ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the historic Crow culture and the place of the warrior ethic within it in order to elucidate how the war honor system relates to the production of rock art. The rock art that Crow people categorize as human produced and call bahpawaalaatuua, or rock writing, was primarily created by warriors during the protohistoric and historic periods and is a component of the classic Plains Indian horse culture and its ranking of war honors. Historic Crow people believed that success in war could only be achieved with spiritual assistance. One Crow consultant whose family owns a Pipe Owners pipe said the pipe had the ability to chichilik/seek out or hunt down the enemy. The historic Crow held a periodic ceremony that shared basic traits with other Northern Plains tribal ceremonies, commonly classified as Sun Dance. The original Crow Sun Dance derived from the ancestral Hidatsa Hide Beating Ceremony.
