Permanent plaque at Chief Plenty Coup monument site

A quote from Linderman’s biography of Plenty Coups, “The buffalo gone and freedom denied him, the Indian was visited by two equally hideous strangers, famine and tuberculosis. He could cope with neither.  His pride broken he felt himself an outcast, a beggar in his own country."      

It was now that Plenty Coups became the real leader of his people. 

In an interview Plenty Coups made a statement that reveals his greatness:

All my life I have tried to learn as the chickadee learns by listening,  profiting by the mistakes of others,  that I may help my people.  I hear the white man say there will be no more war.  But this cannot be true.  There will be other wars.  Men have not changed, and whenever they quarrel they will fight as they have always done.

We love our country because it is beautiful, because we were born here.  Strangers will covet it and someday try to possess it as surely as the sun will come tomorrow.  Then there must be war, unless we have grown to be cowards without love in our hearts for our native land.  And whenever war comes between this country and another.  Your people will find my people pointing their guns with yours.  “If ever the hands of my people hold the rope that keeps this country’s flag high in the air, it will never come down while an Absarokee (Crow) warrior lives.

Crow country once ranged from Three Forks to the Black Hills, from  the Musselshell to the Big Horn Mountains.  Red Lodge was a place of worship, food and protection for the Crow people when it was theirs.   Please respect it and love it.  It is a very good place.

This monument to Plenty Coups chief of the crows, was made possible by Tom and Gail Hansberger of the Palisades Ranch through the Hansberger Family Foundation and art collectors of miniatures of the monument

Dedicated the 3rd day of July 1999 by Barney Old Coyote, Francis Stewart and friends of Plenty Coups.