A Nation Met Only at the Edges
The Apsáalooke — rendered in the journals as “Crow,” “Crow de Curbo,” “de Carbours,” and (for the river bearing their name) “American Crow” — are among the most consequential Indigenous nations the Corps of Discovery never formally encountered in council. Unlike the Mandan, Hidatsa, Shoshone, or Nez Perce, the Crow are not the subject of any speech, medal-giving, or extended ethnographic description in the captains’ notes. Yet they appear repeatedly across the journals as warriors of reputation, as horse-rich neighbors of the Hidatsa, as the namesake of streams and creeks, and finally — and most disastrously for the expedition — as the suspected thieves of every horse Sergeant Nathaniel Pryor was charged with delivering to the Mandan villages in the summer of 1806.
This profile assembles every reference to the Crow in the entries provided. Where the captains rely on hearsay or inference, that is noted; the journal record on the Apsáalooke is, by the captains’ own admission, sparse and indirect.
First Mention: A Sioux Tale of Slaughter (August 1804)
The earliest reference to the Crow in the surviving journals comes not from direct contact but from a story told to Clark about a Yankton Sioux warrior society. On August 31, 1804, Clark recorded the customs of a band of “active deturmined young men, with a vow never to give back, let the danger or deficuelty be what it may.” To illustrate their fatalism, his informant told him of a recent battle:
in a battle with the Crow de Curbo Indians out of 22 of this Society 18 was killed, the remaining four was draged off by their friends, and are now here… This Custom the Souex learned of the de Carbours inhabiting the Gout Noie or Black mountain
This passage is striking for two reasons. First, it locates the Crow as adversaries of the Sioux, with a reputation severe enough that an entire warrior society could be all but annihilated in a single engagement. Second, Clark’s spelling — “Crow de Curbo” and “de Carbours” — preserves a French-influenced rendering (probably gens des corbeaux, “people of the crows”) that he likely picked up from his Franco-Indian informants on the lower Missouri.
Crow Creek and the Naming of the Country (September 1804)
As the keelboat moved upriver into present-day South Dakota, the Crow appeared on the landscape in the form of place names. Editorial notes to John Ordway’s entries of September 16 and 19, 1804 identify “American Crow Creek” and “Crow” Creek along the river opposite Brule County. On September 19 Ordway noted passing “3 large Creeks (called the Souix 3 river pass) on N. S.” — streams that, the editor explains, included Crow and Wolf Creeks. Clark’s accompanying note that “all nations who meet are at peace with each other” at this place suggests the area was understood as a neutral ground frequented by Crow and other plains peoples.
The captains themselves seem not to have linked the creek’s name explicitly to the Apsáalooke nation in their entries; the connection emerges in the editorial apparatus. Their own “Corvus Creek,” named the same week for a magpie Lewis killed, is a reminder that the captains were eager Latinizers — and that on this river, the word “crow” did multiple duty for birds, streams, and a nation.
Crow Country as Hidatsa Frontier (Winter 1804–05)
At Fort Mandan the Crow re-entered the journals through the testimony of Hidatsa (“Big Belly,” “Me ne tar res”) visitors. On October 29, 1804, Clark noted that the old Hidatsa chief had “Given his power to his Son who is now on a war party against the Snake Indians who inhabit the Rockey Mountains.” While that particular war party targeted the Shoshone, the journals make clear throughout the winter that Hidatsa raids reached deep into Crow territory as well, and that horses circulating through the Mandan-Hidatsa villages came in part from such raids.
Clark’s references to “the little Crow” — for example on November 3, 1804 (“the little Crow loaded his Squar with meat for us also a Roabe”) and January 9, 1805 (“the little Crow Brackft. with us”) and January 16, 1805 (“the little Crow 2d Chf of the lower village came & brought us Corn”) — refer to a Mandan chief, not to a member of the Apsáalooke nation. This is a common point of confusion in reading the journals: “Little Crow” and “Little Raven” (“Ka goh ha mi”) are personal names of Mandan leaders. They should not be conflated with the Crow people.
The Plan to Speak with the Crow (Summer 1806)
It was on the return journey, with the captains’ separation at Travelers’ Rest, that the Crow finally became a deliberate object of expedition policy. On July 3, 1806, as Clark set out southward through the Bitterroot Valley with his detachment, he recorded the composition of his party in revealing terms:
I… Set out with ____ men interpreter Shabono & his wife & child (as an interpreter & interpretess for the Crow Inds and the latter for the Shoshoni) with 50 horses.
