Plenty Coups is the name of an Apsaalooke (pronounced Ap-saa-loo-ge with the ‘l’ rolled according to Mark Bruised Head a tribal linguist) Crow Indian Chief 1848-1932. He dreamed of the chickadee’s home which I guess is where his museum and house now stand.
Mr. Ram and I thought this would be a short stop. A small museum with a house in the middle of nowhere on the Crow Reservation, little did we know that the women who ran the museum were so informative and willing to answer our few questions which of course became more questions. As we enjoyed wandering around the small one room museum, which is set up like a teepee so guests are supposed to enter left and move counterclockwise, we could easily ask questions of the women at the desk. I was fascinated with the language because above each display were words and saying from the Apsaalooke language. Mark Bruised Head stopped by to visit with the girls at the desk and they introduced him as ‘the one to ask about language as he speaks Crow fluently’. He was very patient with me asking him to repeat the same words multiple times to try to get the pronunciation as close as possible. If would have been fun to spend a few weeks taking language classes with such a patient teacher.
We left the museum and headed down the path to Plenty Coups house and enjoyed the coziness of the 2 floor structure he tried to model after Mt. Vernon which he had visited.
We left and being adventurous headed further down the dirt road past a parked car. As we passed the parked car we were surprised by a resident out shooting prairie dogs from this car with a high powered rifle. He noticed us just in time to pull his shot and we noticed the rifle so both parties were a bit ruffled, I think.
We could have made the news Van traveling West shot passing through Crow territory!