Misplaced Pages

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80-613: The Bighorn Mountains ( Crow : Basawaxaawúua , lit.   'our mountains' or Iisaxpúatahchee Isawaxaawúua , 'bighorn sheep's mountains') are a mountain range in northern Wyoming and southern Montana in the United States , forming a northwest-trending spur from the Rocky Mountains extending approximately 200 mi (320 km) northward on the Great Plains . They are separated from

160-430: A consonant cluster with h as the initial radical ( hp , ht , hk ) are unaspirated and lax. Gemination in stops only occurs intervocalically. Intervocalic single, nongeminate stops are lax, unaspirated, and generally voiced. The difference between voiced stops b and d (allophones of m and n ) and voiceless stops is hardly discernible when following a fricative, since both are unaspirated and lax. The phoneme k has

240-760: A deep canyon until it issues onto the plains , just at the Montana-Wyoming border. In Little Bighorn Canyon in Wyoming, the Little Bighorn receives other mountain streams as tributaries including the Dry Fork (which despite its name maintains a permanent, year-round significant flow of water into the Little Bighorn), and the West Fork of the Little Bighorn. After issuing from its canyon at

320-572: A dozen more that rise to over 12,000 feet (3,700 m). From the east the mountains present a vertical relief of over 8,000 feet (2,400 m), rising abruptly from the plains. Overall, the Bighorns are more rounded than their sister mountain ranges to the west. The Cloud Peak Wilderness is the centerpiece of a roadless block of land around 189,000 acres in size. The Wilderness is surrounded by acreage of U.S National Forest as well as Bureau of Land Management , state, and some private land. Most of

400-560: A highland oasis of moisture towering over the otherwise arid plains that surround the range in all directions. The melting snow feeds many rivers through the summer months. The range is the location of the headwaters of the Little Bighorn , Tongue , and Powder rivers. Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area consists of approximately 120,000 acres (490 km) within the Bighorn Mountains. It includes Bighorn Lake ,

480-558: A palatalized allophone [kʲ] that occurs after i , e , ch and sh , often word-finally. Fricatives are tense; they are only lax when intervocalic. Palatal sh is often voiced intervocalically; s is sometimes voiced intervocalically; x is never voiced. The alveolar fricative /s/ has an optional allophone /h/ in phrase-initial position: Sonorants voiced /m/ and /n/ have three allophones: w and l intervocalically, b and d word initially and following an obstruent, and m and n in all other conditions. In conservative speech, l

560-543: A parking area is maintained by the Wyoming Fish and Game Department, but signage prohibits overnight camping. Upstream above this point fishing is permitted on the National Forest, but the first river mile of this stretch of fishing is unusually difficult and rugged because the stream bed is littered with very large boulders due to a massive earth slide that blocked the canyon thousands of years ago, after which

640-679: A relative clause into a derived noun. There are two basic types of compounding in Crow: noun-noun compounds and noun-verb compounds. Noun-noun compounds often involve a whole-part relationship: the first noun refers to the whole and the second to the part. Members of the compound may also be themselves compounds or derived nouns. íi mouth + + bilí water = = íi-wili saliva íi + bilí = íi-wili mouth + water = saliva áali arm + + ísshi container = = áal-isshi sleeve áali + ísshi = áal-isshi Little Bighorn River The Little Bighorn River

720-627: A reservoir damming the Bighorn River . In 2015, a sudden, huge 'gash' was found in Wyoming's Big Horn Mountains. The Wyoming Geological Survey studied the area and determined that "The Crack" may be the result of an "apparent active landslide " in the southern end of the Big Horn Mountains. The Bighorns provided important resources for ancestral indigenous people, including plants, migratory big game, rock shelters, tepee poles, and stone for tools. American Indian trails crisscrossed

800-535: A wild bison herd on this portion of the Bighorns. The Crow lands are a sacred area, and thus are off-limits to non-tribal members. The three highways traversing the Bighorns are designated Scenic Byways by the US Forest Service and the State of Wyoming. These include U.S. Routes 14 , 14A, and 16 . The high elevation of the Bighorns results in condensation of air and significant yearly snowfall, creating