This is one of the most specific statements anywhere in the journals about the linguistic logic of Sacagawea’s continued presence. Clark expected — or hoped — to make contact with the Apsáalooke as he descended the Yellowstone, and Toussaint Charbonneau was being carried along expressly as a possible Crow interpreter. (How Charbonneau was supposed to interpret Crow, an unrelated Siouan language, is unclear; possibly Clark expected to chain through Hidatsa, which Charbonneau spoke and which is closely related to Crow.)
Down the Yellowstone: Smoke, Lodges, and Suspicion
As Clark’s party descended the Rochejhone (Yellowstone), signs of recent Indigenous presence multiplied without any direct meeting. On July 18, 1806, Clark wrote: “at 11 A.M. I observed a Smoke rise to the S. S. E” — one of several distant smokes he interpreted as signal fires.
By July 21, 1806, half of the expedition’s horses were gone. Clark sent Shannon, Bratton, and Charbonneau out to search; all returned empty-handed. Shannon reported finding “a remarkable large Lodge about 12 miles below, covered with bushes and the top Deckorated with Skins &c” — almost certainly a Crow ceremonial structure. Clark’s conclusion was direct:
I am apprehensive that the indians have Stolen our horses, and probably those who had made the Smoke a fiew days passed towards the S. W.
The editorial note to Ordway’s July 4, 1806 entry confirms this reading retrospectively: “the plan for Pryor’s parly was defeated through the theft by the Crow Indians of all his horses.” Sergeant Pryor had been detached to drive the expedition’s horse herd overland to the Mandan villages; the Crow took every animal, forcing Pryor and his small party to build bullboats and float down to rejoin Clark.
The Big Horn and the Edges of Apsáalooke Country
Clark’s descent of the Yellowstone took him through the geographic heart of what is today recognized as Crow country. On July 26, 1806, he reached and named the Big Horn River:
we arived at the enterance of Big Horn River on the Stard. Side here I landed imediately in the point… I walked up the big horn 1/2 a mile and crossed over to the lower Side, and formed a Camp on a high point.
Though Clark does not name the Apsáalooke in this entry, he was camping in the river valleys that would later be reserved as their homeland. His detailed observations of game, grass, and timber at the Big Horn confluence amount to one of the earliest American descriptions of the country the Crow nation would defend, with notable success, throughout the nineteenth century.
Reproach at the Mandan Villages (August 1806)
By the time Clark reached the Mandan and Hidatsa villages on the homeward leg, the picture of intertribal warfare he had hoped to alter was, if anything, worse than when he had left. On August 16, 1806, he scolded the assembled chiefs sharply, but the nations he named as victims were the Shoshone and Arikara, not the Crow:
I reproached them very Severely for not attending to what had been Said to them by us in Council in the fall of 1804… our backs were Scercely turned befor a party followed and killed the pore defenceless snake indians whom we had taken by the hand
The Crow themselves are absent from these final councils. The captains had carried Charbonneau and Sacagawea hundreds of miles partly in hope of speaking with the Apsáalooke; that conversation never occurred.
What the Record Does — and Does Not — Tell Us
The journal record on the Crow is genuinely sparse. Lewis and Clark did not visit a Crow village, did not give a Crow chief a peace medal, did not record a Crow vocabulary, and did not transcribe a Crow speech. What the journals do preserve is suggestive but secondhand:
- A Sioux memory of catastrophic losses to the Crow in battle (Clark, Aug. 31, 1804).
- The naming of Crow Creek and the surrounding peace-ground on the Missouri (Ordway, Sept. 16 and 19, 1804, with editorial notes).
- Clark’s deliberate plan to interpret with the Crow through Charbonneau and Sacagawea (Clark, July 3, 1806).
- The signal smokes and abandoned lodge on the Yellowstone (Clark, July 18 and 21, 1806).
- The horse theft that ended Pryor’s overland mission (editorial note to Ordway, July 4, 1806; Clark, July 21, 1806).
- Clark’s traverse of the Big Horn — the geographic core of Apsáalooke country (Clark, July 26, 1806).
Other entries in the corpus that contain the word “crow” refer to the bird (e.g., Lewis’s “carrion Crow or Buzzad of the Columbia,” Feb. 17, 1806; the magpies and corvids cataloged on Sept. 17, 1804, and elsewhere) or to Mandan personal names like “the little Crow.” These are not, strictly, references to the Apsáalooke nation, and have not been treated as such here.
The Crow thus enter the Lewis and Clark record obliquely, as a presence felt rather than met — a reputation in Sioux mouths, a name on creeks, a column of distant smoke, and finally a herd of horses vanished from a Yellowstone meadow. The captains’ failure to make formal contact was not for want of trying; it was a measure of how thoroughly the Apsáalooke controlled the country through which the Corps was passing.
