From the Heart of the Crow Country

Joseph Medicine Crow

Joseph Medicine Crow, respected elder of the Crow tribe, draws on more than sixty years of story collecting to offer readers this extraordinary look at American Indian culture from the Indian point of view. In his early boyhood, Joe Medicine Crow had the good fortune to have known many pre-reservation Crows. His grandfathers, Medicine Crow and Yellowtail, both leaders of the Crow tribe, were ceremonial traditionalists who often invited their fellow men to sweat baths, at which times many stories were told. Young Joseph would sit quietly and listen. He was further exposed to the stories of the Indian wars while growing up in the same home with White-Man Runs Him, one of Custer's six Crow scouts. Thus was born a passion for recording stories and collecting data on Crow culture - a collection that stretches from the buffalo-hunting days of men born before the Civil War up to the present day. Few Native Americans alive today can provide such a compelling and authentic window into a way of life that ended more than a century ago. As the first Crow Indian to graduate from college and earn a master's degree, Joe Medicine Crow combines oral tradition and the written record to compile a history of the Northern Plains tribes that is unique in the American Indian community.