traditional Crow Site Names |
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by Carrie Moran McCleary Indian Country Today |
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map by John Potter/Billings Gazette Staff |
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 CROW AGENCY,
Montana – When Barney Old Coyote looks across his homeland in Crow reservation, he can point to places like Anmaalapammuua,
“Where the Whole Camp Mourned,” Baahpalohkahpe, the place where the Crows first celebrated the Fourth of July,
and Bisshiilannuusaau, “Where They Laid Down Yellow Blankets.”These places all have English names on maps created by the state of Montana, but Old Coyote remembers what his people have called these places for hundreds of years, and he hopes the Crow Place Name Project will help generations to come remember them as well. Two years ago Old Coyote and 20 other Crow elders began working with Little Big Horn College general studies instructor Tim McCleary to document place names and chronicle the stories behind them. Most people don’t know the rest stop on Interstate 90 is known as Anmaalapammuua because the whole camp mourned there after a war party that fought at Rainy Buttes returned with many dead. Old Coyote says so many warriors were killed, not one family went unaffected, and everyone was in mourning. The Rainy Buttes fight is known to the Lakota as “Where Sitting Bull’s father was killed.” Baahpalohkahpe was once a favorite tribal camping site. It is also where the Crows first celebrated the 4th of July in a Burlington Northern Railroad-sponsored celebration in 1882. The Crows, camped at Absarokee, were transported on flat-bed railroad cars for the celebration. Railroad workers named a child born during the celebration George Washington. That child became a tribal leader – George Washington Hogan. Mission Creek was the site of the first distribution of annuities after the 1868 treaty. It included yellow Army blankets. To this day many Crows call the area Bisshiilannuusaau. Old Coyote is a Crow tribe member, decorated World War II veteran and respected tribal elder. He has spent his adulthood passing knowledge of Crow tribal culture and history on to his children, grandchildren and the next generation of Crow people. He worked as an educator at the college level and continues to give occasional seminars in his retirement. The Crow place names list now boasts more than 500 locations, from the 2.2-million-acre reservation and beyond, across the North America. In 1997, McCleary published a book on Crow star knowledge. Old Coyote and his brother, the late Mickey Old Coyote, contributed to the book. “I like to see the project progress,” Old Coyote said. “To me personally, it’s a chance to renew my ties with the land and my past, and some things I believed to be true, but was not sure about. It has clarified things, and refined my perspective of Crow history, simply because of the names and locations. It gives one hope for the future that we will not lose our Crow identity. “When something is already in print (Euro-American maps) it is hard to change. This can correct those distortions of the past. “Crow place names are tied not only by events, but also for what they offered the Crow and for their physical characteristics ... Such as a coulee or creek with a fork or a place to gather wild carrots or gooseberries, and locations where teepee poles would be gathered. “So it (a Crow place name) can be a local reference as well as a general reference,” Old Coyote said. “I grew up in Big Horn (district) so the Grape Vine is where we gathered our serviceberries, gooseberries, etc. They all had favorite places like that.” Old Coyote said he feels the impression is worse when English translations of Crow names are corrupted. “One thing I noticed is white people like colorful names of how they think of Indians, and they often don’t match what they are,” he said. “In Billings, Aashuuchoosalaho – ‘Where There are Many Skulls,’ white people call it Valley of Skulls, which gives the impression of human skulls. But to the Crows it’s a place of abundance of game, because you didn’t take skulls with you when you butchered an animal.” A college Historic and Battle Sites tour in the summer of 1991 gave birth to the place name project. McCleary said he watched videos of the bus tour and was immediately struck by the story telling by four elders. “They had descriptions of almost every little point and drainage as they traveled. As they described the stories, they didn’t always know the dates of events, like a Euro-history professor would, but they knew incredible details about what took place there, so it became apparent to me where it took place and what occurred is more important to the Crow people.” McCleary’s interviews with elders are available on a database linked to the college Web site. It contains GIS maps of each location and can be accessed by the English or Crow name and by reservation district. Recently McCleary trained bilingual teachers from across the reservation to access the site. Randy Falls Down, the college’s chief information officer, created the Web site and supervised creation of computer-based maps. He said the project’s potential for classroom use is important. “For a bilingual teacher to just look out the window and point at something and say its name in Crow makes it more interesting for students. Kids love their computers,” he said. “And with this they can connect their culture into it. It’s just a good deal all the way around.” |
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Apsáalooke Cultural Landscape Project |
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Crow Tribal Council Page |
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Plenty Coups-Crow Language
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| Canku Ota is a free Newsletter celebrating Native America, its traditions and accomplishments . We do not provide subscriber or visitor names to anyone. Some articles presented in Canku Ota may contain copyright material. We have received appropriate permissions for republishing any articles. Material appearing here is distributed without profit or monetary gain to those who have expressed an interest. This is in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107. | ||
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Canku Ota is a copyright © 2000, 2001 of Vicki Lockard and Paul Barry. |
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The "Canku Ota - A Newsletter Celebrating Native America" web site and its design is the |
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Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2001 of Paul C. Barry. |
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