880-576: A wooden trestle that sent ties shooting down a waterslide at more than 50 miles per hour. Small sawmills operated at locations throughout the Bighorn Range, including the Babione sawmill on Babione Creek. Commercial timber harvesting continued into the 21st century, supplying lumber mills in Buffalo and Sheridan. Reservoir companies in the early 1900s built extensive ditch and reservoir systems in

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960-439: A word initial syllable are generally followed by a consonant cluster, while accented long vowels are generally followed by a single consonant. Stress can fall on short vowels as well as long vowels and may fall on either mora of a long vowel. With diphthongs, either the long vowel or the offglide may bear the stress. Stress helps predict the tones of all the vowels in a word: stressed vowels are high in pitch; all vowels following

1040-419: Is síisííyaačyɔʔɔ́tah , 'snake butte', and ʔɔ́tééíh ʔɔhʔániih , 'sheep mountains' is a modern translation. Overhunting of bighorn sheep, and livestock diseases and parasites introduced from domestic sheep grazing largely wiped out the native population of bighorn sheep by the early 1900s. Today the only herd of bighorn sheep in the namesake range is a reintroduced herd near Devils Canyon in

1120-473: Is a polysynthetic language . Basic stems consist of one to four syllables (with four being rare) and always end in a vowel. Monosyllabic stems have long vowels or diphthongs, e.g., bií , 'stone, rock'; bía , 'woman'. The vast majority of nouns in Crow are derived stems. Derivational processes in nominal morphology include affixation and compounding. An exhaustive list of nominal suffixes: Prefixes will render

1200-695: Is a 138-mile-long (222 km) tributary of the Bighorn River in the United States in the states of Montana and Wyoming . The Battle of the Little Bighorn , also known as the Battle of the Greasy Grass, was fought on its banks on June 25–26, 1876, as well as the Battle of Crow Agency in 1887. The Little Bighorn rises in northern Wyoming , deep in the Bighorn Mountains , under Duncum Mountain and Burnt Mountain. The main stream flows through

1280-599: Is also referred to as the Battle of the Greasy Grass, as it is in the discussions of the battle by the History Channel. The alternative name used in the 1800s by the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Crow of "Greasy Grass" for the "Little Bighorn" is reflected in current-day nomenclature at the Little Bighorn battlefield. A prominent ridge on the Little Bighorn Battlefield that overlooks the eastern banks of

1360-510: Is available at many established campgrounds with facilities, or across most of the national forest. Wilderness users must register at trailheads, but no permit is required, though there are regulations about group size, prohibiting fires at high elevation, and camping away from water sources. Motorized trails wind through most of the national forest. The noise impacts from ATV use outside of the Cloud Peak Wilderness contrast from

1440-473: Is impassible in the winter after snow accumulates and after the two stream fords, fed by springs, partially freeze over. When not closed by winter weather, this road still requires vehicles with high clearance, preferably with 4X4 gearing. In Wyoming, and particularly in the Little Bighorn Canyon, all the land adjacent to the road and the stream is private, and a sign noting this is posted at

1520-744: Is located mainly on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana; its 144,000 acres also includes 34,000 acres of Devil's Canyon on the Bighorn N.F. in Wyoming. In this part of the range, semidesert prairie is cut by steep canyons leading to Yellowtail Reservoir, and high, Douglas-fir cloaked ridges top out at over 9,000'. Colorful rock formations are common. Rocky Mountain juniper and limber pine are scattered on lower elevations, and wildlife includes pronghorn, rattlesnake, golden eagle , ferruginous hawk , and mule deer. The Crow Indians manage

1600-503: Is now primarily used by cattle ranchers, marathon runners, and fishermen. After flowing out of Wyoming and into Montana at the mouth of Little Bighorn Canyon, the entire remaining course of the Little Bighorn River and all its tributaries are within the boundaries of the Crow Indian Reservation , and access to the river is subject to the unique and confusing mixture of Montana state and Crow tribal law. Fishing within

