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In the Lodge of the Chickadee: Architecture and Cultural Resistance on the Crow Indian Reservation, 1884-1920 Author(s): Thomas Carter, Edward Chappell and Timothy McCleary Source: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, Vol. 10, Building Environments (2005), pp. 97-111 Published by: Vernacular Architecture Forum Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3514343 Accessed: 27-01-2017 01:17 UTC

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CHAPTER 7

IN THE LODGE OF THE

CHICKADEE: ARCHITECTURE

AND CULTURAL RESISTANCE

ON THE CROW INDIAN

RESERVATION, 1884-1920

THOMAS CARTER,

EDWARD CHAPPELL,

AND TIMOTHY McCLEARY

The Crow Indians of southeastern Montana recognize the seminal role words play in their lives. As they say,

"Iichikbaale bilaxpaiake diawassakaashe f`uwuushkaataak iliahihcheem baleeiiwaaxpaak" (The First Maker blew his breathe into the first humans, therefore our words are holy). Arranged into stories, and especially those sto- ries that originate in dreams and visions, words form the

basis for human action. Not only do they explain how and why the world is the way it is, but they also present information individual tribal members use to chart a

successful course through that world. For the Crow, truly, the words come first, and any attempt to under- stand Crow history and culture must start with the important stories.1

By looking at architecture through the veil of narra- tive, one sees how a particularly powerful narrative, the story of the chickadee, helped shape and bring meaning to the built environment created by and for the Crows as they moved onto their reservation during the early 1880s. The Indian response to this new-and what must have seemed to them mostly hostile-political landscape was informed by a story whose message of guarded resistance allowed the Crows to ride out and ultimately survive the oncoming wave of American fron- tier expansion. The story centers on the wisdom of the chickadee and, through its telling and retelling among the Crow people, it became the story that, in the words of Coyote Runs, "we traveled by."2

The chickadee story came to a young Crow warrior named Plenty Coups in the 1850s during a vision quest in the sacred Crazy Mountains of western Montana. The young future chief dreamed the buffalo were re- placed everywhere on the plains by the white man's spotted cattle. He also saw a great storm destroy the

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green forest, and only "one tree, tall and straight, was left standing." As Plenty Coups later told the story, "The Four Winds that always make war alone had this time struck together, riding down every tree in the forest but one. Standing there alone among its dead tribesman, I thought it looked sad. What does this mean? I whispered in my dream. 'Listen, Plenty Coups,' said a voice, 'in that tree was the lodge of the Chickadee. He is least in strength but strongest of mind among his

kind. He is willing to work for wisdom'."3 The vision was a clear sign to Plenty Coups that if

the Crows were to avoid destruction by the whites, they must rely on ingenuity rather than warfare; they must outsmart rather than outfight their foes. Other tribes might perish before the American onslaught, but the Crows, in their actions from this point on, would

remember the story of the lone tree and the lodge of the chickadee: they would join with the whites against common enemies such as the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho, they would "work for wisdom" by educating themselves in the ways of the intruders, and they would preserve their culture by adapting it to the changing world. Bending, the Crows would not break.

The Crow people followed a generalized yearly pat- tern: living in tipis, they moved about the Great Plains in search of game, primarily buffalo, and fought inter- tribal battles over honors and horses. During the win- ter the Crow were broken into small family groups that would gather into larger kin-based groups in the spring to harvest edible roots. As summer approached, they regrouped into their respective bands, or possibly even the whole tribe, for large buffalo hunts. Fall brought a

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MAP 7.1 The Crow Indian Reservation, circa 1884. Drawing by Collin Tomb, courtesy of the Western Regional Architecture Program, University of Utah.

98 Thomas Carter, Edward Chappell, and Timothy McCleary

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return to somewhat smaller groups to pick berries and then a break into family groups again for the winter. By the early 1880s the traditional seminomadic Crow lifestyle, with its dependence on following the buffalo herds, had become untenable. The buffalo were gone, slaughtered by white hunters as part of the grand effort

to subdue the Plains Indians, and the thirty-three mil- lion acres of land set aside for the Crows in the 1851

Fort Laramie Treaty had been reduced to just over four million acres. And there were signs that still more con- cessions would have to be made to satiate the seemingly endless American appetite for land.4

Crow leaders wanted to preserve and control the center of their original homelands, the abundant lands along the Big Horn and Little Big Horn rivers, and ne- gotiations with the federal government would make this desire evident. In 1884, after visiting the previous year in Washington, D.C., Crow leaders returned to their people and moved them eastward, away from lands ceded in the western part of their former reservation, to

the new reservation headquarters of present-day Crow Agency (map 7.1), an act that ushered in what histori- ans call the "assimilation" phase of tribal history.s

