The Woman Who Loved Mankind: The Life of a 20th-Century Crow Elder

MontanaHistoricalSociety

Mardell Hogan Plainfeather, who is retired from the National Park Service, shares the story of her mother, Lillian Bullshows Hogan (1905–2003). Hogan grew up on the Crow Indian Reservation, learned traditional arts and food gathering from her mother, survived the bitterness of Indian boarding school, and grew up to be a complex, hard-working Native woman who drove a car, maintained a bank account, and read the local English paper. Hogan spoke Crow as her first language, practiced beadwork, tanned hides, honored clan relatives in generous giveaways, and often visited the last of the old chiefs and berdaches with her family.