1680-517: Is realized as a tapped r , however in general cases it is realized as l , perhaps due in part to the influence of English. Word initially, b is optional for /m/, though b is more commonly realized. The glottal sonorant /h/ assimilates to the nasality of the following segment, but retains its voicelessness. When following i or e or preceding ch , /h/ may be realized as an alveopalatal fricative. Vowel sequences across morpheme boundaries can be quite varied, but short vowels cannot appear alone in

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1760-580: Is still used in present-day American Indian ceremonies. Ancestors of the Shoshone Tribe likely had the longest continuous association with the Bighorns, potentially dating back 1,000 years or more. Stone artifacts found in the Absaroka Range farther west are known to have originated in the Bighorns, suggesting ancestral movement between the two ranges. The Apsalooke or Crow tribe located in this region about 300–400 years ago after discovering

1840-774: The Absaroka Range , which lie on the main branch of the Rockies to the west, by the Bighorn Basin . Much of the land is contained within the Bighorn National Forest . The Bighorns were uplifted during the Laramide orogeny beginning approximately 70 million years ago. They consist of over 9,000 ft (2,700 m) of sedimentary rock strata laid down before mountain-building began: the predominantly marine and near-shore sedimentary layers range from

1920-596: The Cambrian through the Lower Cretaceous , and are often rich in fossils . There is an unconformity where Silurian strata were exposed to erosion and are missing. The granite bedrock below these sedimentary layers is now exposed along the crest of the Bighorns. The precambrian formations contain some of the oldest rocks in the world, at 3.25 billion years old. Following the uplift, large volumes of sediments, rich in early Tertiary fossils, were deposited in

2000-589: The Crow Tribe prefers to speak in English. The language was defined as "definitely endangered" by UNESCO as of 2012. However, R. Graczyk claims in his A Grammar of Crow (2007) that "[u]nlike many other native languages of North America in general, and the northern plain in particular, the Crow language still exhibits considerable vitality: there are fluent speakers of all ages, and at least some children are still acquiring Crow as their first language." Many of

2080-453: The Montana - Wyoming line the Little Bighorn flows northward across the Crow Indian Reservation . The river flows past the towns of Wyola , Lodge Grass and Crow Agency , and joins the Bighorn River near the town of Hardin . At Wyola, Montana , the Little Bighorn receives the flow of Pass Creek flowing north from the Bighorn Mountains . At Lodge Grass the Little Bighorn receives

2160-430: The sacred tobacco plant growing in the Bighorn Mountains below Cloud Peak. This ended a multi-generational sojourn that began near Devils Lake, North Dakota, where a leader named No Vitals received a vision to seek the tobacco. The Crow chief Arapooish gave a speech in the 1830s showing that his people were fully aware of the migratory behaviors of bighorn sheep and deer, which spent summer on high-elevation summer range in

2240-538: The Bighorn Mountains is Ma'xekȯsáeho'honáéva with the element kȯsáeho meaning bighorn sheep. The Arapaho also called the Bighorn Mountains Houuneniinoho'oooyoo' meaning "Crow Tribe Mountain Range," an indication of the Crow's use of the area in the 1800s. The Lakota word for the Bighorns is Ȟeyúškiška meaning "Rugged mountain ridge" or "rough animal horns." The traditional Gros Ventre name

2320-445: The Bighorn Mountains to support agriculture and grain farming near Sheridan, Buffalo, and Greybull. Significant reservoirs include Willow Park, Bighorn, Park, Dome, and Shell. These reservoir companies continue to operate today, with shares of water dictating the operation of ditches and priority of water appropriation, which in the 21st century primarily supports alfalfa farming and municipal water systems. Permitted livestock grazing on

