The Living History of Joe Medicine Crow

The Crows’ traditional homeland is the Yellowstone River Valley and a generous swath of land surrounding it. They were bordered on their west and north by the Blackfeet, on their south by the Cheyenne, and their east by the Sioux, all of whom were once a very territorial and warlike people. Wars between the tribes were common. And as they became more common, they evolved into something sophisticated and formal, something almost game-like, with their own rules and reward system.

The mid-1600s to the late 1800s was an era of warriors and war chiefs. A warrior’s greatest honor, and thus his greatest aspiration, was to become a war chief. But this was no easy task. A tribe would have had one main leader, also called a chief, but this was different than being a war chief. A tribe could have and often did have many war chiefs,all the men in the tribe who had proven themselves by completing the four war deeds.

“War Chief of the Crow Indians” isn’t a title that’s just given to anyone. You don’t become a War Chief just because you’re the oldest member in the tribe, or the greatest hunter. It’s an ancient, prestigious honor bestowed only upon the bravest, the strongest, and the most hardened warriors around, and the only way to attain this title is by proving yourself in combat and unlocking the four achievements or deeds of war, which the Crow believed to be the most difficult things a warrior can attempt in battle.
1. Leading a successful war party on a raid.
2. Capturing an enemy’s weapon.
3. Touching an enemy in combat without killing him,
4. Take an enemy’s horse for your own.
None of this is easy, and pretty much all of it requires you put your life on the line by bringing yourself face-to-face with at least one warrior who is presumably actively trying to kill you before he himself is killed. It’s like the Crow Indians way of making sure they don’t have any warriors of untested metal leading their tribe into war.

At 101 years old, Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow-High Bird is the only surviving War Chief of the Crow Indians. He is a fearless warrior and pillar of the crow community, who accomplished all of these tremendous feats of bravery in combat,and he did it in World War II.

Joe Medicine Crow was born on a reservation near Lodge Grass, Montana in 1913.
Raised in the illustrious warrior tradition of the Crow, his step-grandfather White Man Runs Him, had been a scout for General George Armstrong Custer at the infamous Battle of Little Bighorn. The Crow had a generations-long blood feud with the Lakota Sioux In the 1850’s The Lakota who coveted the hunting lands of the Crow and warred against them by right of conquest, they took over the eastern hunting lands of the Crow, including the Powder and Tongue River valleys, and pushed the less numerous Crow to the west and northwest upriver on the Yellowstone.
And his paternal grandfather was a named Chief Medicine Crow who was distinguished Crow war hero and scout during the Plains and Indian wars of the 19th Century

Medicine Crow was first of his tribe to graduate from college and was in the process of working on his PhD in anthropology when the United States entered World War II.
Medicine Crow enlisted in the United States Army in 1943, as a scout in the 103rd Infantry and was sent to land in Marseille France to make war upon the Axis of European Fascism.
Despite serving in a war dominated by automatic weapons, heavy artillery, and tanks armed with 88mm cannons, Medicine Crow held on to the time-honored practices of his tribe, he wore his war paint beneath his uniform with a sacred painted eagle feather under his helmet whenever in combat.

As an infantry scout, you don’t get too many opportunities to lead a group of men into combat, but Pvt. Medicine Crow got the opportunity to do just that in snowy battlefields of Western France while the Allies made their push from Paris towards Berlin.
The border to Germany was a heavily-fortified wall of impenetrable machine gun bunkers, tank traps, trenches, moats and artillery positions known as the Siegfried Line, which was basically like a functional, version of France’s Maginot Line. During one particularly nasty portion of the battle for the Rhine, Medicine Crow’s commanding officer ordered the Native American warrior to take a team of seven soldiers and lead them across a field of barbed wire, bullets, and artillery fire, bring dynamite from an American position that had been utterly annihilated, and then assault the German bunkers and blow them up with dynamite. This was a suicide mission, but, according to Medicine Crow, when he got the mission his Commanding officer’s exact words were, “if anyone can do this, it’s probably you.”
That’s not exactly a phrase that inspires tremendous confidence, but Medicine Crow charged out, evaded an endless rain of shrapnel, and misery, grabbed the dynamite from a supply crate while tracer rounds zipped past, and then charged the Germans machine gun nests while carrying an armload of high explosives. He somehow reached the wall in one piece and blasted a hole in the Siegfried Line so the infantry could advance. Medicine Crow received a Bronze Star for this action, and his squad did not lose a single man in the battle.

