Established 1868,[3][4] the reservation is located in parts of Big Horn, Yellowstone, and Treasure counties in southern Montana in the United States.

In August 1805, fur trader Francois-Antoine Larocque camped at the Little Bighorn River and traveled through the area with a Crow group.

"Oglalas under Crazy Horse and Red Cloud and Hunkpapas and Minneconjous under Sitting Bull continued to follow the dwindling buffalo herds west from the Powder River, while gold seekers travelled north into the [Crow] region along the Bozeman [Trail].

In a hotel room in Washington, D.C., they opened a bundle over the incense of buffalo chips from animals in the National Zoo and prayed for help.

[16] The reservation got its present shape after moderate land cuts in 1937 and in connection with the construction of the Bighorn Canyon Dam in the 1960s.

[18] The value of the enormous amount of coal under the surface in the old tribal territory became clear to the reservation Crows after the Arab Oil Embargo in the 1970s.

[20] In 2013, the tribe and Cloud Peak Energy agreed to open the Big Metal mine, which would have brought the company $10 million in revenue over the first five years.

[21] In March 2017, the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation sued Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to stop his attempt to lift the moratorium.

On June 25, 1876, combined forces from the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes defeated the Seventh Cavalry Regiment commanded by George Armstrong Custer.

[24] The PBS TV series Reading Rainbow partially filmed its tenth episode, "The Gift of the Sacred Dog", on the reservation on June 17, 1983.