2400-502: The Bighorn National Forest is known to degrade water quality with microbes like e coli and giardiasis. Sheridan's water treatment plant is built to handle this contamination. The Bighorns are a popular destination for hiking, backpacking, fly fishing, hunting, horse back riding and increasingly ATV riding and snowmobiling . Fishing opportunities abound in the Bighorns, with a high prevalence of brook trout. Camping

2480-793: The Bighorn Range. Regulations require the cabins to visually fit into the natural surroundings, and that cabin owners reduce fuels around the premises to reduce wildfire risk. The National Forest also permits summer grazing for cattle and sheep, and professional outfitting and hunting services. Private inholdings and businesses within the Bighorn National Forest include Tepee Cabins, Folly Ranch, Dome Lake Club, Bighorn Reservoir Company, Kearny Reservoir, Paradise Ranch, Bear Lodge, Arrowhead Lodge, Elk View Inn, South Fork Lodge, Deer Haven Lodge, and Meadowlark Lodge, and Wyoming High Country Lodge. The former Spear O Wigwam guest ranch hosted Ernest Hemingway in 1928, where he wrote part of "A Farewell to Arms." The Sioux , Crow, and Cheyenne peoples have long considered

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2560-729: The Bighorn River is within the boundaries of the Crow Reservation. In the seminal case of Montana v. United States , 450 U.S. 544 (1981), the court exempted the Big Horn River from their ruling, holding that the bed of the Bighorn River was not included within the grant of tribal lands to the Crow Tribe in their prior treaties, and thus upon the admission of Montana to the Union the bed of the Big Horn River (and thus

2640-713: The Bighorns and other mountain ranges. Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota use of the Bighorns region mostly dates to the period after 1800, when they made incursions into traditional Shoshone and Crow territory. Of the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Lakota, the Arapaho had longest history on the east slope of the Rocky Mountains in a region spanning from the Yellowstone River to the Arkansas River, which included

2720-690: The Bighorns sacred mountains. Crow language Crow is closely related to Hidatsa spoken by the Hidatsa tribe of the Dakotas; the two languages are the only members of the Missouri Valley Siouan family. Despite their similarities, Crow and Hidatsa are not mutually intelligible. According to Ethnologue with figures from 1998, 77% of Crow people over 66 years old speak the language; "some" parents and older adults, "few" high school students and "no pre-schoolers" speak Crow. 80% of

2800-640: The Bighorns, no major deposits of precious metals have been found to date. Brief gold rushes of placer deposits occurred at Bald Mountain City and Porcupine Creek, and in Big Goose Canyon. The lack of precious metals helped stave off development and settlement in the mountains, in contrast to the Colorado Rockies. The Madison limestone aquifer provides a significant source of groundwater for the town of Dayton. Limestone karst formations throughout

2880-653: The Bighorns. The Cheyenne and Lakota were originally agricultural tribes based on rivers of the Great Plains and the Midwest. By the 1860s and 1870s, the Lakota showed a knowledge of the ancestral trail systems in the Bighorn Mountains, particularly in incidents like the Sibley Fight. The Bighorn Mountains are named for the Bighorn River, which originated with the Crow. According to Crow oral tradition, shortly after

2960-437: The Cloud Peak Wilderness is above the tree line ; the National Forest lands surrounding it are lower in elevation and covered in coniferous forests. Mule deer , elk , moose , black bear, and mountain lion are found throughout the area. Two more large roadless areas remained in the Bighorns as of 1992. It is unknown whether these areas have since been reduced in size by road-building and other development. Both areas straddle

3040-529: The Crow in the 1840s to 1860s as the Sioux pushed westward, continued to call the river the "Greasy Grass". Native Americans called the river the Greasy Grass before the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876, and Lakota people still commonly refer to the Battle of the Little Bighorn as the Battle of the Greasy Grass. In historical references in Misplaced Pages articles, the Battle of the Little Bighorn

3120-399: The Crow located in this region after discovering the sacred tobacco, a stepfather pushed his son off the rim of a canyon, intending to do him harm. The boy was caught in juniper trees and survived for four days, until he was rescued by the seven sacred bighorn rams. The largest of these rams was chief of all the bighorns. This ram had horns of metal, and was called "Big Metal". This ram implored