From the outset, the policy of the U.S. government toward Indian peoples was to isolate them on reserva- tions until they could become "civilized" enough to enter and function within European American society. Federal policy saw acculturation-forcing the Indians to adopt white ways-as the principal objective of reserva- tion life. This policy would be carried out in two ways, educating the children in white-run schools and forcing the adults to adopt a sedentary agricultural lifestyle sim- ilar to that of other rural Americans.6

Theories of the day concerning human behavior centered on what is known as environmental determin-

ism-the idea that people's surroundings, customs, sto- ries, food, and clothing largely determined how they would behave and act. Sen. Henry Dawes, the major proponent of this theory, as it related to American Indi- ans, stated, "Till this people will consent to give up their lands, and divide them among their citizens so that each can own the land he cultivates, they will not make much progress." Following this philosophy meant that the success of the acculturative process hinged on changing the Indians' environment. Not surprisingly, architecture, as one of the most obvious and easily manipulated as- pects of the human landscape, figured heavily in the efforts to "civilize" the Indians.7

One well-oiled vehicle for such architectural deter-

minism was the boarding school. These institutions were located either on or off the reservation, and run by the government or by another institution like a church or benevolent society. Common to all forms of board- ing schools was the physical separation of Indian chil- dren from their families, either by a simple fence or half

a continent. Whether the school was located nearby on the reservation or miles away at a district or regional school, a barrier was effected between parents and chil- dren and between the Indian past and American future. Placed in the new boarding school setting, which was aggressively Eurocentric with its emphasis on order (gridiron seating patterns, a daily schedule ruled by the clock), individualism (separate desks, chairs, and beds), geometry (square buildings with square rooms), and per- manence (substantial masonry buildings). Indian chil- dren were supposed to abandon their native culture and accept new religions, thought patterns, and behaviors in hopes of a smooth passage into American society. Sepa- ration from family helped prevent backsliding into the "old" Indian way of life.8

Some Crow children were sent to boarding schools on the east or west coast, but during the early years of reservation settlement generally the Crows were, as his-

torian Fredrick Hoxie has noted, "unwilling to part with their children."' The two Roman Catholic missions established on the reservation had the most successful

schools. The first, St. Xavier, was founded in 1887 in the

Big Horn District. The second, opened in 1891, was St. Charles Mission (fig. 7.1), located in the western

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In the Lodge of the Chickadee 99

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district of Pryor. Around each of these missions Indian camps consisting of tipis, tents, and small log cabins sprang up, filled with families of new converts to Chris- tianity and those interested in taking advantage of the church-sponsored schools. Education in these settings, Crows knew, could be gained without removing chil- dren from the parents-and their traditional culture. Barney Old Coyote, a Crow elder and lifetime educator, describes upward of forty small single-room cabins built near St. Francis Xavier mission between 1900 and 1940.

Only one survives, a low structure of hewn logs built by Ties His Knees to house his family seasonally, during the time when the children and grandchildren attended the mission school. Even though the children stayed in dormitories while not in class, the nearness of the family allowed for some interactions during the week. Viewed out of context, the building could represent the materially modest life of any poorer western farm family.

However, built by Ties His Knees adjacent to the mis- sion boundary segregating his family's school-age chil- dren, the house is a dramatic representation of the effort

by Crows to preserve the traditional family unit.1'0

Another Crow institution that the U.S. government sought to dismantle was the Indian camp. Crow political and social life was based on extended family and clan relations forming numerous subbands within three larger

bands that ultimately formed the tribe under a principal leader, or chief. The subbands gathered in camps ar- ranged in a rather loose, linear fashion, usually along a river (fig. 7.2). In the middle was the lodge of the head- man or band chief. Next, on both sides, came the lodges of prominent warriors and medicine men. Finally, toward the outside on each end were found families of lesser

standing and their lodges. It was a type of social organi- zation that fostered band solidarity by reinforcing Crow nationalistic identity and culture. However, the commu-

nal nature of the camp contradicted the essential individ- ualistic nature of white communities and had by federal policy to be changed."

The importance government strategists placed on the dissolution of the Crow camp is evident in the Dawes Act of 1880, also known as the Allotment Act. This directed government agents to divide collectively held tribal lands into surveyed parcels of privately owned and operated farming plots known as "allot- ments" (map 7.2). Indeed the grid pattern of enforced land division resembled, in miniature, the blueprint for Manifest Destiny that had been official governmental

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FIG 7.2 Conjectural axonometric view of a traditional prereservation Crow camp. Drawing by Bryce Allison, courtesy of the Western Regional Architecture Program, University of Utah.

policy since Thomas Jefferson's presidency. The Dawes Act marked a new, advanced phase of federal control of Native Americans, from military conquest and settle- ment on managed reservations to a much more in- tensively controlled environment with Indians-turned- farmers assigned surveyed squares and rectangles- placing Indian families on the land in much the same way as having Indian children assigned to desks with seats in their rectilinear classrooms. Once settled on the

abstractly delineated properties, Crow families were vis- ited and their progress toward civilized behavior moni- tored by government agents and their aides. Once offi- cially partitioned, parts of the reservation could also be legally leased or sold to whites, whose intended perma- nence was increasingly marked by the construction of substantial houses. Allotment-the dispersal of the Indians over the land the way that white people lived- had another objective: it was pivotal to the federal gov- ernment's overarching goal of undermining both tradi- tional tribal authority and the collective orientation of Indian people.12

