5/19/2011

Elias Goes Ahead tells the story:

When Chief Plenty Coups was nine years old, he visited Black Butte, Montana and received a vision.  He would live to see the white men come, and he would live through their arrival.  He would be protected by the Little People and by the chickadee.  In his youth the eagle would give him wisdom, and then so would the mountain lion.

(The gathering room of Plenty Coups’ home.  A bust of Plenty Coups, rocking chairs representing the places of honor for past storytellers, and the head of a buffalo that fed 800 people in 1998.)

Plenty Coups was known as a great orator.  In 1921 Plenty Coups went to Arlington, Virginia and visited the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  In an unanticipated act, he went up to the Tomb, laid his war bonnet upon the grave marker, and gave a speech to the audience in Crow.  He spoke no English but an interpreter came with him everywhere.

After visiting Mt. Vernon, Plenty Coups was inspired to create a similar place.  He would build himself a house that would be both a home for his family and a gathering place for everyone who would come.  Decades later, his vision is still coming true at the Chief Plenty Coups State Park, where people from around the world gather to learn about the life of  the “chief of chiefs” and about the Crow Nation.

(The view of Crow country from the second story of Plenty Coups’ home.)