Joe Medicine Crow relates the history of the early boarding school on the Crow reservation

Chief Medicine Crow tells how the boarding schools on reservations were places of intense work and terrible conditions for the children that were required to live there due to government regulations. He includes a tragic story about his grandfather who had to bring a Nez Perce boy to one of these schools. Joe Medicine Crow (1913-2016) was the Crow Tribal Historian and a revered elder of the Crow tribe. In 1939, he was the first member of the Crow tribe to obtain a master’s degree. His Master’s thesis, “The Effects of European Culture Contact upon the Economic, Social, and Religious Life of the Crow Indians,” remains the most widely read source on Crow culture. He received honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Southern California and Rocky Mountain College. Medicine Crow was the last traditional Plains war chief, having achieved the war deeds necessary to be declared a “chief” during World War II.