Why did some tribes support the white man while some did not?

At the time when the white man and the Indians were fighting, many Indian tribes were also fighting each other for the last of the great buffalo hunting areas. The Crow Indians and the other tribes did not have enough warriors to win. They chose to help the white man because they thought it would help them survive. The Crow Indians made decisions very early to ally with the white men and assist them. They became allies because they were at the same time battling with the various tribes, such as the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho and Blackfeet, who were all competing for this area: the last of the great buffalo hunting areas.

This alliance only made sense since the white men who came into this area were also battling those groups. Drawing upon the visions of Plenty Coups and others, they knew that because they were a less populace tribe they had to have a powerful ally to survive. There were many other commonsense reasons for them to help the white man. Gradually, more white men came into the area. They established military forts in the 1860s, such as Fort Phil Kearney in Wyoming, Fort Smith on the Bighorn River, to protect the Bozeman Trail. They built Fort Custer in 1877 at the confluence of the Little Bighorn and Bighorn Rivers in the Hardin area. This fort came into place after the Custer Battle and existed for about 20 years until it was dismantled in 1903. From: Chief Plenty Coups State Park Museum Tour Content