3200-509: The Crows for the river system because in the river bottoms in the upper reaches of the Little Bighorn and its major tributaries, there was abundant grass that would gather heavy dew in the morning which, in turn, would wet moccasins and leggings of Indian people, and the bellies and legs of horses, and cause them to look greasy. On the mainstream, the name Greasy Grass slowly gave way to the alternative name Little Bighorn. For one major tributary of

3280-630: The English translation of the Indian names, and the names for both rivers have come down through history. Captain Raynolds had Jim Bridger as a guide and interpreter, so the information about the source of the name was confirmed by Raynolds from Indian sources through Bridger. According to the USGS, the Little Bighorn River has three other official variants of the name, including Little Horn River, Custer River and Great Horn River. Local people who live in

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3360-470: The Little Bighorn River has retained the name of Greasy Grass Ridge and is the site of critical events of the battle. In Lakota , the Little Bighorn River is called Pȟežísla Wakpá . Upstream from the point where the Little Bighorn issues from the Little Horn Canyon, the stream flow is in Wyoming. For the first two miles a very rough road goes upstream. All along this road, and all along

3440-435: The Little Bighorn canyon is notorious for rattlesnakes. Herpetologists from the Bighorn National Forest state that the east facing canyons of the Bighorns have rattlesnakes because they also support a habitat for small mammals, like a mouse and chipmunk population, which are the prey of rattlesnakes. With the restoration of the black bear population in the Bighorn Mountains, there has been a resurgence of black bear living along

3520-575: The Little Bighorn on September 6, 1859. He noted in his journal for that day that the Indian name of the Big Horn river, into which the Little Bighorn empties, is Ets-pot-agie , or Mountain Sheep River, and this generates the name of the Little Big Horn, Ets-pot-agie-cate , or Little Mountain Sheep river. The trappers who came to the Big Horn Mountains in the fur trapping era continued the usage of

3600-401: The Little Bighorn, the (presently named) Lodge Grass Creek retained the name "Greasy Grass Creek", but as Joe Medicine Crow explained in the 2012 video, this name morphed from "Greasy Grass" to "Lodge Grass" due to the error of an interpreter since the Crow word for "greasy" is Tah-shay, and the Crow word for "lodge" is Ah-shay. The Lakota Sioux, who began to contest control of this area with

3680-577: The Middle Fork of the Powder River, contained an important American Indian trail adjacent to a bison migration corridor. The Wilson Price Hunt expedition of Astorians noted in 1811 that the bison dung was so dense in this area that it resembled a "continuous barnyard" for several miles. Hunt noticed Shoshone and Crow Indians in the area. The Medicine Wheel on the northern end of the Bighorns is an important sacred site built by ancestral tribes that

3760-512: The Montana-Wyoming state line, in the northern part of the range. One area, north of U.S. Route 14A and containing the headwaters of the Little Bighorn River , is 155,000 acres of National Forest land. This little-known region features subalpine terrain cut by steep canyons. Pronghorn inhabit the area, as it includes a portion of the Great Plains. What little human use it receives is from hunters and fishermen. The second roadless area

3840-645: The Tribe or held by the United States in trust for the Tribe. On tribal lands, the Crow Tribal Code (2005) addresses fishing by non-members in Title 12. Non-members may fish on Tribal lands but only while possessing a Tribal Recreation License, with appropriate permit to fish. and only with an enrolled Crow Tribal member in attendance, who is trained and properly licensed as a fishing guide. While

3920-614: The adjoining basins. The ice ages of the Pleistocene led to extensive glaciation. Though many cirques , U-shaped valleys and glacial lakes can be found in the mountain range, the only remaining active glacier is the Cloud Peak Glacier , which is on the east slope of Cloud Peak . Geologist N.H. Darton with the U.S. Geological Survey produced one of the earliest studies of geology in the area, drawn from field research from 1901 to 1905. Despite extensive prospecting in

