An Arikara village, near where present-day Pierre, South Dakota will develop, is visited in 1743 by two sons of the French trader and explorer La Vérendrye.

The Arikara's name is believed to mean "horns," in reference to the ancient custom of wearing two upright bones in their hair.

The name also could mean "elk people" or "corn eaters."

The Arikara language is a member of the Caddoan language family. Arikara is close to the Pawnee language, but they are not mutually intelligible.

Linguistic divergence between Arikara and Pawnee suggests a separation from the Skidi Pawnee in about the fifteenth century.

The Arzberger Site near present-day Pierre, South Dakota, designated as a National Historic Landmark, is an archeological site from this period, containing the remains of a fortified village with more than forty-fou rlodges.

The sons of Vérendrye continue to increase the number of trading posts in the region that will become Manitoba and, in 1743, claim for France the region around present Pierre, South Dakota.

The name of the Absaroka or Apsáalooke tribe is translated into French by interpreters as gens du corbeaux (people of [the] crows).

It means "children of the large-beaked bird," a name given by their neighboring tribe, the Hidatsa.

The bird, perhaps now extinct, was defined as a fork-tailed bird resembling the blue jay or magpie.

The Absaroka in 1743 first encounter people of European descent—the two La Vérendrye brothers, Pierre and Jacques-René, from French Canada.

The explorers call the Apsáalooke beaux hommes (handsome men).

The Crow call the French Canadians baashchíile (persons with yellow eyes).

The Plains tribes had rapidly adopted the horse, which have allowed them to move out on to the Plains and hunt buffalo more effectively, from about 1740.

However, the severe winters in the North keep their herds smaller than those of Plains tribes in the South.

The Crow, Hidatsa, Eastern Shoshone and Northern Shoshone soon become noted as horse breeders and dealers and develop relatively large horse herds.

At the time, other eastern and northern tribes are also moving on to the Plains, in search of game for the fur trade, bison, and more horses.

The Crow are subject to raids and horse thefts by horse-poor tribes, including the powerful Blackfoot Confederacy, Gros Ventre, Assiniboine, Pawnee, and Ute.

Later they will have to face the Lakota and their allies, the Arapaho and Cheyenne, who also steal horses from their enemies.

Their greatest enemies will become the tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy and the Lakota-Cheyenne-Arapaho alliance.

The Crow are generally friendly with the northern Plains tribes of the Flathead (although sometimes they have conflicts); Nez Perce, Kutenai, Shoshone, Kiowa and Kiowa Apache.

The powerful Iron Confederacy (Nehiyaw-Pwat), an alliance of northern plains Indian nations based around the fur trade, develops as enemies of the Crow.

It is named after the dominating Plains Cree and Assiniboine peoples, and will later include the Stoney, Saulteaux, Ojibwe, and Métis.

La Verendrye, a financial failure despite the establishment of numerous trading posts on the buffalo plains, had resigned in 1744, leaving his sons and nephews to carry on the western commerce.

During his years of activity, La Veredrye has won new Amerind nations to French allegiance and lured their trade away from the Hudson’s Bay Company and toward Montreal.

The new French minister of the marine, Antoine Louis Rouille, has him decorated with the cross of the order of Saint Louis in 1745; La Verendrye dies in December of the same year.