JOSEPH      FIRECROW
Northern Cheyenne Fluteman
by Lorrie Sarafin  
Copyright © 1998  All Rights Reserved

Joseph FireCrow's second CD, "Cheyenne Nation" was nominated for a
GRAMMY.  Both "Cheyenne Nation" and his first CD, simply entitled
"FireCrow" are available on the Makoche label. He makes his home in
Connecticut.

Remember the very first time you heard the Native American flute? Chances are 
it was a pleasant, positive experience. Not for Northern Cheyenne Joseph Fire Crow. 
"When I was a little boy on the reservation back in 1963 or ’64 Grover Wolf Voice 
was the old fluteman. He died in 1970, but he played the flute in the evening time 
and when I first heard it, you know, it scared me. My parents were constantly 
fighting and making promises they couldn’t keep. There was drinking, violence - 
that kind of stuff going on. It’s hard to lose these things. The Creator has given us 
so much and then when things start to go totally awry you wonder why; or having 
no concept you just try to ride it out. When I heard the flute then, it reached out and 
touched my heart and I said, "No, don’t. I don’t want to feel this. I’m scared." It wasn’t that 
I wasn’t aware of what was going on. I was angry and hurt, and the music only 
amplified these things."

Fire Crow, born and raised in Montana on the Northern Cheyenne reservation, grew up in 
a small log cabin with no running water and an outside toilet until the house burned down 
and the family went to live with his grandparents. It was a difficult time. "One day we had food, 
and the next we were starving or eating raw potatoes and flour." As part of the 
Mormon Indian Placement Program, Fire Crow left the reservation at age nine and joined 
a foster family in Seattle. During those years in the Mormon Indian Placement Program he 
would return to the reservation to visit blood relatives, but was teased and ostracized. 
"When I first went home, I sat in with my uncle’s drum group and there were certain members 
who said, ‘What are you doing here? Are you trying to be an Indian?’ I started to stay away 
more and more. I spoke fluent Cheyenne when I was a young boy and knew phrases and 
commands when I was teenager but forgot how to say ‘the’ and ‘was’ and so when I went 
home to visit it was like reverse discrimination. I went home at 23 and it took ten years 
before I could go to a Sun Dance or pow-wow with friends and peers and not feel 
any barriers or separation."

The flute came back into his life at age 18 when he attended Brigham Young University 
and took a course on Native American music taught by John Rainer, Jr. "I had no idea who he was. 
It had been many years since I was a young boy with Grover Wolf Voice, and when he had 
died, everyone thought the flute had died with him: you know, how to go look for the wood, 
the kind of prayer that you say and what you offer, asking permission, these things. Rainer 
taught me that the flute is a part of me and that I have to give part of myself to the flute. 
Right away I wrote my first song. I played the flute for a year and a half in the Intertribal Choir, 
but I was very selfish with it. I liked the spotlight and I let it go to my head. 

One of the hardest things that one has to learn and be careful about, is not to show off with 
the flute, or to be egotistical with it. You can only do that for so long and then your creativity leaves.

Whenever you put something ahead of what you know is right, then it’s like your flutes are 
angry with you. And they tell you, when you pick them up, ‘I don’t want you to touch me. 
Leave me alone until you straighten your life out.’ And then you do. And then you go back 
to them. It sounds kind of goofy, but the ones that do know, understand fully what I mean. 

But try telling that to someone who’s walking down the street and it’s like picking up a rock 
and trying to have a conversation with it. Ego has no place with the flute.  I know what it’s 
like to have all the attention. Especially in college I loved the attention all the girls 
gave me and the impulse to pick the flute up became less and less. There were no 
more songs coming to me. And my very first flute, 
I don’t know where it’s at. That was taken, too. It’s the price I paid for my arrogance. 
My creativity was not so great after that and I stopped playing for 12 years."


