Nirumbee is the Crow word for The Little People. The white man considered them Indian folklore until the winter of 1934 when two miners blasted open a cave in the Pedro Mountains near Casper, Wyoming. Inside they discovered a mummy of one of these people, thus showing that the legends of the Arapaho, Shoshone, Crow, Sioux and many other bands of people native to the northern plains might not be myths, but factual. There have been many such discoveries and a host of stories of The Little People as told by the Native Americans of Utah to the arctic Inuits of Canada. Today, many tribesmen still believe that the Nirumbee exist. Bret Marchant, the author of Nirumbee - The Little People, spent a good part of his youth in and around the Crow Reservation in Montana. He was raised hearing the stories of the Nirumbee. As he grew older, Bret began collecting his own research of The Little People. What he found prompted him to tell this story.

Smokey Walker was raised on the Crow reservation in the Upper Bighorn Basin in Montana, one of the last remote places in the Continental U.S.A. A rugged land unspoiled by man, a landscape of deep canyons and towering mountains unchanged for thousands of years. It was here that he first learned of the Little People who lived in an almost inaccessible canyon. His grandfather and the Crow Elders taught Smokey from an early age not to fear the Little People, but to protect them as they had done for centuries. When a new road through the heart of Little People country threatens to expose their existence to the world, Smokey vows to not let that happen.

Over the course of her life, my mother and family collected many articles and newspaper clipping of the events that shaped her world. She also wrote down what other people told her and about her own experiences. Throw in a little history and you have this book. I've tried to cover a few hundred years in a couple hundred pages. To accomplish this, I take you on a journey around the Bighorn Basin including many other points of interest with a clear view of the Pryor Mountains. I can only hope the results of my mother's effort and my own hard work can show in some small way to the rest of the world what an awesome place the Bighorn Basin country truly is. It is my fervent hope this book will instill within you a fraction of the love of this wild country as I have. Perhaps you will make the effort to visit and when the time comes, protect it for all future generations. I have come to realize how lucky and proud I am to have been born in the town of Lovell, in the heart of Bighorn County, Wyoming, in these United States of America.