The introduction of European American house forms and nuclear-focused family structure was another legacy of the Dawes Act. The customary Crow dwelling was the four-pole lodge, or tipi. Not only was it classically

round and mobile, making it somehow unagrarian and definitely un-Euro-American, the tipi was also laden with religious meaning. Simultaneously it represented both the Crow concepts of femininity/motherhood, and the spiritual and physical aspects of the universe. Each of the twenty-one poles-four principal ones plus seventeen others that were structural but not load-bearing-repre- sented either land or sky beings. The white buffalo

100 Thomas Carter, Edward Chappell, and Timothy McCleary

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hide/canvas covering represented purity of the family within. And the tipi itself was considered the property of the woman of the household in a real and spiritual manner. Metaphorically the tipi was spoken of as a per- son's second mother, the canvas embracing the poles as a mother embraces her children. The tipi, an object of great cultural significance for Crows, was viewed by whites as both "primitive" and an obstacle in the road to "civilization." Square houses were deemed essential if the Crows were to become good citizens. Government agents therefore focused their energies and limited re- sources on providing European American-type housing for chiefs and band headmen, hoping that these leaders would set an example for their followers.'3

Cultural memory and interaction are generally more complex than students of material culture perceive them. It has been argued that precontact Crows and their predecessors in the Yellowstone Valley used un- notched logs for the base and walls of their lodges, and this may be the case. Also, contact with the fur trade undoubtedly exposed Crows to European American techniques of log construction early in the nineteenth century, but they became more intimately acquainted with log houses during the 1870s at the original agency, which was at Absarokee, Montana, in the western half of their original reservation. Here a number of log cab- ins were constructed for tribal leaders, but this initial attempt at "civilizing" the Indians had little immediate effect because the native political structure and econ- omy had not been disrupted. However, when the Crows moved to the eastern half of the reservation in the early

1880s, to the Big Horn and Little Big Horn river valleys, the buffalo had almost disappeared, and intertribal war- fare had ceased. Now, white agents worked more vigor- ously not only to break up the camps but also to impose new non-Indian housing standards on the tribe.'4

In 1886, several years after the move east, white visitors to the reservation noted that though peaceful the Crows "still cling with tenacity to all the traditions of the past, and have not deviated in dress, habits or pursuits from the tribe of fifty years ago." It was an observation that held for the architectural landscape as well, with the Indians in this preallotment era setting up familiar-looking camps along the rivers and major streams or next to the missions at St. Xavier and St.

Charles. The three major bands of the Crow had settled in different areas of the newly formed reservation. In the center, occupying the Big Horn valley, lived a seg-

ment of the Mountain Crows led by Pretty Eagle and Iron Bull. In the north were the River Crows, follow- ers of Sees With His Ears and Two Leggings. In the east, along the upper reaches of the Little Big Horn River, were the Kicked In The Belly camps of Medicine Crow and Spotted Horse. And in the west, along Pryor Creek, settled the remainder of the Mountain Crows under Plenty Coups. Plenty Coups purposely located his group as far from the new government headquarters at Crow Agency as possible to maintain, by keeping his distance, his own autonomy. At this time Pretty Eagle was the principal leader of the Crow, but Plenty Coups was a rising young leader and the heir apparent to Pretty Eagle's position.'s

The Crows were well aware of the implications sur- rounding allotment. The attractions were few and the detriments many. Individual ownership of land, after all, meant little to them, and they rightly feared that once they were situated on specific parcels, the agents, not the chiefs, would gain control of tribal affairs. Thus, actively, if in a nonconfrontational way, in the chickadee

tradition, the Crow resisted dispersal. Initially govern- ment agents lacked the resources to enforce provisions of the Dawes Act, and most Crow camps on the reser- vation followed the traditional model.'6

One main difference, however, was that at the cen-

ter of the camp often stood a government-built log house, newly erected for the band leader or chief. Most band leaders, including Pretty Eagle, Medicine Crow, and Plenty Coups, adopted for their followers what might be termed the "reservation camp." The one Plenty Coups established on Pryor Creek is representa- tive of those established by the other bands (fig. 7.3). On the north end was located Plenty Coups's home- stead, consisting at the time of a one-room, single-story

log house, a tipi, a round horse corral, and a log stable. To the south lay Plenty Coups's camp, a diverse collec- tion of small log houses-there may have been as many as fourteen at one time-army wall tents, and tipis arranged in a traditional manner. While it is true that some Crows accepted the Anglo-American rectilinear house form, closer inspection suggests that the Indians may nevertheless have had a say in the actual design process.17