Fire Crow once again left the flute behind and ended up working for the Montana Power 
Company for ten years. "When I look back on my working life with the power industry, 
I spent a great deal of time tearing the earth apart. I was cutting down trees, digging into 
the earth for coal. I remember standing there once looking at land just north of my reservation 
where I was working. It looked like the moon and I wondered what the hell I was doing. The 
flute came back into my life in my early 30’s and I started playing again. My brother Ron and 
I both had learned how to make flutes from Rainer. We then went back to our people and 
learned more about our traditional flute. And from there we have combined both but yet keep 
them separate. If I make a flute in the traditional way, seeking out the wood, using pine gum 
to seal the flute, using hand and arm measurements, burning the holes in; the flute will be 
given to a family member. For someone else, I would go to Home Depot and get the wood."

Fire Crow believes those who play "as if the flute speaks to them" should try to make their 
own flutes. "When you make a flute, you use your own two hands. As you form that wood, 
your hands are doing the work. The Cheyenne people pray with their hands open, and 
you also pass energy through your hands. You handle the flute with your hands and you have 
that special relationship with your flute. This piece of wood usually comes from a main branch 
or the trunk itself, red cedar or juniper. And it’s the red core part that you want. And I’ve got 
some that was gotten the old way. You go look for it and it takes a long time. Each person 
has his own way of finding it; some use a tobacco blend, prayer, whatever. But you don’t talk 
about it to anybody. And the wood will speak to you. It’s like a voice and you feel it. You talk 
to it and you kind of have an understanding because it’s going to teach you a lot about who 
you are. You take that wood out each little bit at a time. You can sing, whatever, and keep 
good thoughts. Selfish thoughts, ulterior motives; those self seeking things take away from 
the flute. You can’t use that. You hurt people that way. When that flute goes together you’ve 
made that flute from the inside out. You know how the grain goes. You know which way it 
changes. You know exactly how that flute is carved on the inside. It’s taught you a lot 
about your patience, your tolerance; whether it’s pain because you cut your finger. I’ve even 
run a chisel almost through my whole hand and had to cancel two months worth of work. 
This flute is like a person almost. It has it’s own voice. Machines are good and you can get 
a really good sound, but that’s kind of rare in those instances. You can end up with a good 
flute almost every time if you take the time to listen to the wood and what it has to teach you 
and what you have to give to it. Some of the most beautiful flutes I’ve ever seen are just the 
most simplest looking things and some of the worst sounding flutes are quite beautiful and 
over-priced."

Traditionally, the Cheyenne used the flute for social rather than ceremonial purposes. 
"Today we still live in our societies on the rez. The flute has 
always been there. And the thing about it is that the flute for the Cheyenne people is 
totally social, it’s nothing to do with ceremony."

More and more, non-natives are picking up the flute. Fire Crow says that’s inevitable. 
"The flute is for everyone. Times have changed, and it’s not just for men anymore or 
my people and it’s wonderful to see women picking up the flute and playing. I think that if 
there’s anyone more in tune with their emotions, it’s that women are. Their medicine is very 
very powerful. It’s taken me a long time to understand the strength of women. It’s far greater 
than men. The flute teaches you compassion, love. But these things don’t happen immediately. 
It takes time. 

It’s easy to say the sound is ‘haunting’ or ‘melancholy’. The thing about words like 
that is that it depends on your point of view. I can play one song somewhere and when a 
handful of people come up to me afterwards to tell me how the music moved
them, the emotions can range from anger to peace and serenity. We carry a shield with 
us all the time, and it tells everybody who we are, and this shield is also a mirror. You look 
into this, and you see yourself. We call this the medicine of the flute. It makes you want to 
reach out to those emotions. Some people do it involuntarily and some people really have 
to try hard with the emotion to finally get through it and express it and then accept it. In a lot 
of cases people deny their emotions all through their lives and so that’s why you have people 
who really like the flute and others who will turn up the TV when they hear it. You know there’s 
that movie, "The Neverending Story" where the kid in the story walks up to the mirror and 
it’s the kid reading the book looking back at him. You start to recognize yourself, your gestures; 
and what I’m talking about is this spiritual and physical voice that we all have. And when one 
is out of whack, we’re doing something wrong or something is up, to say the least. It takes 
time and effort to come to a place where both those voices speak the same. 
The Christians call it Grace."

