BILLINGS AND THE BIG OPEN - Montana and Wyoming - page 58

of Big Timber, 60 miles northeast of Red Lodge, and 46 miles west of Hardin. In Wyoming,
Cody is 106 miles away, and it is 130 miles to Sheridan.
GETTING AROUND
At the Billings airport, Enterprise, Thrifty, Dollar, Hertz, Alamo, Avis, Budget and Na-
tional have on-site car-rental counters.
There are two taxi services available: City Cab (406/252-8700) and Yellow Cab (406/
245-3033). There is no taxi stand at the airport, so call ahead if you want to be picked up.
MET transit (406/657-8218, www.mettransit.com , 5:50am-6:40pm Mon.-Fri.,
8:10am-5:45pm Sat., $1.25) offers bus service throughout Billings, and although there are
marked bus stops around the city, you can also flag them down at any corner. Booklets with
routes and schedules are available at most banks, convenience stores, grocery stores, the
library, and government offices.
Crow and Northern Cheyenne Reservations
Southeastern Montana is a ruggedly beautiful part of the state, with vast prairies, dramatic
canyons, and stark badlands. The land is dry and brittle in places, but the people here are
tenacious, having been ordered to occupy this region in the aftermath of the Fort Lara-
mie Treaty of 1851. The two tribes in this part of the state—the Crow and the Northern
Cheyenne—have managed to preserve their cultures and build remarkable, if struggling,
communities with little more than steadfast determination. They have done much to show-
case the people, places, and events that have impacted their own destinies and shaped and
defined much of Montana and the West.
The story of the Crow Indian Reservation is all too familiar and tragic. The 1851 Fort
Laramie Treaty recognized almost all of the Yellowstone Valley as Crow territory. Mining
claims and a dramatic increase in the number of settlers traveling through the region led to
conflict and a second treaty in 1868, which, even though the vast majority of Crow refused
to sign it, significantly reduced the size of their territory. The discovery of gold on Crow
land shortly after the second treaty led to a third treaty in 1873, which moved the Crow
again to a much smaller reservation in central Montana's Judith Basin. Neither the Crow
nor the white cattlemen settling in the region were pleased with the arrangement, and after
much debate in Washington, D.C., the Crow Reservation was moved farther east and fur-
ther diminished in size.