Plenty Coups first saw his future house in a vision he had as young man. This vision began with the chief being led through a cave by a spirit guide and then shown that the buffalo would disappear and be re-

102 Thomas Carter, Edward Chappell, and Timothy McCleary

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N"Y COYP5 CAMPK

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FIG 7.3 Conjectural axonometric drawing of Plenty Coups's house and camp, circa 1890, Pryor, Montana. Drawing by Bryce Allison, courtesy of the Western

Regional Architecture Program, University of Utah.

placed by cattle. As he described his vision to William Wildschut, one of his biographers: "At that time I had not yet seen many cattle, except those that were used to

pull the wagons that traveled through our country. But now endless strings of cattle came and passed me. We were standing in front of the mouth of the cave and my guide pointed to a house and said: 'That is your house, there you will live to be an old man and a great chief among your people.' We knew nothing about houses at that time and even very few cabins were built in our part of the country yet. My guide spoke again and said; 'This will be your home hereafter.""'

Again the story had a "shaping" effect, helping-as a form of cultural validation-Plenty Coups and those around him in accepting the idea of the new kind of house. In 1883, a year before the move of the agency eastward, agent H. J. Armstrong wrote to Washington, stating "that I have the honor to request authority to employ two carpenters . . . to assist Plenty Coos [sic] band in building cabins on Pryor Creek. ... Plenty Coos [sic] insists that he is now able to manage a farm and ... there is no other place where he wants to put his per- manent home." The house, which combines both Euro- pean American and Crow features, was finished by 1885 and was a subtle but purposeful combination of both Anglo-American and Indian architectural themes. A

photograph of the house taken before subsequent re- modeling shows a story-and-half house, rectangular

in plan, with little to distinguish it from houses white settlers were then building in the region.19

Although lacking circular plans and hide or canvas coverings, early Crow houses, like that of Plenty Coups, nevertheless possessed a number of distinctive tipilike features (fig. 7.4). For example, the fireplaces or stove chimneys of contemporaneous European American cab- ins were generally located on the building's gable end, while in cabins built for Crows, the stove was located in the center, much like the fire pit in the tipi, with the stovepipe running up the through the center of the roof. In European American cabins, the front door usu- ally faced the road, whatever direction that was, but in Indian cabins, like the tipi, the front invariably faced east

in anticipation of the rising sun. Also, whereas in houses built for whites there were windows to one or both sides

of the front door, in the Crow examples the tendency is to make the cabin more tipilike by cutting only a single door opening.20

Early Crow log houses were also often decorated, furnished, and used in the same manner as their tipi predecessors. Take for example the tipi "liner." In Crow tipis, a curtain, or liner was hung around the in- terior wall. The liners or curtains served both practical and social functions. On a practical level, they formed

FIG 7.4 Comparison diagram showing on the left a traditional Crow tipi, in the center Plenty Coups's original log house, and to the right a typical Anglo-American log house. Drawings by Danielle Grabarz and Bryce Allison, courtesy of the Western Regional Architecture Program,

University of Utah.

In the Lodge of the Chickadee 103

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an air space that helped insulate the lodge in both win- ter and summer. Socially, the liners were decorated to publicize a man's war record, thus declaring his status in the tribe. This practice lasted into the early reser- vation period. Robert Lowie, an anthropologist who worked on the Crow reservation in the early 1900s observed that "pictorial representations of deeds in realistic style were made upon men's robes and on the

windbreaks (bitaalasshia) inside the lodge. . . . Nowa- days some men ... have corresponding decoration on the canvas lining the inner walls of their log cabins." Personal items were customarily hung along the top of the liners, with sacred objects being placed in the back, or west, side of the tipi. This tradition was carried over to the cabins as well, and it would not have been un- common to see hanging along the west wall of the cabin a warrior's medicine bundles, sacred objects, and other war accouterments.21

Other similarities between the two dwelling forms are visible in patterns of use. Well into the twentieth century, for instance, Crows had little use for European American furniture, preferring to use the floor, which was, in the earliest cabins, probably without wooden planks, as is the case with Plenty Coups's original cabin. Beds were made on the floor and were rolled up and placed against the wall as backrests-just as in the tipi.22

Government pressure for Indian dispersal contin- ued, and it appears that, by the first decades of the twen-

tieth century, some Crows started to take up their allot- ments. One of the first was the principal leader Pretty Eagle. Around 1905 the chief moved from his log cabin, along the Big Horn River, into a house beside the main thoroughfare that connected the mission of St. Xavier to Crow Agency and the growing European American community of Hardin. The choice of loca- tion, one that increased the aging chief's visibility, may have come as an attempt by Pretty Eagle to maintain his authority during his twilight years. His house too represents one of the first of a new kind of dwelling that would dominate domestic architecture on the reser-

vation for the next several decades. Sometimes called

"allotment" houses, these houses differ from earlier ones

in that they have multiple-room plans and are con- structed of light balloon framing covered with drop or novelty siding. Lumber for Pretty Eagle's house, like many others from this period, came from Fort Custer, located on the bluffs south of present-day Hardin. The fort was decommissioned in 1890; while some fort

buildings were moved intact to Indian homesteads, most were dismantled for their lumber, which was put into the

construction of the new allotment-type houses.23 On the eastern side of the reservation, the Kicked In