Burning sage or sweetgrass to cleanse or purify a flute is a personal choice, according 
to Fire Crow. "Back home we don’t burn sage. And out here (Connecticut) they burn it a lot. 
Someone once told me if the sage smells bad to you or stinks to you then you don’t 
have a good heart, and I’m going, ‘Oh, wait a minute...it does stink and I’m a decent person!’ 
For us back home we use it to clean ourselves, like a washcloth after ceremonies. 
Sometimes you’ll use it to put over your mouth during sweats to help you
breathe, real simple uses like that. I never heard of anyone burning sage until I came out here 
Someone once asked me, ‘Should I give my flute a name?’ I told him that’s up to you. 
Each person who plays the flute should follow his/her heart and if you want to get up every 
morning and burn sweetgrass and bless your flutes that’s fine, but that’s just for you and 
it’s not a given way for anything. I guess what I’m getting at is it’s more important how you walk 
than exactly what you say. I know that flute players have been known to talk too much 
sometimes when they’re talking to people and you want the music to always be there. 
It’s not an opportunity to be on a soapbox. There are a lot of things that are happening in 
the world today that a performer can get up and address. You keep it simple and directed 
at something that’s more in the present, and as you leave and go out into your daily living, 
that’s more important. Today, and in particular, this moment is the most important 
thing right now."

Fire Crow’s compositions generally start with improvisation. "All of a sudden you hear 
this thing, and it says, ‘this is what you’re going to do’, and when this time happens it’s 
hard and a lot of people run to get a recorder. I play the song over and over and over 
until I’m sick of it, literally. And if I can’t get up the next morning and play that song exactly 
as I heard it, then it was meant for something else, but if it comes back just like that then I 
know that I will never forget it. There’s a lot of terrible music out there and you wonder 
where we’re headed. What we’re doing with a lot of the music today in society is selfish - 
‘give me, satisfy my needs, my desires-me me me’ - or at least those are my feelings. 
Why not talk about how beautiful that tree is over there? Or that bird? Talk about a flower 
and express it in music. Talk about how we connect with the earth or how we’re related to 
people. That’s what this music’s about...it’s very elemental, it’s very raw and pure, 
there’s not a lot of hollowness with it."

For most people, the joy in playing the Native American flute is that one can make 
music almost immediately. "The flute has a beautiful voice to begin with. You don’t have to 
concentrate on embouchure like you would do with the French horn, or even a regular 
European transverse flute. I studied music throughout school, playing the trumpet. I didn’t 
study classical, but I did have musical training through band. The thing about the trumpet is 
I could take someone’s song and just make it sing. You can teach someone how to 
make the flute and you can also teach one how to play it but you can’t teach one how 
to make it sing. That’s up to each individual. You can’t be dishonest with the flute. 
You have to be honest with it. Your diaphragm is the center of your body. You have 
to be connected to that flow with the earth. If I’ve been dishonest with someone, 
say I’ve told a lie; I’m going to concentrate on that and it’s going to affect how I play. 
I have to be that honest about things for this music. That’s the part that separates the 
men from the boys so to speak. The full note comes from you, but it also comes from 
the earth. That’s why it’s always important for us to stay connected to the earth. When
was the last time you had your shoes off? Get back in touch with that dirt."

To be a fluteman for his people is still something of a struggle for Fire Crow. "You have 
people who make flutes, and they’re flute makers. You have those who play flutes and 
they’re known as flute players. Then you have those who do both, and they’re close to being 
a fluteman. To say that I’m a Northern Cheyenne fluteman is that I’ve been given charge 
by my people to learn the Wolf Songs (songs of love & affection that teach patience, 
generosity, honesty and hopefully understanding) and to talk about this flute and I have 
the blessing of my elders. 

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