Crow Flies High

Crow Flies High (Hidatsa: Beericga Maaguhdaa Neesh; ca. 1830s-1900) was the chief of a band of dissident Hidatsa people from 1870 until their band joined the reservation system in 1894. This band was one of the last to settle on an Indian reservation. A North Dakota State Park is named after him.

Smallpox struck the Hidatsa community in 1837 and decimated the population. Together with the remnants of their allies the Mandan tribe, the survivors built the Like-a-Fishhook Village further up the Missouri River around 1845. Having lost his closest relatives in the epidemic, Crow Flies High was raised by Eats-From-The-Line clan members.

In 1870, Crow Flies High left the joint Hidatsa, Mandan and Arikara Indian reservation at Fort Berthold in North Dakota due to conflict with the chiefs. He and his followers settled near the military post Fort Buford. Ordered away in 1884, they built a new village of sheds near the mouth of Little Knife River. By keeping a low profile while hunting small game in the area, the band managed largely to stay outside the reservation system until 1894.

Crow Flies High chose to reject the leadership of the traditional ceremonial elders. His heretical faction gathered around the new leader Bobtail Bull, a Hidatsa, with Crow Flies High functioning as the military chief.

Around this time in 1870, a severe conflict "approaching civil war" emerged in Like-a-Fishhook village. Crow Flies High and Bobtail Bull accused some leaders of unfair distribution of government rations. Tension grew between the rival groups. Persistent rumors about a plan to murder Crow Flies High circulated. Urged to leave at least for a time, Crow Flies High and Bobtail Bull headed up river. From 140 to 200 discontented Hidatsas and Mandans went along. The Hidatsa dissidents came from every clan.

The dissident band settled on the north bank of the Missouri, about two miles above the mouth of Yellowstone River on an outlying part of the Fort Buford Military Reservation (see Map 1). Nearby Fort Buford reduced the risk of attacks on the small village from the Sioux and it provided a market for furs and robes. The Hidatsa had never fought the U.S. Army and the garrison accepted them in the area. The new settlement consisted mostly of log cabins, earth lodges, and a number of families dug storage pits.

In 1886, Crow Flies High described the early years in the settlement near Garden Coulee. "We subsisted ourselves by hunting Buffalo and Deer ... and selling our hides at Fort Buford". Gardens were laid out as bison became rare. Some of the people enlisted early as scouts and hunters at the fort and received regular pay. Prostitution and begging at the fort occurred when game went scarce. Captain Charles A. Coolidge provided for a number of aged and needy villagers in 1880. On one occasion, Crow Flies High quickly paid damages for a few heads of domestic cattle butchered by young men from the village.

Regularly, families resettled at Like-a-Fishhook Village, while new ones joined the dissidents and moved into vacated log houses. The average population was around 150 when the village was inhabited. It served mainly as a place for the winter and as a stopover for Hidatsa hunting camps going up Yellowstone River. The Garden Coulee villagers received government rations during visits to Like a Fishhook village. With time, Crow Flies High was recognized chief of the village.