The Belly bandleader, Medicine Crow, moved with some of his followers to individual allotments near the Little

Big Horn River (fig. 7.5). Like Plenty Coups, Medicine Crow had seen his house in a vision, and in 1906 he had an allotment-type house composed of salvaged lumber built on the rise, near the spring, indicated in his dream (fig. 7.6). From the outside, a house such as Medicine Crow's appears typically European American, having a basic rectilinear shape and a familiar two-room, front- kitchen, rear-sleeping-room plan. Covered by a gable roof, wall studs, siding, roof sheathing, and floors were all mill sawn and machine finished. Inside, the walls were covered with new matchboard of a kind used for modest

turn-of-the century houses all across the United States. Like Plenty Coups and many other Crows, however, Medicine Crow was not fully accepting even the material form of mainstream white domestic life. He had moved

his family to an allotment. He had adopted an Ameri- can house form with mass-produced finishes and store- bought stoves for cooking and heating, but the way the house was designed and used remained thoroughly Crow. Like the tipi, the house had a single front door that faced east. The front room, furnished with a "Monarch" stove,

104 Thomas Carter, Edward Chappell, and Timothy McCleary

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FIG 7.6 Top left: principal southeastern elevation of the Medicine Crow house, Lodge Grass District, Crow Indian Reservation, Montana; top right: southwestern elevation; and bottom: floor plan. Drawings by Jessica Huber and Bryce Allison, courtesy of the Western Regional Architecture Program, University of Utah.

served as a kitchen area where meals were prepared and the family ate on the floor, for tables and chairs were not added until the 1920s.24

The backroom was used for a living and sleeping area; around its walls hung a tipi liner depicting the war honors of Medicine Crow (fig. 7.7). On the floor, to the back, the chief slept with his wife, and above their heads, on the west (east-facing) wall, hung their sacred bundles and the chief's war shield. It is interesting to note that the couple continued their traditional manner of sleeping even after one son brought a European American bed and dresser into the room for his own

use. In the summer, as was customary on the reserva- tion, the family spent their time largely outdoors, cook- ing over an open fire and living in a brush-covered shade shelter to the side of the house's front door.

Located nearby were the barns and corrals, and also a sweat lodge, an important religious structure still found on many Crow homesteads.25

Of all the houses built for Crow chiefs during the early reservation period, Plenty Coups's is perhaps most instructive as a piece of subtle architectural resistance.

FIG 7.7 Conjectural reconstruction of the war banner/tipi liner in the Medicine Crow house depicting the heroic exploits of the Crow chief. Drawing by Tim McCleary and Bryce Allison, courtesy of the Western Regional Architecture Program, University of Utah.

As the last chief to rise to the position of principal tri- bal leader, Plenty Coups occupies a unique position in Crow history. His name reflects his warrior's route to leadership-he gained many honors in battle-yet it was during his tenure as chief that the American West transformed from a contested frontier into an estab-

lished regional economy, and the Crow reservation, for better or worse, was absorbed into this increasingly complex cultural network. Plenty Coups oversaw such things as the negotiation of railroad rights of way, man- aging grazing and water rights contracts, and the devel- opment of a new, American type of tribal government. Through it all the chief walked in two worlds-the white and the Indian, and in his house he skillfully mani- pulated architectural symbols from European American and Crow culture to create a building that projected authority to whites and Crows alike.

As noted, Plenty Coups's original house represented something of a tipi disguised as a European American log house. His homestead always included a tipi, which he continued to occupy in summer months, and a sweat lodge, as well as new forms, like a horse corral and barn for his new life as a rancher. Some improvements were made to the initial house around 1900, when a one- story one-room addition was placed on one end. Also built of logs, it was probably used initially as a dining area but would become the chief's private sleeping room in his last years. But more was in store: Plenty Coups had a much grander vision for the homestead.26

As early as 1883 Plenty Coups had traveled with a number of other Crow leaders to Washington, D.C.,

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to meet with U.S. officials. The trip was designed to demonstrate to the Crow leaders the immense power of the United States and to negotiate a right of way for the Northern Pacific Railroad through Crow lands. To impress the Crows further, guides escorted them to major points of interest in or near the nation's capital. This included the National Zoo, the U.S. Capitol, and Mount Vernon. Chief Plenty Coups was particularly im- pressed with Mount Vernon.

