BILLINGS, Mont. -- Images of American Indians in war bonnets are a staple of Hollywood westerns, but among the Crow, a warrior had to perform very specific achievements to become a chief or wear a war bonnet.
Lawrence Flat Lip, a Crow oral and cultural historian, talked during a recent presentation at the Western Heritage Center about how Mountain Crow warriors earned honors. His talk coincided with last month's annual Crow Fair celebration.In Crow, the word "alaxxchia" means achievements. Coups were considered the highest level of achievements, followed by deeds and honors.
The Crow no longer have a traditional chief because the way a person becomes a chief is no longer practiced, Flat Lip said. While Chief Plenty Coups is frequently cited as the last recognized traditional chief of the Crow, Flat Lip asserts that Chief Bird Hat, who died in 1935, was actually the last chief.
Crow villages were like Roman city-states with the village chief as their ruler, Flat Lip said. The chief of a small village did not have to take orders from the chief of a larger village.
The Crows traditionally recognized four kinds of coups. The highest was to be the first man to charge into enemy forces and to touch an enemy while the person was still alive. The second level was to take a weapon away from an enemy. The third was to take an enemy horse on the battlefield or in enemy territory or in an enemy village. The fourth was to kill an enemy and to show proof to verify that the enemy had been killed.
All four coups had to be counted for a Crow to be eligible to become a chief.
A warrior still could not become a legitimate chief without a legitimate pipe. A single village might only have 10 legitimate pipes. Those pipes could be bought or inherited.
Even after acquiring a pipe, a Crow had to have followers to be considered a chief. Of the eight levels of chiefs, the highest ranking were the village chiefs and the lowest were the family chiefs, Flat Lip said.
The hunt chief controlled hunting parties, while the war chief directed combat. During a hunt, even the village chief took orders from the hunt chief.
Each coup, deed or honor counted for one eagle feather in a war bonnet and one weasel pelt on a war shirt, Flat Lip said.
"Legitimately today, nobody has a right to wear a war bonnet," Flat Lip said. He qualified his statement as his interpretation of the requirements that he has learned through the oral history passed on to him.
Even Crow soldiers in the U.S. military who earned honors and counted coup in combat don't qualify under traditional requirements, since they were not fighting under the command of a pipe carrier and their coups weren't verified.
Flat Lip, who is 50, has spent much of his adult life relating Crow oral traditions. He has also helped explain Crow culture to outsiders. Although he works for the Crow Tribe and lives in Pryor, he has been assigned to the Western Heritage Center in Billings since 1994.
He describes himself as an oral historian.
"I don't call it storytelling be-cause they say storytellers make up stories," he said during an earlier interview.
He avoids the temptation to merge oral history with documented, written forms. Sometimes, he reminds his audience of contradictory oral and written versions.
He is often aware of discrepancies, such as the debate over the birthplace of Chief Plenty Coups. Different sources claim that the Crow leader was born in three different places. The Mountain Crow version of Crow history asserts that the tribe's Mountain Crow band has lived in Yellowstone Country from the beginning of time rather than migrating to the area.
"I'm loyal to traditions, to cultures I was taught. I try to pass that to whoever wants to learn," Flat Lip said.
In the 1970s, he was picked as a member of a Crow cultural committee that examined artifacts to be returned to the tribe and he assisted in archaeology field work in the Bighorn Mountains and Pryor.
He graduated from Eastern Montana College in 1987 with a major in art and a minor in Native American studies. In the early 1990s, he worked at the Plenty Coups State Park and Museum and also gave presentations at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.
He began learning oral histories as a child.
"The more stories I heard, the more I liked them, the more I was interested," he said.
Few in his generation took the time to listen, Flat Lip said.
"They'd rather listen to Neil Diamond and all those guys than listen to those old stories," he said.
As Flat Lip grew up, he began to realize that the outside world didn't see the Crow the way they saw themselves.
"They didn't even call us by our real name," he said. The word "Crow" is a misinterpretation of the Indian word, "Apsaalooke."
The word cannot be understood without listening to the oral history of the Crow creation story.
"The whole world one day needs to know us," he said, "for who we really are."