Lodge Grass, Montana

Lodge Grass (Crow: Eelalapiío) is a town in Big Horn County, Montana, United States. The population was 441 at the 2020 census.

It is at the confluence of Lodge Grass Creek and the Little Bighorn River, on the Crow Indian Reservation.

The two words of the name of "Lodge Grass" are not usually put together, in that order, to make a commonly used name, or meaningful phrase. This is because the name "Lodge Grass" came from a mistake of interpretation of the Crow Indian name for "Greasy Grass".

Lodge Grass is named after Lodge Grass Creek, which flows through the town, but as explained in a video viewed in 2013 on YouTube by Joe Medicine Crow, Crow tribal historian, the correct Crow name for Lodge Grass Creek is Greasy Grass Creek.

Crow tradition holds that when the Crows camped on the bottoms of the Lodge Grass Creek or the Little Bighorn River in the spring and summer, when the grass in the valley would be high and when the dew was heavy the bellies and legs of the horses would become wet and glisten as if covered with grease. In another traditional version of the same derivation of the name, when the Crows camped on the creek and walked through the thick grass in the morning when it held dew, their moccasins and leggings would get wet and they would look greasy. Thus the Crows called the valley areas of the Little Bighorn River and Lodge Grass Creek "the Greasy Grass".

The Sioux also called the Little Horn River the Greasy Grass Creek.

The Crow name for "greasy" and the Crow name for "lodge" sound very much alike. The Crow word for "greasy" is Tah-shay, and the Crow word for "lodge" is Ah-shay, and the words sound so much alike that an early interpreter mistakenly interpreted the Crow name for "Greasy Grass" as "Lodge Grass".

The misinterpreted name stuck, and so the creek, and then the town became known as Lodge Grass.