"Many years ago," Plenty Coups remembered, "I stood beside the tomb of the first white Chief, George Washington, and I felt glad to be there. I had heard much about this Chief, and had noticed that no man spoke harshly of his life or deeds, and that all held his name in reverence. I was one among many visitors at Mount Vernon that day, and yet there was no talking, no noise, because people were thinking of the great past and the unknown future." Plenty Coups would create his own version of Mount Vernon in Montana.

It would take some twenty years, but the chief's dream of creating both a house of state and a monument to himself would come to fruition.27

In 1909 Plenty Coups contracted to have a large two-story addition placed on the north end of the orig- inal house, an addition that was described by agent S. G. Reynolds: "In this season we figured out an addi- tion for [Plenty Coups'] house, and we made it into one large room, with a large, old fashioned fireplace in the end, and a big, open stairway leading to the cham- ber above. The living room is about twenty by thirty feet. On the front of this upright we are now building a large, wide porch which overlooks his meadows and fields and the very beautiful valley of Pryor Creek. The house is built of large, straight, peeled, pine logs, and looks very attractive" (figs. 7.8, 7.9, 7.10).28

The addition Plenty Coups made to his small log house has an emphatic, consciously styled appearance that makes both local and distant-in this case eastern

American-references. On one hand the house approx- imates in size and general form the sort of houses occu-

pied during the second half of the'nineteenth century by nearby white ranchers or even officers at Fort Custer. Its

story-and-a-half height clearly distinguishes it from sur-

rounding reservation housing, which is invariably but a single story, as do its log walls, smooth, even, and neatly notched so as to give the appearance of more expensive wood siding. Within the local architectural vocabulary, Plenty Coups's house is of an elevated variety, one that

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differentiated from Indian dwellings and similar to those built by successful whites. At the same time, the slightly oversized dormers that light the upper floor and the fin-

ish carpentry on these dormers and the roof and even the porch serve to connect the design to a distant clas- sicism, reminiscent again of the best buildings in Billings or at Fort Custer and even of Mount Vernon itself, which has its own set of rather peculiar dormers. The new house is distinctly more showy than other buildings on the reservation, and while not equal in size to the agent's house at nearby Crow Agency, nevertheless it

106 Thomas Carter, Edward Chappell, and Timothy McCleary

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FIG 7.10 Main and upstairs floor plans of the Plenty Coups house. Drawing by Bryce Allison, courtesy of the Western Regional Architecture Program, University of Utah.

makes an impressive statement of class, especially when compared to either Medicine Crow's or Pretty Eagle's small allotment-type houses. It is worth noting too that the large downstairs room was designed as a meeting hall, and the massive fireplace had aspirations to be like ones the chief had seen in the east. Here Plenty Coups met with white dignitaries, negotiated with government representatives, and contracted with white ranchers seek- ing to lease Crow lands.29

Other rooms also had special functions. The origi- nal downstairs room, called by Linderman the "living

room," because this is where Plenty Coups, his wife, relatives, and friends spent most of their time, was "also a sleeping apartment and kitchen, having two or three iron beds, a cook stove, a table, and cupboards." To the south, in the circa 1900 addition, was the aging chief's personal bedroom, with two beds and a chest of drawers.30

Particularly significant was the upstairs room in the original section. This was Plenty Coups's ceremonial room and was arranged much in the tradition of the tipi, complete with stylized tipi liner. By the early years of the new century, traditional liners depicting a war- rior's deeds were replaced by factory-made cloth, usu- ally bright in color and often in a striped or floral pat- tern. Plenty Coups's room reflects this trend with a large floral-patterned cloth around the bottom half, while the upper half received a layer of decorative wall- paper glued to the gable-end and undersides of the sloping roof (fig. 7.11).31

The northwest end of the room also received hon-

orific treatment. Here, as George Snell, a personal friend of Plenty Coups, recalled, the chief "had his medicine bundles and held his personal ceremonials." In addition to the sacred medicine bundles, photographs, keep- sakes, and other important items were also nailed to this wall. The placement of the room in the upper floor of the original house (now raised to nearly a full two stories in height) made it highly private for access to it could be and was tightly controlled. It stood deep within the household: visitors had to pass through the large downstairs front room and two upstairs chambers before reaching the doorway leading into Plenty Coups's embellished wall.32

Plenty Coups's use of the structure also reflected his astute grasp of European American protocol, while at the same time remaining true to his calling as leader of the Crow people. For example, European American vis- itors were greeted on the front porch and led into the large front room. Both tribal and personal business was conducted there, and only close European American friends were allowed beyond this room. Crow people on the other hand entered the house through the kitchen doorway (the front door of the original house) and vis- ited there or in an adjacent tipi or wall tent located just outside the door.33

