Newton Old Crow, tribal elder, Army veteran, Sun Dancer.

The original and preferred name for the Crow people is Apśaalooke, which translates to “Children of the Large-Beaked Bird,” i.e., a raven. Early French Trappers diminished this name to Crow.

In 1880, a delegation of Crow chiefs traveled from Montana to Washington, DC, to meet President Ulysses S. Grant to discuss Crow territorial boundaries in Montana. Newton’s grandfather, Chief Old Crow, was a member of that historic delegation.

I photographed Newton Old Crow twice in 2021 and we became friends. The following year, at ninety-one years old, Newton chose to stop his cancer treatments. In his words, he was “ready to go home.”

In the autumn of 2022, Rheanna Menges, my gallery manager, and I were photographing on Crow when we were told that Newton was in the hospital, dying. A surprising number of Crow people told us we must visit him. When we arrived, his entire family was in his room. A medicine man was beating a small drum and singing in the Crow language. Newton was in a coma. He died three hours later. That visit had a deep spiritual, almost mystical, impact on Rheanna and I.

Robert Osborn