4000-537: The boundaries of the Crow Indian Reservation is governed by the U.S. Supreme Court case of Montana v. United States , 450 U.S. 544 (1981). The case addressed the Crow Nation's ability to regulate hunting and fishing on the reservation by tribal members and by non tribal members, and the case held that the Crow Tribe may prohibit or regulate hunting or fishing by non-members on land belonging to

4080-546: The boy that the name of the river was the Bighorn River, and told the boy that if the name of the Bighorn River was ever changed, the Crow tribe would cease to exist. The name of the river became the basis for naming the Bighorn Mountains. Many peaks of the region were named by the Crow, including Sheep Mountain Chíilapalawaache (where the bighorn ram sits), Medicine Mountain Awaxaammaaxpée (Holy Mountain),

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4160-541: The canyon to the south finally reaching primitive roads above Dry Fork that go on to the Burgess Ranger Station on US Highway 14 on top of the Bighorn Mountains. From the start of the Forest Service lands, all along the northwest side of the river there is trail access for about 14 miles (23 km) up to the source of the stream and on to the divide on top the Bighorn Mountains. In Wyoming, at

4240-492: The case of Montana v. United States also holds that the Tribe may not prohibit non-Indians from hunting and fishing on lands not owned by the tribe or held in trust for the tribe, such parcels of "fee lands" are usually not extensive and are scattered randomly among the parcels of Tribal lands, and there is no indication on the ground to indicate to the non-member fisher person when they are on fee land, where they would be trespassing, and when they are on Tribal lands in breach of

4320-500: The community, however, has preserved the language via religious ceremonies and the traditional clan system. Currently, most speakers of Crow are 30 and older but a few younger speakers are learning it. There are increased efforts for children to learn Crow as their first language and many do on the Crow Reservation of Montana , particularly through a Crow language immersion school that was sponsored in 2012. Development for

4400-575: The crest divide of the Bighorns Awaxahátchke (Long Mountain), Bald Mountain Awaxaawammáakoo(2) (High Mountain). The highest peak of the range, Cloud Peak, is Awaxaawakússawishe , meaning extended mountain. The word "Bighorn Mountains" were also used by the Arapaho or Cheyenne: both tribes called today's Bighorn River "Mountain Sheep River," and it was common to name mountain ranges after nearby rivers. The Cheyenne term for

4480-579: The eastern side of the river and is now the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument . In 1859, William F. Raynolds led a government expedition up the Big Horn River to the mouth of Big Horn Canyon, and then southeast along the base of the Big Horn mountains. En route to the Big Horn Canyon, and about 40 miles (64 km) down the Big Horn River from the canyon, he camped just below the mouth of

4560-399: The end of the two mile stretch of road from the mouth of the canyon Bighorn National Forest Service lands extend up to and over the top of the Bighorn Mountains. In the Little Bighorn watershed there are cougars, black bears, deer, elk, wild turkeys and other birds and small mammals, all of which are common to the Bighorn Mountains. An occasional moose has been sighted. The floor and sides of

4640-423: The entrance to the canyon. At the furthest point of the road, two miles upstream from the canyon mouth, at the US Forest Service boundary, there is a parking area maintained by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department but signage prohibits overnight camping. Upstream, above this point the Forest Service lands a trail that crosses the river on a footbridge to the southeast side and then leaves the river and climbs up out of

4720-405: The exception of the mid vowels. There is also a marginal diphthong ea [ea] that only occurs in two native Crow stems: déaxa 'clear' and béaxa 'intermittent'. Crow has a very sparse consonant inventory, much like many other languages of the Great Plains . Stops are aspirated word-initially, word-finally, when geminated (e.g. [ppʰ]) and when following another stop (e.g. [ptʰ]). Stops in

4800-411: The former marketing motto that invited people to "Visit the Bighorns if you can stand the quiet." The Cloud Peak Wilderness has a network of hiking trails to remote areas and alpine lakes. Higher trails are often covered with snow except from July through August. After Labor Day, there is a good chance of high country snow storms at any time. The Bighorns are home to one of the elite ultramarathons in

