The Crow are resisting pressure from native…

The Crow are resisting pressure from native enemies who greatly outnumber them when when European Americans arrive in numbers to the Plains.

In the 1850s, a vision by Plenty Coups, at this time a boy, but who will later became their greatest chief, is interpreted by tribal elders as meaning that the whites will become dominant over the entire country, and that the Crow, if they are to retain any of their land, will need to remain on good terms with the whites

By 1851 the more numerous Lakota and Cheyenne are established just to the south and east of Crow territory in Montana.

These enemy tribes covet the hunting lands of the Crow and war against them.

By right of conquest, they take over the eastern hunting lands of the Crow, including the Powder and Tongue River valleys, and push the less numerous Crow to the west and northwest upriver on the Yellowstone.