Crow Native Little Nest Posing in Pryor, MT, 1941

Captured here is a beautiful photograph of the Crow native known as Little Nest, posing near the Pryor Mountains in 1941.  There is a look of pride on his face, and his head is held high.

Little Nest was the owner of a renowned medicine bundle known as lise-shoobaa or Four Faces.  A medicine bundle is usually a leather bag containing sacred items, believed to convey power to the owner.  The items inside might be animal teeth, seeds, small bones, pine cones, herbs, or other items that have spiritual significance.  Often times the contents of the bundle were gathered while on a vision quest, particularly important to the Crow tribe, who traditionally performed their vision quests in the Pryor Mountains.  Perhaps the most important Crow visionary was Plenty Coups, who was given a vision of the North American bison disappearing and being replaced by cattle by one of the famous Pryor Mountains "little people."

Four Faces was passed down through Little Nest's family, and is now in possession of his grandson Marvin Stewart. 

Medicine bundles, or something like them, are not specific to Native American cultures - the 5000-year-old corpse of a man found in the Swiss Alps had something very like a medicine bundle nearby, and images of small, sacred leather bags have been found in prehistoric sites in Turkey dating back to 10,000 BC.