Apsaalooke Hiraaca

The Crow, or Apsáalooke, and the Hidatsa, or Hiraacá, are two related Missouri River Siouan peoples. Both are said to have come from the Ohio country, and they settled south of Lake Winnipeg in the twelfth or thirteenth century, where they farmed and hunted bison in villages.

The Hidatsa later settled the Knife River in what is now North Dakota, taking up farming in permanent earthlodge villages. The Ojibwe and Cree drove the Crow west to the upper Missouri in the mid-sixteenth century. In the late seventeenth century they split from the Hidatsa and moved to the Yellowstone valley, and from about 1730 they adopted the horse to hunt buffalo on the Plains.