Lodge Grass: Valley of the Chiefs

Lodge Grass sits at the confluence of Lodge Grass Creek and the Little Bighorn River, in the heart of the Crow Indian Reservation. The name came from a translation error: the Crow called the creek Greasy Grass, referring to the rich grass that grew along its banks, but the Crow words for grease and lodge sound similar enough that early translators wrote it down wrong. The name Lodge Grass stuck.

The place itself has always been Crow country. Traditional summer hunting camps occupied this valley for generations before any post office or general store arrived. Lodge Grass is known as the Valley of the Chiefs, and it earned the title: the town is the birthplace of Joseph Medicine Crow, the last traditional war chief of the Crow Nation, who became also the tribe's first person to earn a graduate degree and one of its most celebrated historians.