Efforts to preserve cultural distinctions and alliances while responding successfully to powerful influences from

a seemingly stronger majority group are numerous in

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American history. Each case is unique, of course, with strategies and outcomes dependent on the circumstances surrounding each case. Yet there are patterns relevant to the choices made by Plenty Coups, Medicine Crow, and many Crows less directly involved in the negotiation of power on the newly formed reservation. For instance, various Germanic people in eighteenth century Pennsyl- vania, Maryland, and Virginia shared a Rhenish culture that marked them as different from the English-speaking

majority in language, manners, and buildings. The first several generations of these people in America undertook fundamental changes in the ordering of their lives- establishing dispersed farmsteads rather than agricultural

villages and constructing separate houses and farm build- ings/barns instead of linking them around compact courtyards as had been the practice in Germany. Their actual houses, however-the dwellings most Rhenish American families built-remained highly distinctive as late as 1800, visually marking the minority status of their

residents as strongly as their spoken dialects. But many

families continued adjustments to their cultural codes. Increasingly the new generations spoke English in public and built houses that, while still distinctive internally, approximated on the outside those of Anglo-Americans. These same people commonly spoke Rhenish dialects in private and decorated the insides of their houses in an Old World fashion. Indeed, the era of sharpest archi- tectural change was that in which most flamboyant Rhenish-American domestic arts-the private arts-were created. And not all minority codes were shielded from public view. Rhenish-American farmers built big, multi- level barns celebrating their agricultural prowess. They often embellished their, barns with bold geometric patterns, marking the German farmsteads as distinctly "other" as did tipis, standing beside the wooden houses on Crow allotment farms well into the 1940s.34

Plenty Coups's house was then a complex kind of cultural code switching. On one hand, as the only Crow- occupied multistoried dwelling on the reservation, it had the qualities that could impress both Indian and white

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audiences. The Pryor Creek house's size alone signaled to the Crows the chief's importance on the reservation and how he differed from not only more common mem- bers of the tribe, but even from other leaders, such as Medicine Crow and Pretty Eagle, whose houses, though European American in form, were nonetheless smaller and less obvious as symbols of power and prestige. For whites the house worked too for it spoke to them in their

own language; it presented an architectural vocabulary that was easily understandable. Here, it said, was an enlightened Indian, a person with whom you could rea- son and who had the influence to carry out decisions.

Like the house, which masks its true Crow identity, Plenty Coups himself, despite his appearances, remained committed to his original vision. Quite obviously Plenty Coups had learned how architecture displayed power and authority to European Americans. Through careful manipulation of white symbols, he was able to maintain his authority and protect his people against the great storm. Learning and recalling the story of the chick- adee, bending, he made his people whole and consum- mate beings in a new era. The lodge of the chickadee still stood and the Crow culture, albeit in a new form, endured.

NOTES

This essay is based on research conducted during the summer of 1999 by students and teachers from the University of Utah's Western Regional Architecture. Program and from Little Big Horn College. The project was conceived and carried out in cooperation with the Crow Tribal Council and the Montana Department of Parks and Recreation. Timothy McCleary of Little Big Horn College directed the project. Thomas Carter from the University of Utah and Edward Chappell, director of architectural research at Colonial Williamsburg, supervised the fieldwork. University of Utah graduate students participating in the work included Collin Tomb, Kelly Morgan, Jessica Huber, Danielle Grabarz, and Melonie Walker. Ken Breisch of the University of Southern California contributed both to the fieldwork and the photographic doc- umentation. Final drawings were prepared by Bryce Allison, an architect living in Salt Lake City.

All the people participating in the project would like to thank Jerilynn McIntyre, academic vice president of the University of Utah, for a grant to carry out the fieldwork; Burton Pretty on Top of the Crow Tribal Council for blessing the project and providing insight into traditional Crow culture; Crow historian Joe Medicine Crow for sharing his time and considerable knowl- edge of early life on the reservation; Rich Pittsley and the staff at Plenty Coups State Park for their cooperation, expertise, and patience, and all the people whose homes and farms we visited, who let us into their homes and their lives. This essay is dedicated to Joe Medicine Crow.

1. Dale D. Old Horn, Baaaniile (Direction of the Path of the Sun) (Crow Agency, MT: Bilingual Materials Development Center, 1986), 7, 14.

2. Frank B. Linderman, Plenty-coups: Chief of the Crows (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1930), 75.

3. Plenty Coups's chickadee dream and related narrative is found in Linderman, 57-75.

4. Wendell H. Oswalt and Sharlotte Neely, This Land Was Theirs: A Study of Native Amer- icans (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1999), 40-41, and Timothy P. McCleary, The Stars We Know: Crow Indian Astronomy and Lifeways (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1997), 2.

5. For a general historical background on the Crows, see Frederick E. Hoxie, Parading through History: The Making of the Crow Nation in America, 1805-1935 (New York: Cam- bridge University Press, 1995).