4880-478: The land the fisher person is standing on, has caused fishing websites to conclude: "However, the Little Bighorn runs entirely within the boundaries of the Crow Reservation and access to it is next to nil." The prospective fisherman should not be misled by the fact that the blue ribbon trout fishery on the Big Horn River, below the Yellowtail Dam, is fished by non-Indians (provided the non-member complies with Montana fishing regulations and laws), though this stretch of

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4960-411: The language includes a Crow language dictionary and portions of the Bible published from 1980-2007. The current literacy rate is around 1-5% for first language speakers and 75-100% for second language learners. Teens are immersed in Crow at the Apsaalooke language camp sponsored by the Crow Tribe. Crow is closely related to Hidatsa spoken by the Hidatsa tribe of the Dakotas; the two languages are

5040-441: The law. The Crow Tribal Court has exclusive jurisdiction over non-Indians who commit violations on Tribal land. If a non-member is found in violation of any part of the Tribal Code, they are subject to fines (Crow Tribal Code 2005, Section 12-11-109), forfeiture of fishing gear, and payment of court costs This confusing and chaotic situation, in which enforcement of fishing restrictions and access to streams depends on who owns

5120-567: The morpheme: V:V (long+short), V:V: (long+long) and diphthong+V (short). Word finally, only a (in a diphthong), o , and u (allomorphs of the plural suffix) can occur after a long vowel. A wide variety of consonant clusters can occur in Crow. All consonants except for /h/ can be geminated . Voiced labials and dentals (phonemic m and n , allophones b , m , w and d , n , l ) are resistant to clustering. Because they only occur intervocalically, l and w do not occur in clusters. The plosive allophones b and d only occur in clusters as

5200-449: The nation. The 100-mile Bighorn Trail Run is held every June. The Bighorns are home to two small ski areas: Meadowlark Resort off Highway 16 near Buffalo, and Antelope Butte Ski Area on U.S. 14 between Dayton and Greybull, which reopened in 2019 after a long hiatus. Antelope Butte hosts a summer festival with music, and foot and bike trail races. The Bighorn National Forest permits land leases for hundreds of summer home cabins throughout

5280-409: The northern part of the range. The arrival of the Burlington and Missouri Railroad to Sheridan in 1892 created a demand for railroad ties. This led several companies to launch commercial timber harvesting in the Bighorn Mountains, such as the McShane Tie Company. Workers built several timber camps in the mountains, including Woodrock and Rockwood, and the impressive Tongue River tie flume, featuring

5360-474: The only members of the Missouri Valley Siouan family. The ancestor of Crow-Hidatsa may have constituted the initial split from Proto-Siouan. Crow and Hidatsa are not mutually intelligible, however the two languages share many phonological features, cognates and have similar morphologies and syntax. The split between Crow and Hidatsa may have occurred between 300 and 800 years ago. There are five distinct vowels in Crow, which occur either long or short with

5440-453: The point at which the river flows out of the canyon (at about the Wyoming-Montana state line) the road continues upstream in the canyon for only about 2 miles (3.2 km). There are two (and sometimes three) unbridged stream fords. This portion of the road is unmaintained and is a two track road with tight turns. It is primitive, rough, ungraded, and littered with partially buried boulders. When it rains large puddles accumulate in low spots. It

5520-555: The range contain many fissures and cracks that have developed into extensive cave systems, including Tongue River Cave , and the caves adjacent to Medicine Mountain. The Natural Trap Cave on the west slope of the Bighorns contains numerous remains of prehistoric mammals. The highest peaks within the Bighorns are located in Wyoming in the 1,120,000-acre (4,500 km) Bighorn National Forest . Two peaks rise to over 13,000 ft: Cloud Peak (13,175 ft, 4,016 m) and Black Tooth Mountain (13,005 ft, 3,964 m). There are

