22. Big Horn County

At the time Montana Territory was created in 1864, Big Horn County encompassed all of the eastern half of the state, but had so few white settlers that Gallatin County (6) handled all the administrative duties for the vast land area. After the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876, the county was renamed in honor of General George Armstrong Custer, and Big Horn County ceased to exist, at least in name. It was not until January 13, 1913 that the Montana Legislature created a new Big Horn County with Hardin as its seat. The county is Montana's sixth largest in area, and with a 2010 Census count of 12,865 it is fourteenth in population. Two reservations, the Crow Indian Reservation and the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, cover over seventy percent of Big Horn County's land area, and with a white population at less than 37 per cent of the total, the county is definitely in the forefront of twenty-first century American demographics. While native languages are declining and even dying across the country, almost 27 per cent of the people in Big Horn County speak Crow as a first language.

The Big Horn County Courthouse
Hardin, Montana

Historians believe the Crow people may have originally come from the area around Winnipeg, Manitoba, or perhaps northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. In an age old story, as the Lakota (Sioux) people were pushed westward by white settlement of North America, the Crow were in turn pushed west by the Sioux. Their tribal name, Apsáalooke, translates as "Children of the Big-Beaked Bird," a name the early French trappers took to mean "crow." That name stuck with the subsequent white settlers. Traditionally there are three (or maybe four) bands of Crow, the Mountain Crow, the River Crow, the Kicked in the Bellies, and possibly the Beaver Dries Its Fur who appear in the Crow oral tradition. Once established in what is now Montana, the Crow lived on a range that extended from present day Yellowstone National Park to the Black Hills in western South Dakota. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 established Crow rights to this area, but the Lakota and the Cheyenne disputed this, and pushed westward, taking over large parts of the eastern Crow lands. This culminated in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in June, 1876, when the Hunkpapa Lakota and the Cheyenne under the leadership of Crazy Horse and inspired by a vision shared by Sitting Bull fought and defeated the US Army's Seventh Cavalry, led by Custer. Custer and over 260 of his soldiers were killed in what came to be known as Custer's Last Stand. The Crow, traditional enemies of the Lakota, had served Custer as scouts and guides.

The defeat of the 7th Cavalry, coming just prior to the U.S. Centennial celebrations and little more than ten years after the end of the Civil War, shocked the American people and brought a massive response that ended the Indian Wars within a few years. In 1879, the U.S. Government established a national cemetery on the site of the battle. In 1946, the site became the Custer Battlefield National Monument (the name I grew up with), and in 1991, in recognition that Americans are more than just white Europeans transported to North America, the site was renamed Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument (this despite the fact that the native people called the area Greasy Grass, rather than Little Bighorn).

Graves of George Armstrong Custer and 7th Cavalry Soldiers
Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument

Montana author Frank Bird Linderman has written extensively about the native people of Montana. Two of his books treat important Crow tribal members. Plenty-Coups, a Mountain Crow chief, had a vision where he saw the bison from the plains all running into a hole in the ground and disappearing. After the bison were gone, Plenty-Coups saw unfamiliar animals emerging from the same hole. These animals unfamiliar to him would seem to be the cattle that came to cover the rangelands. This vision told Plenty-Coups that unless the native people cooperated with the new white settlers, they would be defeated. Because of Plenty-Coups' leadership, the Crow people always worked with whites. Linderman wrote about him in his biography American. Similarly, using sign language and an interpreter, Linderman interviewed Crow medicine woman Pretty Shield. The resulting biography is considered one of the first works to examine the life of a native woman.

Ceremonial House in Shape of Tipi
Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation
Busby, Montana

As a side note, I would be remiss if I didn't mention a Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) agent serving on the Crow Reservation in the early 1900s. Fred E. Miller, a photographer and pharmacist originally from Iowa, became BIA agent to the Crow and brought his camera equipment with him. Unusual among government agents, Miller was so honest and compassionate that the Crow came to trust him and in turn adopted him and his family into the tribe. As a result, Miller was allowed access to Crow ceremonies and recorded amazing images on glass-plate negatives which his grand-daughter, Nancy Fields O'Connor, collected in the mid 1980s. I am proud to have had a part in the publishing of the collection and the first national tour of the resulting exhibition. I've placed a link below to Amazon's website where you can purchase your own copy of this wonderful book.

Like most of Montana, Big Horn County is largely rural and agricultural. Agriculture makes up 20% of the industrial base of the county, with public administration coming in at 15%. Sugar beets have been an important part of the local scene, and Holly Sugar operated a plant outside of Hardin for years. That plant closing had a tremendous negative impact on the Hardin economy and on the summer-time employment opportunities for the people in the area.

Grain Elevator, Downtown Hardin

Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area, described on the Park Service's website as the Grandest Canyon in the Northern Rockies, is a recreational wonderland located in southwestern Big Horn County. Covering approximately 68,000 acres in Montana and Wyoming, the Bighorn Canyon offers boating, fishing, camping, hiking and other activities along the seventy-one mile extent of the Bighorn River backed up by Yellowtail Dam. To quote the National Park Service's brochure:

Bighorn Canyon is a geologist’s dream and an animal lover’s paradise. Bighorn Canyon offers a diverse landscape of forest, mountains, upland prairie, deep canyons, broad valleys, lake and wetlands. The wildlife is equally diverse. From the fabulous Pryor Mountain Wild Horses to the majestic Bighorn Sheep, hundreds of bird species and a world class fishery, Bighorn Canyon is truly one of the most significant natural areas in the United States.

Photo Information:

Big Horn County Sign: Taken 3/25/2010 on the Big Horn/Rosebud County line, US Highway 212. Focal length 85 mm. ISO 125, f /16.0, 1/15 second.

Big Horn County Courthouse: Taken 3/25/2010 in Hardin, Montana. Focal length 22 mm. ISO 125, f /8.0, 1/6 second.

Custer Battlefield Graves: Taken 5/28/2011 on the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Focal length 85 mm. ISO 125, f /16.0, 1/10 second

Tipi House: Taken 5/28/2011 at Busby, Montana. Focal length 35 mm. ISO 125, f /16.0, 1/125 second.

Grain Elevator: Taken 3/25/2010 in Hardin, Montana. Focal length 34 mm. ISO 125, f /11.0, 1/6 second.

Below are the links to allow you to purchase any or all of the books I've mentioned above from Amazon.com. They will open an Amazon.com page in a new tab.