Cheyenne Memories

An oral history of the Cheyenne Indians from legendary times to the early reservation years.

Only six Cheyenne Indians (but 32 Sioux) died in the fighting that wiped out the command of General George Custer. Brave Wolf was at the scene on that bloody Sunday in 1876. Brave Wolf and others of his tribe recall the courage of the doomed men in the Seventh Cavalry and give a firsthand account of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. 10 photos. 3 maps.

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.

Many stories that non-Natives tell about Native people emphasize human suffering, the inevitability of loss, and eventual extinction, whether physical or cultural. But the stories Northern Cheyennes tell about themselves emphasize survival, connectedness, and commitment to land and community. In writing Webs of Kinship, anthropologist Christina Gish Hill has worked with government records and other historical documents, as well as the oral testimonies of today’s Northern Cheyennes, to emphasize the ties of family, rather than the ambitions of individual leaders, as the central impetus behind the nation’s efforts to establish a reservation in its Tongue River homeland. Hill focuses on the people who lived alongside notable Cheyennes such as Dull Knife, Little Wolf, Little Chief, and Two Moons to reveal the central role of kinship in the Cheyennes’ navigation of U.S. colonial policy during removal and the early reservation period. As one of Hill’s Cheyenne correspondents reminded her, Dull Knife had a family, just as all of us do. He and other Cheyenne leaders made decisions with their entire extended families in mind—not just those living, but those who came before and those yet to be born. Webs of Kinship demonstrates that the Cheyennes used kinship ties strategically to secure resources, escape the U.S. military, and establish alliances that in turn aided their efforts to remain a nation in their northern homeland. By reexamining the most tumultuous moments of Northern Cheyenne removal, this book illustrates how the power of kinship has safeguarded the nation’s political autonomy even in the face of U.S. encroachment, allowing the Cheyennes to shape their own story.

The Battle of the Rosebud may well be the largest Indian battle ever fought in the American West. The monumental clash on June 17, 1876, along Rosebud Creek in southeastern Montana pitted George Crook and his Shoshone and Crow allies against Sioux and Northern Cheyennes under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. It set the stage for the battle that occurred eight days later when, just twenty-five miles away, George Armstrong Custer blundered into the very same village that had outmatched Crook. Historian Paul L. Hedren presents the definitive account of this critical battle, from its antecedents in the Sioux campaign to its historic consequences. Rosebud, June 17, 1876 explores in unprecedented detail the events of the spring and early summer of 1876. Drawing on an extensive array of sources, including government reports, diaries, reminiscences, and a previously untapped trove of newspaper stories, the book traces the movements of both Indian forces and U.S. troops and their Indian allies as Brigadier General Crook commenced his second great campaign against the northern Indians for the year. Both Indian and army paths led to Rosebud Creek, where warriors surprised Crook and then parried with his soldiers for the better part of a day on an enormous field. Describing the battle from multiple viewpoints, Hedren narrates the action moment by moment, capturing the ebb and flow of the fighting. Throughout he weighs the decisions and events that contributed to Crook’s tactical victory, and to his fateful decision thereafter not to pursue his adversary. The result is a uniquely comprehensive view of an engagement that made history and then changed its course. Rosebud was at once a battle won and a battle lost. With informed attention to the subtleties and significance of both outcomes, as well as to the fears and motivations on all sides, Hedren has given new meaning to this consequential fight, and new insight into its place in the larger story of the Great Sioux War.

"Sklenar contends that Custer did have a battle plan, one different from any other suggested by scholars thus far. Custer, he argues, had reason to believe that his scheme might succeed with minimum bloodshed; made decisions consistent with army regulations and his best instincts as an experienced commander; had subordinates who could not overcome the limits of their personalities in a desperate situation; and made a selfless commitment to save the bulk of his regiment. Along the way, Sklenar appraises the officers and other men who served in the Seventh, evaluating the survivors' testimony and assessing the intent and motives of each."--BOOK JACKET.

The battle that unfolded at the Little Big Horn River on June 25, 1876, marked a watershed in the history of the Plains Indians. While a stunning victory for the Sioux and Cheyenne peoples, it initiated a new and vigorous effort by the U.S. government to rid the west of marauding tribes and to realize the ideal of “Manifest Destiny.” While thousands of books and articles have covered different aspects of the battle, few if any have analyzed the tactics and chronology to arrive at a satisfactory explanation of what befell George Armstrong Custer and the 209 men who died alongside him. This volume seeks to explain the circumstances culminating in the near-destruction of the 7th Cavalry Regiment by a close examination of timing, setting every event to a specific moment based on accounts of the battle’s participants.