Case file · Folklore / legend
Plenty Coups' vision in the Crazy Mountains
Around 1857, as a boy of about nine, the future Crow chief Plenty Coups fasted in the Crazy Mountains of Montana and saw the buffalo vanish and spotted cattle take their place; elders read it as a sign that the whites would take the land.
1857 CE · 46.10, -110.33 · status: account
The account
He took the chickadee, the bird that listens and learns, as his guide, and later chose alliance with the United States. He told his life to Frank Bird Linderman, who published it in 1930.
The sceptical view
The date is approximate and the account was recorded about seventy years after the event.