According to Crow oral history, the Crow Nation intentionally migrated from the east. Their historical homelands extended across a large area that included parts of present-day Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota. After the Lewis and Clark expedition and the invasion of fur traders in the early 1800s, change was on the horizon for the Crow. Despite the 1851 Fort Laramie treaty, it was a trying time. Other tribes followed the dwindling buffalo herds west into Crow territory while gold seekers and prospectors were flooding in. In 1868, the Crow sold around 30 million acres of their 1851 territory and agreed to live on a reservation, though land cessions continued for many years. The reservation got its present shape after additional land cuts in 1937 and, once again in the 1960s, in connection with the construction of the Bighorn Canyon Dam. Even after all the land cessions, the reservation is the largest of the seven Indian reservations in Montana.

The people of the Crow Nation call themselves the Apsáalooke, Children of the Large Beaked Bird. They were famous for having some of the largest horse herds on the northern Great Plains. Every August, the Crow Nation hosts the Crow Fair, one of the largest Native gatherings in the country. The fair opens with a parade, in which participants dress themselves and their horses in elaborate regalia that proudly reflect their culture and homelands.

In the 1830s, Crow Chief Eelápuash had this to say about their native homelands. “The Crow country is in exactly the right place. It has snowy mountains, sunny plains, all kinds of climates and good things for every season. When the summer heat scorches the prairies you can draw up under the mountains where the air is sweet and cool, the grass fresh, and the bright streams come tumbling out of the snow banks…

“In the autumn, when your horses are strong and fat from the mountain pastures, you can go down into the plains and hunt the buffalo or trap beaver in the streams. And when winter comes on you can take shelter in the woody bottoms along the rivers. There you will find buffalo meat for yourselves and cottonwood bark for your horses…The Crow country is exactly at the right place. Everything good is to be found there. There is no country like the Crow country.”