Excerpt from Social Life of the Crow Indians

River down to the Missouri confluence. They met the Assiniboine, and were apparently also in more frequent contact with the Hidatsa than the Mountain Crow, so that certain societies, such as the Horse society and also one Crazy Dog organization, l are regarded as distinctive of the River Crow, who are said to have adopted them from the tribes mentioned. The many-lodges, according to all accounts, occupied approximately the terri tory including the present Crow reservation and adjoining regions, that is to say, southeastern Montana and part of Wyoming. The Fire-weasel couple define the territory of the many-lodges as bounded by the Tongue River on the east and the site of Livingston, Montana, on the west. Bull chief states that in the spring they ranged from the site of Buffalo, Wyoming, to the Pryor district, Montana, while in the winter they moved towards the Basin. The frarapi'o, according to this authority, joined the Many Lodges in the spring, but in the winter they went to the country of the Wyoming Shoshone. Maximilian seems to speak of the whole Crow tribe pasturing their horses along the Wind River in winter,2 but if the division into local bands antedates his journey,3 his informants presumably referred to the winter habitat of the Kicked-in-their-bellies band.

There is no evidence that any dialectic differentiation took place among the three local groups. They were never at war with one another, but on some occasions temporary misunderstandings seem to have led to the composition of songs by one group deriding the members of another. As the name implies, the many-lodges were numerically preponderant, and the Crow employ the same term to designate the East as the principal dwelling-place of the whites.

In answer to the direct question, whether a person belonged to his father's or his mother's local band, I received contradictory answers. In practice the problem probably never arose. The majority of marriages took place between members of the same band, and I am decidedly under the impression that affiliation with a band was simply a matter of residence.

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