Cheyenne Journey

With an introduction by Ben Nighthorse Campbell, U.S. Senator and member of the Northern Cheyenne

George Amos Dorsey was an U.S. ethnographer of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, with a special focus on Caddoan and Siouan tribes. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Denison University in 1888, then a second Bachelor's Degree in anthropology in 1890 at Harvard university, and finally PhD in 1894, the first PhD in anthropology from Harvard, and the second ever awarded in the United States. The following account of the Cheyenne social organisation was obtained as part of Dorsey's studies of the Cheyenne Sun-Dance, which, in turn, are part of a comparative study on this ceremony among the Plains Tribes he began in 1901. The Cheyenne Sun-Dance forms the subject of Part II. The accounts of the societies, the myths of the origin of the same, and the story of the medicine-arrows are given, with but slight changes, as they were obtained through Richard Davis, a full blood Cheyenne.

The exodus of the Northern Cheyennes in 1878 and 1879, an attempt to flee from Indian Territory to their Montana homeland, is an important event in American Indian history. It is equally important in the history of towns like Oberlin, Kansas, where Cheyenne warriors killed more than forty settlers. The Cheyennes, in turn, suffered losses through violent encounters with the U.S. Army. More than a century later, the story remains familiar because it has been told by historians and novelists, and on film. In The Northern Cheyenne Exodus in History and Memory, James N. Leiker and Ramon Powers explore how the event has been remembered, told, and retold. They examine the recollections of Indians and settlers and their descendants, and they consider local history, mass-media treatments, and literature to draw thought-provoking conclusions about how this story has changed over time. The Cheyennes’ journey has always been recounted in melodramatic stereotypes, and for the last fifty years most versions have featured “noble savages” trying to reclaim their birthright. Here, Leiker and Powers deconstruct those stereotypes and transcend them, pointing out that history is never so simple. “The Cheyennes’ flight,” they write, “had left white and Indian bones alike scattered along its route from Oklahoma to Montana.” In this view, the descendants of the Cheyennes and the settlers they encountered are all westerners who need history as a “way of explaining the bones and arrowheads” that littered the plains. Leiker and Powers depict a rural West whose diverse peoples—Euro-American and Native American alike—seek to preserve their heritage through memory and history. Anyone who lives in the contemporary Great Plains or who wants to understand the West as a whole will find this book compelling.

This interdisciplinary, empirical and theoretical approach to forgiveness and revenge considers the roles of truth, restitution and ritual in the promotion of forgiveness and deterrence of revenge in multiple contexts.

Brave Eagle grows to manhood amid the constant changes and turmoil on the Plains. Now, in a world full of choices, Brave Eagle must make many decisions, some for his survival. This period is a time of exploration, discovery, and settlement in the West; intervention and treaties with the U. S. Government; leadership issues between the peace chief Black Kettle and the war leader Roman Nose, the Dog Soldiers, the Sand Creek Massacre, the Massacre at Washita. Is Brave Eagle to be a man of war or a man of peace? *Is he to be a fierce frightening warrior or a wise peacemaker? Can he learn to adapt to the white man's world, or would he be able to hold on to the rich traditions of the grandfathers? In the middle 1800's, the white man's world collides with the world of the Native Americans. How would this affect the people of the Plains? Where will this life journey take Brave Eagle?