5600-469: The range, while the canyons provided important winter shelters. Stone game blinds in the high country were used by pedestrian hunters to kill migratory big game animals with atlatl -propelled spears or bows. The northern Bighorns and the Tongue River drainage were formerly a significant summer range for migratory bison that wintered in either the Bighorn Basin and the Powder River/Tongue River/Little Bighorn River drainages. The southern Bighorns, particularly in

5680-406: The right to fish on the Big Horn River) passed from federal ownership to the state of Montana. In Montana, from the mouth of the river at Hardin upstream to about 8 miles (13 km) above Wyola, there is paved and gravel road access to the Little Bighorn Valley, and upstream from this point to the mouth of the Little Bighorn canyon there is a gravel road maintained by Bighorn County. However, from

5760-428: The river cut down through the slide leaving huge boulders along the river banks. At two miles above the parking area, the river enters a granite-sided box canyon that extends for about a mile, where the river washes from one sheer wall to the other and is impassible to wading anglers except during times of very low water. In this area, the trail leaves the river and climbs around this gorge. The very rough road ends and

5840-475: The second consonant and only at morpheme boundaries. The nasal allophones m and n can only occur with each other with the exception of nm , or occur with h at a morpheme boundary. Clusters in general occur at morphemic boundaries. Some morphemic constraints: Stress in Crow is phonemic. The position of the stress in the stem is determined lexically. Virtually all noun and verb stems have an inherent stress. In word initial syllables, accented short vowels in

5920-600: The stream as it flows out into Montana, extending down the Little Bighorn Valley in Montana. Ranchers between the mouth of the canyon (at about the Wyoming Montana line) down to Wyola often report black bear groups living in the timber along the river, and travelers on the Montana portion of the Little Horn road will occasionally site bear out in the pastures along the river, and occasionally along

6000-499: The stream in this stretch, the land is privately owned and a sign at the entrance to the canyon provides notice of this fact. Wyoming stream access laws are not liberal and trespass laws are strictly construed. In this two mile stretch all riparian access requires trespass across private lands. After two miles of road travel upstream, the road reaches the Bighorn National Forest Service boundary where

6080-459: The stressed vowel are low in pitch; all short vowels preceding the stressed vowel are low in pitch; all long vowels preceding the stressed vowel are high in pitch; short vowels occurring between a long vowel and the accented vowel assimilate to a high pitch. In words composed of more than one morpheme, there are several rules (with a few exceptions) to determine the placement of the stress: Exceptions: Phonological processes in Crow include: Crow

6160-474: The trail up the Little Horn Canyon begins a few hundred yards after the parking area. One fork of the trail crosses the river and becomes the Dry Fork Trail. The other trail winds upstream in a westerly direction through the Little Horn Canyon. The Little Horn Canyon trail was originally established for the purposes of delivering mail to Bald Mountain City, a gold mining town, in the late 1800s. The trail

6240-409: The valley and along the tributaries commonly use the shortened version—Little Horn—instead of the more cumbersome name, Little Bighorn. A historical variant name for the Little Bighorn is the Greasy Grass. From the 1500s to the 1800s, the indigenous Crow people knew the river as the Greasy Grass. Crow tribal historian Joe Medicine Crow explained in a 2012 YouTube interview that this name was used by

6320-497: The waters of two tributaries, the largest being Lodge Grass Creek which flows west out of its own canyon system in the Bighorn Mountains, and Owl Creek flowing east and north from the Wolf Mountains. A few miles before reaching Crow Agency, the Little Horn receives the flow of Reno Creek from the Wolf Mountains to the east. The famous Little Bighorn battle site is approximately 3.6 miles (5.8 km) south of Crow Agency, on

6400-461: The younger population who do not speak Crow are able to understand it. Almost all of those who do speak Crow are also bilingual in English. Graczyk cites the reservation community as the reason for both the high level of bilingual Crow-English speakers and the continued use and prevalence of the Crow language. Daily contact with non–American Indians on the reservation for over one hundred years has led to high usage of English. Traditional culture within

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