Joe Medicine Crow passes

Chief Tango sends us inks to the story of Joe Medicine Crow, known as JoeCrow to his friends, who passed away on April 3rd at the tender age of 102 years young. He was the historian of the Crow Nation as well as a sailor and an infantryman in World War II and the last Crow Nation War Chief. From the Washington Post;

The National Park Service described Mr. Medicine Crow, who was 11 when his grandfather Whiteman Runs Him died, as “the last living person with a direct oral history from a participant of the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876,” where Custer was killed and his forces overwhelmingly defeated.

Years later, Mr. Medicine Crow would observe that the Indians had “won the battle and lost a way of life.”

He earned his “war chief” creds in World War II according to the Billings Gazette;

Born Oct. 7, 1913, Medicine Crow was the official Crow Tribe historian. He was a Crow war chief, having completed the required four war deeds while serving in the Army during World War II.

Those deeds included leading a war party, touching the first fallen enemy and stealing his weapon, and entering an enemy camp and stealing horses.

“I never got a scratch,” he recalled about 60 years later.

Wiki tells the story of one encounter that he had with a German soldier;

He touched a living enemy soldier and disarmed an enemy when he turned a corner and found himself face to face with a young German soldier:

“The collision knocked the German’s weapon to the ground. Mr. Crow lowered his own weapon and the two fought hand-to-hand. In the end Mr. Crow got the best of the German, grabbing him by the neck and choking him. He was going to kill the German soldier on the spot when the man screamed out ‘momma.’ Mr. Crow then let him go.”

He also led a successful war party and stole fifty horses from a battalion of German SS-officers, singing a traditional Crow honor song as he rode off. He is the last member of the Crow tribe to become a war chief.[3] Of his story, documentarian Ken Burns said, “The story of Joseph Medicine Crow is something I’ve wanted to tell for 20 years.” Medicine Crow was interviewed and appeared in the 2007 Ken Burns PBS series The War, describing his World War II service.

Category: We Remember