Crow Nation - Culture

Culture

Traditional Crow shelters are tipis made with bison skins stretched over wooden poles. The Crow are historically known to construct some of the largest tipis. Inside the tipi, mattresses and buffalo-hide seats were arranged around the edge, with a fireplace in the center. The smoke from the fire escaped through a hole in the top of the tipi. Many Crow families still own and use the tipi, especially when traveling. The annual Crow Fair has been described as the largest gathering of tipis in the world.

The Crow wore clothing distinguished by gender. Women wore simple clothes - dresses made of deer and buffalo skins, decorated with elk teeth. They covered their legs with leggings during winter and their feet with moccasins. Crow women wore their hair in two braids, unlike the men. Male clothing usually consisted of a shirt, trimmed leggings with a belt, a robe, and moccasins. Their hair was long, in some cases reaching or dragging the ground, and often part was styled into a pompadour.

The Crows' main source of food was bison, but they also hunted mountain sheep, deer, and other game. Buffalo meat was often roasted or boiled in a stew with prairie turnips. The rump, tongue, liver, heart, and kidneys all were considered delicacies. Dried bison meat was ground with fat and berries to make pemmican.

The Crow had more horses than any other Plains tribe; in 1914 they numbered approximately thirty to forty thousand head. By 1921 the number of mounts had dwindled to just one thousand. They also had many dogs; one source counted five to six hundred. Unlike some other tribes, they did not eat dog but used them as guards, to carry burdens and to hunt. The Crow were a nomadic people.

The Crow had a matrilineal system. After marriage, the couple was matrilocal (the husband moved to the wife's mother's house upon marriage). Women held a significant role within the tribe.

Crow kinship is a system used to define family. Identified by Lewis Henry Morgan in his 1871 work Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, the Crow system is one of the six major types among indigenous people which he described: Eskimo, Hawaiian, Iroquois, Crow, Omaha, and Sudanese.