Crows (people)

“ The Crows are airing themselves this mild day; they are out in large flocks sailing slowly over the valley, and just rising above the crest of the hills as they come and go; they never seem to soar far above the woods. This afternoon a large flock alighted on the naked trees of a meadow south of the village; there were probably a hundred or two of them, for three large trees were quite black with them. The country people say it is a sign of pestilence, when the crows show themselves in large flocks in winter ”

“ The ‘Crow-Killer’ is a great warrior; he steals like a snake into the lodges of the Crows and he overcomes the great chief, the ‘White Vulture,’ in single fight; the blood of the Crow braves is red upon his hands; their spirits cry from the white clouds for vengeance. ”

“ In forest arms the night will soonest creep,
Where sombre pines a lullaby intone,
Where Nature's children curl themselves to sleep,
And all is still at last, save where alone
A band of black, belated crows arrive from lands unknown. ”

“ A crow, however, has no real pretensions to religion, in spite of his gravity of mien and black attire. Crows are certainly thieves, and probably infidels. Nevertheless, their voices yesterday were in admirable accordance with the influences of the quiet, sunny, warm, yet autumnal afternoon. ”

“ The plumage of the Crow in the northern parts of the world is black, and we are so accustomed to that color that to speak of a white or of a spotted Crow might subject one to ridicule, yet in many parts of the world such Crows are found. Some are gray and black, and some species are larger than others. ”

“ The Crows are a brave nation,—the bravest of all the Injuns; they fight like the white man; they don't kill you in the dark like the Black-foot varmint, and then take your scalp and run, the cowardly reptiles. ”

“ Everybody knows the Common Crow that goes caw-cawing over the fields through the long summer day, and hunts in the freshly-turned furrows for grubs and wire-worms, and settles down upon the marshes where the white flocks are feeding, dotting them here and there with great black spots, as though some literary giant had taken too much ink in his pen, and scattered it out over the landscape before he began to write. Oh yes, everybody knows the familiar Crow, called by scientific people Corvus corone, Latin and Greek again for the same thing—a Crow! ”

“ They died in the moors and were not buried.
Their flesh was the food of crows.
"Tell the crows we are not afraid;
We have died in the moors and cannot be buried.
Crows, how can our bodies escape you?" ”

“ Crows, when caught young, learn to talk plainly, if pains be taken to repeat certain phrases to them, and they become exceedingly impudent and troublesome. Like all of their tribe, they will steal and hide silver or other bright objects, of which they can make no possible use. ”

“ Crows, that worry the sunless west?
Thieves and villains, you shameless things!
Black your record as black your wings.
Tell me, birds of the inky hue,
Plunderous rogues—to-day have you
Seen with mischievous, prying eyes
Lands where earlier suns arise? ”

“ He is now the ‘great fighting-man of the Crow nation.’ Does the ‘Crow-Killer’ understand? the ‘White Vulture’ is his son! That son, to-night, has given him into the hands of the Crows. The ‘Crow-Killer’ has killed many a young warrior of the Crow nation, but the red chiefs will be avenged, for the ‘Crow-Killer’ will die and know that his son is a great Chief of the Crow nation, and that son hates and will kill the whites. ”

“ He has ever since maintained that the Crows are not so black as they are painted. "Trust to their honor," says he, "and you are safe: trust to their honesty, and they will steal the hair off your head." ”

“ "Well, madam, put a good face on it, and don't seem to be on the look-out for crows, else you'll set other people watching. ”

“ Silverspot.
Crows are, as you must know, our most intelligent birds.—'Wise as an old crow' did not become a saying without good reason. Crows know the value of organization, and are as well drilled as soldiers—very much better than some soldiers, in fact, for crows are always on duty, always at war, and always dependent on each other for life and safety. Their leaders not only are the oldest and wisest of the band, but also the strongest and bravest, for they must be ready at any time with sheer force to put down an upstart or a rebel. ”

