Plenty-Coups Chief Of The Crows Summary

“Plenty-Coups Chief of the Crows” was authored by Frank Linderman in 1930. This book interested me because it was Plenty-Coups account of his life. Plenty-Coups couldn’t write English. So when Mr. Linderman came by asking for his account of his life, Plenty-Coups couldn’t deny. Also why this book interested me was because we were learning about the Native American’s when I picked this book. Final reason why I picked this book is because I have never read a Native’s auto biography.
“Plenty-Coups Chief of The Crows” takes place during Chief Plenty-Coups life(1848-1932). Linderman starts the book with Plenty-Coups’ first memories and medicine dream. Plenty-Coups dreamt that all the buffalo would be replaced with cattle and that he would

become chief of the Crows. Plenty-Coups talked about many battles throughout the book, but one of his most notable was when he was with General Cook fighting the Sioux. Plenty-Coups was 29 years old and became chief of the Crows. General Cook needed help putting the Sioux back on the reservation. So he enlisted Plenty-Coups help. Cook and Plenty-Coups was suppose to met up with Custer, they were delayed because they engaged the Sioux. Sadly they were to late and Custer's command was massacred. Plenty-Coups didn’t talk much about his life in old age because he felt he died with the buffalo. So he only told stories about his youth.
This book is very significant to world history because it was the first time written story was told about the Indians. Not many people knew about native customs when this book was written. Additionally many natives were losing their customs because of influence from other cultures. This book gave the world an in site to native customs and beliefs. As well as gave natives an example of how there ancestors lived before the white man. Therefore it could have helped natives cling fast to there beliefs and help the world understand why.
This book didn’t have a huge affect of my view of world history because it is more of a U.S. history book. The affect it gave me was that the Crows were stuck in time.. The Crows were a complex society because the had a government, religion, law and order, and art. At the same time they not because they were lacking was a writing, agriculture, and cities. The Crows were a like Paleolithic people because they were nomadic hunters and gathers. Yet they were very modern at the same time. They used guns they acquired for hunting and war and they had a verbal and sign language. The Crows started to become more modern as more and more American’s came. Evenly they lost their Paleolithic roots when they were put on reservations. The Crows were living a very similar life to their ancestors until Europeans came to America.
I would recommend this book for a U.S. or Montana state history project since Plenty-Coups is Native to Montana. This book was hard to read at the start since sometime you don’t know if Plenty-Coups is taking about animals or people since many of his friends were named after an animal. As the book goes on it becomes easier to read. The plots start to develop since their is war and conflict being added to the story. Or I would recommend this book if you wanted to learn about Indians because this is Chief Plenty-Coups telling his life story. To conclude I would recommend this book under those circumstances other wise I would read a different book because this book can be boring if you are not reading it for school.