page_title: Crow Flies High
section_title: The Garden Coulee village
hierarchical_section_title: Crow Flies High / The Garden Coulee village
caption_attribution_description: English: The village of Hidatsa chief Crow Flies High near Fort Buford, North Dakota and the Fort Berthold Indian reservation established 1970. Small map shows boundaries of the Three Tribes according to the Fort Laramie treaty (1851)
context_page_description: Crow Flies High was the chief of a band of dissident Hidatsa people from 1870 until their band joined the reservation system in 1894. This band was one of the last to settle on an Indian reservation. A North Dakota State Park is named after him.
context_section_description: The dissident band settled on the north bank of the Missouri, about two miles above the mouth of Yellowstone River on an outlying part of the Fort Buford Military Reservation (see Map 1). Nearby Fort Buford reduced the risk of attacks on the small village from the Sioux and it provided a market for furs and robes. The Hidatsa had never fought the U.S. Army and the garrison accepted them in the area.  The new settlement consisted mostly of log cabins, earth lodges, and a number of families dug storage pits.
  In 1886, Crow Flies High described the early years in the settlement near Garden Coulee. "We subsisted ourselves by hunting Buffalo and Deer ... and selling our hides at Fort Buford". Gardens were laid out as bison became rare. Some of the people enlisted early as scouts and hunters at the fort and received regular pay. Prostitution and begging at the fort occurred when game went scarce. Captain Charles A. Coolidge provided for a number of aged and needy villagers in 1880. On one occasion, Crow Flies High quickly paid damages for a few heads of domestic cattle butchered by young men from the village.
  Regularly, families resettled at Like-a-Fishhook Village, while new ones joined the dissidents and moved into vacated log houses. The average population was around 150 when the village was inhabited. It served mainly as a place for the winter and as a stopover for Hidatsa hunting camps going up Yellowstone River. The Garden Coulee villagers received government rations during visits to Like a Fishhook village. 
  With time, Crow Flies High was recognized chief of the village.
caption: Map 1. Garden Coulee village of Hidatsa chief Crow Flies High. The little map shows the 1851 treaty territory of the Hidatsa, Mandan and Arikara
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