“ THE CROWS AND THE HAWK.
There was once, in a certain desert, a spacious valley, full of streams and trees and fruits and birds singing the praises of God, the One, the All-powerful, Creator of day and night; and among them was a troop of crows, which led the goodliest of lives under the governance of one of their number, who ruled them with mildness and benignity, so that they were with him in peace and security; and by reason of their wise ordinance of their affairs, none of the other birds could avail against them. ”

“ These too are more exclusively arboreal than the other Corvidæ, which walk a great deal on the ground.
The Crows are birds of firm and compact structure; their wings are long, pointed, and powerful; their feet and claws robust. In disposition they are bold and daring, extremely sagacious, easily tamed and made familiar. Most of them have the faculty of imitating the sounds which they hear, and even the words of human language, with much precision, but their natural voices are loud, harsh, and guttural. ”

“ A crow once dwelt in a tree, he and his wife, in all delight of life, till they came to the time of the hatching of their young, which was the midsummer season, when a Serpent issued from its hole and crawled up the tree wriggling around the branches till it came to the Crows’ nest, where it coiled itself up and there abode all the days of the summer, whilst the Crow was driven away and found no opportunity to clear his home nor any place wherein to lie. ”

“ The Crows, like the Blackfeet, are beautifully costumed, and perhaps with somewhat more of taste and elegance; inasmuch as the skins of which their dresses are made are more delicately and whitely dressed. ”

“ The Crows flew away, but in a little while returned, and cried once more: “Sparrow, Sparrow, have pity on us and give us shelter, for the wind blows and the rain beats, and the prickly-pear hedge-thorns stick into our eyes.” ”

“ If the gray, or hoodie, crow—always remembering that crows, gray or black, are servants of the Devil, just as ravens are, and very cunning—if the crow, I say, thought that here was food without some horrible form of hidden death lurking behind it, then the chances were the gray crow was right. ”

“ We rarely discover in any one story so many of the mythological characteristics of the crow as are associated together here; the ill-omened gallows, the black night, the more than human wisdom of the crows, their knowledge of prophecy, and the healing art befitting Apollo's birds, their power of obtaining water, and lastly their malignant nature ”

“ Crows from all parts of the world here live together in one neighborhood, and that the chattering and laughter was loud here did not surprise me, neither that the European crows so well maintained their place among their fellows. That which, however, astonished and delighted me was, the sweet flute-like melodious tones of the Australian crow. In the presence of this crow from Paradise—for originally it must have come therefrom—it seemed to me that all the other crows ought to have kept silence with their senseless chattering. ”

“ You remember that I told you the relationship of birds depends upon their likeness in the bones and the rest of their inwards, not upon the color of their feathers."
"See! there are a great many Crows on that sandbar! They are picking up mussels! Some are bigger than others!" said Rap, who had been taking a look through the field-glass. "Are the small ones the females, or are there two kinds of Crows?"
"There are several kinds of Crows in the United States, besides Ravens and Magpies, who are cousins to the Crow. ”

“ Birds of prey are very numerous here, and wherever I am in my chamber, I know not how many are watching me from the top of the adjacent buildings. Crows are another species of bird as interesting as they are dreary. They inhabit the riversides where the Indians throw their dead ”

“ The next speaker was a Crow chief, who, standing by the council-table, said,—
"Sioux, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Crows, Father: I have been listening to your words, and they sound good. I hope you are not lying to each other. The Crows have long been the friends of the whites, and we want peace for all. We want powder, and when the white Father makes us presents, I want him to give us a good deal of ammunition." ”

“ Aiming at the sun, though a good and virtuous exercise, as we have all heard, is apt to prove dispiriting to sensible marksmen. Crows (fish crows, in all probability, but at the time I did not know it) uttered strange, hoarse, flat-sounding caws. Every bird of them must have been born without a palate, it seemed to me. White-eyed chewinks were at home in the dense palmetto scrub, whence they announced themselves unmistakably by sharp whistles. Now and then one of them mounted a leaf, and allowed me to see his pale yellow iris. ”

“ Thus, if there are no Crows present the farmer and sportsman are probably largely to blame, and the question then resolves itself into the economic one as to which does most harm, the Crows or the white grubs. ”

