Michael He Crow

Michael Crow recently came to Iowa State to talk about flintnapping, Native artifacts, and history. Mr. Crow is the grandson of Big Foot, also known as Spotted Elk. Big Foot was trying to movie his people to Pine Ridge Reservation when they were intercepted by the US Army and ordered to remove their guns, a fight ensued because one of the members was deaf – and eventually around two hundred Lakota were massacred in a monumental misunderstanding with the help of the newly invented Hotchkiss machine gun. I went to the presentation for one of my American Indians classes, not knowing the background of Mr. Crow just knowing the description of the event having to do with flinting arrowheads.

When I came to Michael Crows presentation on Friday, I was expecting from the description of the event to learn a lot about flintnapping and arrowheads, instead I learned more about Lakota history and some of their stories. The first thing that was interesting to me was that Michael told us that Lakota was used in the West, Dakota in the East, and a more rare Nakota in the South. He recalled that his ancestor Big Foot had been given the name later (his original name was Spotted Elk) because of some sort of inflammation of the foot. He also mentioned how Big Foot was a good negotiator with the whites. Something he didn’t talk much about was how his ancestors were massacred at Wounded Knee, or anything about the Ghost Dance (I was there for almost 90 minutes).

The way he presented was expected, he had no script and was very thoughtful and careful with what he told us – if there was something he didn’t know that he surely could have made up he simply told us he forgot that portion of the story, which is appreciated. He wore a plain t-shirt, nothing fancy, and spoke a bit in a monotone voice. After watching the battle for White Clay documentary a few months ago and hearing he came from Pine Ridge I was hoping to ask him a question about it but didn’t because it might bring up some bad memories or emotions that he was not here to talk about. He told the story of how the Buffalo actually won the race but the humans won by cheating using a bird of some kind, and the greatest information of all personally was how the Lakota gathered beans from the mice, and left enough for the mice to make it through the winter. The ways in which the Natives lived was in harmony with nature, and even the rocks had life. In this way nature is not disturbed and the balance of nature is maintained. He mentioned how his people believed they were created here in North America, and did not believe he was Asian or from Asia. He said the stars guided the people, and certain members of his tribe could read the stars and pass down the knowledge to the young.

Later in the presentation the microphone started making loud noise after which they disabled it altogether, this was sad because from then on I could not understand a lot of what was said.