Shortly after moving through the Siegfried Line, the 103rd was ordered to capture a nearby town that was being staunchly defended by the Germans.
While the main elements of the 103rd moved into the well-defended main street of the village, Medicine Crow’s scouts were ordered to flank around through a back alley and get behind the German fortifications. During this Medicine Crow got separated from his unit, and while he While sneaking through the village, Medicine Crow came face to face with a lone German soldier who stepped out from behind a wall.
The German soldier started to raise his rifle, but, says Medicine Crow, “my reactions were a bit quicker than his. I hit him under the chin with the butt of my rifle and knocked him down, sending his rifle flying. He reached for his rifle but I kicked it out of the way.”
Medicine Crow, however, still had his rifle firmly in his grip. and now found himself standing face-to-face with an unarmed German soldier,at Medicine Crow’s mercy. “All I had to do was pull the trigger,” says Medicine Crow But in order to maintain his secret presence in the rear of the village, he laid down his rifle and “tore into him.”
The German soldier, who was quite a bit larger than Medicine Crow, soon had him pinned down on the ground, but Medicine Crow, rolled him over and grabbed him by the throat, and started squeezing “I was ready to kill him,” he later wrote. Just as he was ready to choke the life out of his enemy, the German The soldier cried out for his mother , “Mama! Mama,” says Medicine Crow. “That word, “Mama” opened my ears, and I let him go.”

In early 1945 Medicine crow and his men were on a scouting mission deep behind enemy lines. and While surveying the landscape for enemy troop movements, Medicine Crow’s small team of recon experts just happened to come across a farmhouse where they spotted a small group of German SS with around 50 horses in their possession. While the German Army was renowned for being mechanized, they and the Soviets did deploy more than 6 million horses during WWII. Medicine Crow decided that before they bombarded the area with artillery, they should make off with the horses.
In the early hours of the morning, Medicine Crow, crept past the sleeping guards armed only with a rope and his Colt 1911 .45-caliber service pistol. He found the best horse in the group, tied the rope into a makeshift bridle, mounted the horse bareback as he tried to herd as many horses out of the corral as possible. Doing so just before dawn as the explosions started. “The one I was riding was a sow with a braid, so I felt pretty good riding it,” he says. “It was a beautiful horse.” As he rode across the German countryside, he sang a Crow praise song.
Among the Crow this was the most respected of the four war deeds. “I had been looking for a chance to capture a horse,” Medicine Crow says. “To me that was the best thing I could do to prove I was worthy of my ancestors. In that moment I was a Crow warrior, My grandfathers would have been proud of me.”

One of the darkest experiences Joe faced was In the last days of the war, Medicine Crow assisted in liberating a German concentration camp, he and his commanding officer drove a jeep through the front gates. ”So we got in there and looked. It’s a huge concentration camp – Jews, full of Jews. We went in and boy, there was a horrible plague. There were some long dormitories there, and you had to step down onto the ground there, dirt floor you know. And here are these poor Jews, some in bed, some dead in bed. Then we went out to some sheds … about four or five long sheds, and there they were. Bodies, stacked up all over – hundreds of them, frozen you know. Boy that was a terrible sight. But I think I liberated a concentration camp.”

Germany surrendered in May 1945, and Medicine Crow was discharged from the Army the following January and returned to his home in Lodge Grass, Mont. After the war, Medicine Crow returned to USC and completed his master’s degree. After receiving his master’s degree, the Crow nation offered him a position as their spokesman and historian.

Medicine Crow was the Crow tribal historian for more than 50 years, writing some of the most influential works on Indian history and culture. He realized early on the need to preserve and pass on this information. He has written six books documenting, and preserving, a large section of Crow history also gathering numerous oral histories from older generations, single handedly preserving a large section of Crow history and stories that otherwise would have been lost forever. He has also gathered numerous oral histories from older generations, single handedly preserving a large section of Crow history and stories that otherwise would have been lost forever.

At 101 years old Medicine Crow holds among his titles being a tribal historian, anthropologist, educator, as well as highly decorated World War II veteran. In 2008, France awarded him the Legion d’honneur, for his actions on the Siegfried Line and In 2009, President Obama bestowed upon Medicine Crow the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the nation’s highest civilian honor. Many among the crow nation have been inspired by their “Grandfather” Medicine Crow in their decisions to join the military and to pursue a higher education.

“Education is your greatest weapon. With education you are the white man’s equal, without education you are his victim and so shall remain all of your lives. Study, learn, help one another always. Remember there is only poverty and misery in idleness and dreams – but in work there is self respect and independence.” – Crow Chief Plenty Coups

“Stand, my friends, Joe Medicine Crow is walking past…
To see the things that those walnut stained eyes have seen…
To hear the things those leathery ears have heard…
To feel the things that the still beating heart has felt…
Stand my friend, Joe Medicine is walking past.
Stand, my friend, history is walking past.”
-Craig Johnson