“ The native and self followed the notes a long time without seeing the bird, the song always keeping ahead as we walked. We were returning to camp somewhat disgusted, when I saw two black and white birds fiercely attacking a Crow. On going that way we noticed a bulky nest in a tree about twenty-five feet from the ground. Feeling sure this was the nest of the strangers, we sat down to wait; but the Crows made most persistent and daring attempts to steal the eggs above us. Before long one of the birds returned to drive off the Crows, and I shot it. ”

“ He increased the pressure to let Little Eagle know that he thought they should make a new plan.
“Those two Crows are great warriors,” Angry Wolf whispered. “They have been sent to keep watch during the night between our camp and the other Crow camp. They will make your trip far more dangerous.” ”

“ The crows are cawing. Do you hear, the crows are cawing. From whence have they all gathered? The sky is black with them; they settle down beside us, having lost all fear, and follow us everywhere; and we are always underneath them, like under a black lace sunshade or a moving tree with black leaves. ”

“ Away went the wife home, with her mind disburthened of the awful secret; whilst her friend hastened to her next neighbor, and retailed the story, only with the addition of one more crow. The next edition of the legend rose to four; and at last, when the story had gone round the gossips of the village, a flock of forty crows were reported to have flown from the poor man’s mouth; and there were not a few who remembered seeing the black legion on the wing from the man’s window. ”

“ It prostrates your superior knowledge, your enlarged capacities for happiness, your cultivated understandings. It breaks your strong laws; it rots down your strong houses; it buries you in the filthiest ditch of sin. Send it not to us; we would rather die by the arrows of the Blackfeet."
The Crows [159] are a wandering tribe, and {33} usually found in the upper plains around the head-waters of the north fork of Great Platte, Snake, and Yellowstone rivers. ”

“ Birds sympathize with one another in their distress, and will make common cause against an enemy. Crows will pursue and fight a tame crow. They seem to look upon him as an alien and an enemy. He is never so shapely and bright and polished as his wild brother. ”

“ I learned that the Crows had the first horses that the Blackfeet tribes ever saw, and that they were almost paralyzed with astonishment when they saw men mount the strange, big animals and guide them in whatever direction they wished to go. ”

“ Crows stay with us through a very mild winter, but more often are off to the sea, thirty miles distant, to grow fat on periwinkles; and very rarely indeed a winter wren or a song-sparrow remains with us. The beautiful cream-white snow-buntings, cross-bills, fat handsome pine-grosbeaks, golden-crowned kinglets, brown-creepers, and those pirates, the butcher birds, come for short winter visits. ”

“ In such a mental stage the men “Crows” identify themselves with the actual Crow species: the birds are now “of their flesh,” are fabled to be their ancestors, or the men have been evolved out of the birds. The Crow is sacro-sanct, a friend and protector, and a centre of taboos, one of which is the prohibition preventing a Crow man from intercourse with a Crow woman, “however far apart their hunting grounds may have been.” All men and women Crows are recognized as brothers and sisters in the Crow, and are not intermarriageable. ”

“ My friend, the late Patrick O'Leary, found a story called the "Three Crows," something like this, where the crows talk as the cats do in our story, and where they end by picking out the two bad men's eyes, but there is no bet made, the man is simply robbed and blinded for no particular reason. ”

“ Can one bird tell another anything? it will be asked. To this I answer that, if any one has watched a colony of brooding krakles, or paid close attention to a flock of crows, he has probably satisfied himself upon this point. Crows have twenty-seven distinct cries, calls, or utterances, each readily distinguishable from the other, and each having an unmistakable connection with a certain class of actions; some of which, as, for instance, the many different notes of the brooding-birds, are only heard at certain seasons. ”

“ The Great Spirit is satisfied, and our warriors in the spirit-land are satisfied. Let them now make peace with the Crows.”
“What our father tells us is hard to do,” replied Black Horse. “If we should now send to the Crows to ask for peace, they would kill the messengers.”
“You have a white captive, whom you call Burnt Face. He is a friend of the Crows, and has great influence among them. ”