SWA 5

The Crow went through an unprecedented cultural collapse which changed their entire
view of their virtues. The destruction of their warrior culture through the killing of the buffalo
and the move to the reservation cause the crow to have no idea how to interpret their lives and
how to find happiness through their tradition. Courage was the centerpiece of crow culture and
that courage hinged on their warrior culture. Courage was shown through being a great daring
warrior so when the ability to be a daring warrior was completely taken away from them they did
not know how to respond and derive happiness and a good life from courage anymore. It's not
that they lost all of their courage, it's that they didn't know how to understand courage anymore.
So how would they learn to understand and reimagine their courage when the buffalo go away
and they are forced to move away to the reservation. How was their courage different from their
warrior nomadic life and their reservation life devoid of the need for war.

How the crow showed their courage before their move to the reservation is through
being a warrior gathering coups to be counted. To be daring, take a look into the face of death
and show no fear to not back down in this type of situation. To venture into an enemy tribe's
camp and tap the chief on the head with your coup stick. This courage was happiness for the
crow. It was how they achieved a good life. The crows warrior culture was everything to them.
Their courage, shame, guilt and happiness revolves entirely around their warrior culture. Their
entire psychological structure was built through their experience with their warrior culture.
Through counting coups, through warfare and drawing lines in the sand exclaiming to the enemy
no person who is not a crow warrior shall pass and if one chooses to still attempt to pass the
boundaries of which I have drawn will face the wrath of my courage. I will fight to the death so
that I may have coups of which I can count. They faced annihilation through the Sioux so
drawing boundaries and defending those boundaries to the death was important to the crows
warrior culture they had to show that their boundaries were imperatuble by performing
courageous actions. Their courage had purpose it had meaning it was the centerpiece of the
crows warrior culture. Their acts of courage had great meaning to the crows' way of life. Courage
was the means in which the crow lived a good and happy life. So when the traditional way they
showed off their courage disappeared, this devastated them because they no longer understood
how to show their courage or what their courage meant. Counting coups no longer held any
meaning because they didn't understand their courage anymore. That meaning had all gone away
with the destruction of the buffalo and their warrior culture. With no warfare there was no
courage, with no courage there were no coups because being a warrior was no longer an
achievable way of life the move to the reservation killed that and as a result they no longer knew
how to achieve the good life that they understood from before. What it meant to be a crow had
changed. Their traditions had been altered drastically. Their whole culture had collapsed after
the buffalo and their nomadic lifestyle went away. They were still doing their traditions but they
all had lost their meaning. The warrior culture was happiness for them so they couldn't obtain
happiness when that culture was destroyed. They had to leave their traditions behind because
everything had been watered down so heavily nothing had any significance to them anymore. We
experience time through the meaningfulness of our actions so when you take away meaning from
your traditions it's like nothing is happening. They had to learn how to show courage in a new
way that embraced their new life instead of just hopelessly sticking to the nostalgia of their
traditional life. This is how the crow showed their courage on the reservation

For the crow people courage was the most important virtue. After the collapse of their
society they had no way to avoid shame and guilt; these actions were no longer available. The
standard of what is appropriate and inappropriate has changed. They had to transform their
couragem. The crow had to develop entirely new values whilst still retaining their virtues. A
glimpse into how the crow's courage would change was seen in young plenty's dream of the four
storms destroying the forest and only the chickadee surviving. The virtue of the Chickadee
would be the new face of crow courage during life on the reservation. Courage now meant facing
new cultures with openness with the hope that new good would come from that openness. Not by
blind optimission the type that whips his tail had when he performed the last coup. Trying to
stick to the old way of life whilst ignoring the reality of their cultural collapse. But by embracing
and understanding the reality of their situation of their cultural collapse. Plenty Coups was a
courageous person because he understood the reality of the crows' cultural devastation and
embraced the new in order to create a good life for the crow once again. The challenge was
changing and transforming that courage of which they knew into the new courage that plenty
coups had. Courage under reservation life was no longer warrior culture but was now radical
hope. The radical hope that plenty of coup had required recognition that their way was
devastated he acknowledged that when he placed his coup stick in the tomb of the unknown
soldier. They had to be open to new goods. Plenty coups did not know signing the treaty with the
Americans was good but he had the courage to do it anyway in order to create a new good life
for his people. He embraced and improved European culture by intermixing their own culture
within it he took this unknown and wove it into what it meant to be crow. And because of that
embracement of new goods the crow survived this cultural devastation by having the courage to
hope for new goods. The courage to embrace the unknown whilst letting go of the know and
have hope that new goods will come about. Radical hope was the crow's way of understanding
and making sense of the most important virtue in their society: courage. Courage changed from
warrior culture to radical hope. The belief that something good would come by embracing the
new and rearranging what they had known to improve the that they were learning. Not burying
your head in the sand and ignoring the reality of your situation but embracing that situation and
having hope that new good would come from that realization that your way of achieving a good
life is no longer attainable.
 That is how their courage transformed from their warrior life of warfare and counting
coups to the move to reservation. It was no longer about showing courage through dangerous
acts of bravery but by having radical hope that a new good life can be achieved even with the
cultural devastation that they had been through. To embrace the new and unknown. It's the same
bravery but experienced and understood differently. This is the difference between the courage
understood during their nomadic life and their life on the reservation. Radical hope was how it
was transformed and understood,