They grew crops and hunted bison in settled villages, until the mid-16th century when the Ojibwe and Cree drove them further west to the Upper Missouri River.

To acquire control of their new territory, the Crow fought against Shoshone bands, such as the Bikkaashe, or "People of the Grass Lodges",[10] and drove them westward.

[11][12][13] The Kiowa and Plains Apache bands later migrated southward, and the Crow remained dominant in their established area through the 18th and 19th centuries, the era of the fur trade.

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

They managed to retain a large reservation of more than 9300 km2 despite territorial losses, due in part to their cooperation with the federal government against their traditional enemies, the Sioux and Blackfoot.

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

After about 1860, the Lakota Sioux claimed all the former Crow lands from the Black Hills of South Dakota to the Big Horn Mountains of Montana.

Red Cloud's War (1866–1868) was a challenge by the Lakota Sioux to the United States military presence on the Bozeman Trail, a route along the eastern edge of the Big Horn Mountains to the Montana gold fields.

The Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868 with the United States confirmed the Lakota control over all the high plains from the Black Hills of the Dakotas westward across the Powder River Basin to the crest of the Big Horn Mountains.

[29] Thereafter bands of Lakota Sioux led by Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Gall, and others, along with their Northern Cheyenne allies, hunted and raided throughout the length and breadth of eastern Montana and northeastern Wyoming, which had been for a time ancestral Crow territory.

These Indians had left the Hidatsa villages and adjacent cornfields for good, but they had yet to become "real" buffalo hunting Crow following the herds on the open plains.

Chiefs Red Calf and Spotted Crow allowed the fur trader Francois-Antoine Larocque to join it on its way across the plains to the Yellowstone area.

[47] In 1829, seven Crow warriors were neutralized by Blood Blackfoot Indians led by Spotted Bear, who captured a pipe-hatchet during the fight just west of Chinook, Montana.

[53]: 67–68 During the mid-1860s, the Sioux resented the emigrant route Bozeman Trail through the Powder River bison habitat, although it mainly "crossed land guaranteed to the Crows".

[53]: 93 [63]: 105  A joint large-scale attack on a large Blackfoot camp at the Cypress Hills in 1866 resulted in a chaotic withdrawal of the Gros Ventres and Crow.

[71]: 40  On 7 May, the same year, the Crow ceded vast ranges to the US due to pressure from white settlements north of Upper Yellowstone River and loss of eastern territories to the Sioux.

[81]: 182  In August 1873, visiting Nez Percé and a Crow reservation camp at Pryor Creek further west faced a force of Sioux warriors in a long confrontation.

[85]: 114  George Bird Grinnell was a member of the exploring party in the Yellowstone National Park that year, and he saw the bringing in of the dead chief.

The chief was placed in a tipi "not far from the Crow camp, reclining on his bed covered with robes, his face handsomely painted".

"Where Buffaloes are Driven Over Cliffs at Long Ridge" was a favorite spot for meat procurement by the Crow Indians for over a century, from 1700 to around 1870 when modern weapons were introduced.

He would take a pair of bison hindquarters and pointing the feet along the lines of stones he would sing his sacred songs and call upon the Great Spirit to make the operation a success.

The Crow had large horse herds which were among the largest owned by Plains Indians; in 1914 they had approximately thirty to forty thousand head.

Like other plains people the horse was central to the Crow economy and were a highly valuable trade item and were frequently stolen from other tribes to gain wealth and prestige as a warrior.

The introduction of horses into Crow society allowed them to pull heavier loads faster, greatly reducing the number of dogs used as pack animals.

Their clothing, horses, cradles, ornamental and ceremonial gear, in addition to leather cases of all shapes, sizes and uses were decorated in beadwork.

[95] Some of the clothing that the Crow decorated with beads included robes, vests, pants, shirts, moccasins and various forms of celebratory and ceremonial gear.

The lines represented the young women's new role as a wife and mother; also the new bride was encouraged to wear the robe at the next ceremonial gathering to symbolize her addition and welcoming to a new family.

The line travels downstream to Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area and west to the Pryor Mountains and north-easterly to Billings.

When the opposition challenged, citing the violation of the Constitutional Process and the Right to Vote, the Birdinground Administration sought the approval of the United States Department of the Interior (USDOI), Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

During the United States federal government shutdown of 2013, the Crow Tribe furloughed 316 employees and suspended programs providing health care, bus services and improvements to irrigation.