Called Awaxaawippila by the Apsáalooka (Crow) Indians, the Crazy Mountains are an igneous formation forged about 50 million years ago and are the most sacred and revered mountains on the northern Great Plains for the Apsáalooka. Awaxaawippila was a place of refuge and protection because the Apsáalooka's enemies would not follow them into the mountain, and because of their great spiritual power it continues to be an important vision quest site for the tribe. Countless generations of Apsáalooka boys have gone there as an important rite of passage to seek spiritual guidance from guardian animals and spirit world helpers. In 1857, nine-year-old Plenty Coups came there to dream, and after four days of fasting and little sleep he had a powerful vision about the future of his people. He saw the disappearance of the buffalo and their replacement by "spotted-buffalo," the white man's cattle, and he experienced a powerful storm that destroyed all but one of the trees in an ancient forest, where that lone tree sheltered the nest of a small bird, a chickadee. When an Apsáalooka elder named Yellow Bear later interpreted the dream, Plenty Coups learned that he would see the disappearance of the buffalo in his lifetime, that the forest destroyed by the storm represented other Native American tribes who had resisted the Euro-Americans and had been beaten by them, and that the lone remaining tree represented the Apsáalooka. The dream told him that the Apsáalooka must adapt to survive as a people, and the chickadee became Plenty Coups' medicine. His vision quest was seen as prophetic, and he lived his long life guided by the vision he had in the Crazy Mountains as a boy.