THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow in English or High Bird, his traditional name, in Crow.

“I was fortunate when I was growing up,” he said, after a lunch of stew, frybread and pie at the trading post’s cafe. “The Crow Indians were still retaining the culture, and they felt it was their duty to teach me to carry on the tribal heritage.”

In turn, he’s made it his duty to document and share it.

On Monday, Medicine Crow — tribal historian, storyteller, decorated World War II veteran, first in his tribe to attain a master’s degree, last to achieve the status of traditional Crow war chief and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom — turns 101. As he described in a recent letter to a longtime friend and colleague, “On Oct. 27, I will have seen 101 snows.”

And yet he still feels “young and strong.” The eldest in a tribe of more than 10,000 members whose communities are scattered across nearly 3,600 square miles of plains and mountains, he is perhaps as much beloved for his hold on history as he is for his humor.

“I go to powwows — I’m a powwow man — and I go to rodeos too,” he said, asserting at one point that he is just a mere 91 years young before his son, Ronny Medicine Crow, corrected him.

“You’re 101, remember?” he shouted, so the old man could hear. “Not 91.”

That is when Medicine Crow paused, met the eyes of family members gathered around and released a moment of laughter. “I tried to cheat,” he said, smiling, and then he continued, speaking of his “many, many fond memories of growing up a Crow Indian.”

While brief, Medicine Crow’s service in the U.S. Army during World War II has emerged as among the most celebrated Native American military experiences of the past century.

In 2009 the White House identified him as both “a warrior and living legend” when he was awarded, along with 15 others, the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, saying “history flows through Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow–High Bird.”

Since the war, Medicine Crow has maintained that he did not realize while serving that he had carried out the four warrior deeds, which include seizing an enemy’s weapon, coming into contact with him in hand-to-hand combat without taking his life, stealing an enemy’s horses and leading a successful war party.

The revelation came only after he returned home, when men of his grandfather's generation asked him to tell his stories from the 103rd Infantry Division.

He told of how he disarmed a German soldier during a raid and how in hand-to-hand combat he had his foe by the throat but spared his life in a moment of empathy. He told how he led six men up a hill under mortar fire at the German Siegfried line to retrieve explosives for his unit and how he raided a farmhouse corral with permission from his commanding officer and made away with German horses, leaving the Nazis without their steeds for escape.

While on horseback, he spontaneously broke into a Crow praise song, he said in his memoir, “Counting Coup,” published by National Geographic in 2006.

// posted by montag @ 1:12 PM