6. Oswalt and Neely, 40-41. 7. Fredrick E. Hoxie, A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880-1920

(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 189-95. 8. See Hoxie, A Final Promise, 189-95, and, more specifically, David H. Dejong, Promises

of the Past: A History of Indian Education (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1993), 71-84.

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9. Hoxie, Parading through History, 136. 10. Karen Watenbach, "A History of the Catholic Church on the Crow Reservation,"

unpublished manuscript, Little Bighorn College Archives, Crow Agency, MT, n.d., 19-24; and Timothy P. McCleary, interview with Barney Old Coyote Jr., Little Big Horn Valley, Mon- tana, 25 June 1999, typescript, Little Bighorn College Archives, Crow Agency, MT.

11. Hoxie, Parading through History, 144-47, and McCleary, interview with Barney Old Coyote Jr., Little Big Horn Valley, Montana, 27 June 1999, typescript, Little Bighorn College Archives, Crow Agency, MT.

12. Terry L. Anderson, Sovereign Nations or Reservations? An Economic History of Ameri- can Indians (San Francisco, CA: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 1995), 92-92.

13. Dale D. Old Horn and Timothy P. McCleary, Apsdalooke Social and Family Structure (Crow Agency, MT: Little Bighorn College, 1995), 51-66. See also Henry Old Coyote, Isshi- iooshkunnaalaau: The Origins of the Tipi (The Quest For Red Head's Hair: The Origins of the Tipi) (Crow Agency, MT: Bilingual Materials Development Center, 1980), 54-56, and Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton, Native American Architecture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 150-74.

14. McCleary, interview with Barney Old Coyote Jr., Little Big Horn Valley, Montana, 27 June 1999, typescript, Little Bighorn College Archives, Crow Agency, MT, and William Mulloy, The Hagen Site: A Prehistoric Village on the Lower Yellowstone (Missoula: University of Montana, Publications in the Social Sciences, 1942).

15. Hoxie, Parading through History, 200-203, and McCleary, The Stars We Know, 1-6. 16. Hoxie, Parading through History, 227-65. 17. Timothy P. McCleary, "Chief Plenty Coups House and Sacred Spring," Montana Depart-

ment of Transportation Grant Report, Chief Plenty Coups State Park Collections, Pryor, Mon- tana, 1996, 7-9.

18. William Wildschut, "Chief Plenty Coups," unpublished manuscript, National Museum of the American Indian, Archive, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1926.

19. Letter from S. G. Reynolds to the commissioner of Indian Affairs. National Archives, Seattle, WA, Item 2, Box 8, 1909.

20. See Henry Glassie, "The Types of the Southern Mountain Cabin," in The Study of American Folklore: An Introduction, ed. Jan Harold Brunvand (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978), 391-420.

21. For photographs of the interior of tipis, see Nancy F. O'Conner, Fred E. Miller: Pho- tographer of the Crows (Malibu, CA: Carnan Vidfilm, 1985). For descriptions of tipi linings see Reginald and Gladys Laubin, The Indian Tipi: Its History, Construction and Use (New York: Ballentine Books, 1957), 63-65, and Robert H. Lowie, Social Life of the Crow Indians (New York: American Museum of Natural History, 1912), 231.

22. McCleary, interview with Barney Old Coyote Jr., Big Horn Valley, Montana, 25 June 1999, typescript, Little Bighorn College Archives, Crow Agency, MT, and McCleary, interview with Joe Medicine Crow, Little Big Horn Valley, Montana, 27 June 1999, typescript, Little Bighorn College Archives, Crow Agency, MT.

23. McCleary, interview with Barney Old Coyote Jr., Big Horn Valley, Montana, 24 June 1999, typescript, Little Bighorn College Archives, Crow Agency, MT.

24. McCleary, interview with Joe Medicine Crow, Little Big Horn Valley, Montana, 22 June 1999, typescript, Little Bighorn College Archives, Crow Agency, MT.

25. Ibid.

26. McCleary, "Chief Plenty Coups House and Sacred Spring," 7-9. 27. Frank B. Linderman, 239. 28. Letter from Reynolds to the commissioner of Indian Affairs. 29. McCleary, "Chief Plenty Coups House and Sacred Spring," 19. 30. Frank B. Linderman, 113. 31. McCleary, "Chief Plenty Coups House and Sacred Spring," 36-37, and Reginald and

Gladys Laubin, 64.

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32. Letter from G. E. Snell to Indian allotments, circa 1910, Township No. 6 South, Crow Indian Reservation, Montana. Courtesy of Chief Plenty Coups State Park. James H. Hyde, superintendent, 5 April 1932, Plenty Coups File Al. 1886, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Crow Agency, MT.

33. McCleary, "Chief Plenty Coups House and Sacred Spring," 32-33. 34. Edward Chappell, "Germans and Swiss," in America's Architectural Roots: Ethnic Groups

that Built America, ed. Dell Upton (Washington, DC: Preservation Press, 1986), 68-73.

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