The Southern Cheyennes

For almost fifty years George Bird Grinnell's great work The Fighting Cheyennes has stood unrevised and virtually unchallenged as the definitive account of the struggles of the Cheyenne Indians to preserve their way of life. Now Donald J. Berthrong has re-examined Grinnell's findings and searched historical records unavailable to or not used by Grinnell to verify or correct his conclusions. The result is this accurate, highly interesting account of the Cheyennes' life on the Great Plains, their system of government and religion, and their relation to the fur and hide trade during their last years of freedom. After nearly two centuries of fighting other Indians and whites for their lands, in the eighteenth century the Cheyenne's were forced to shift their range from the Minnesota River Valley to the Central and Southern Plains. From 1861 through 1875, they fought to maintain their free, nomadic existence. There were bloody wars with territorial forces and federal troops, and a few years of intermittent peace and retaliation (including the massacre at Sand Creek in 1864). Finally, after the intensive winter campaign of 1874-75, the fierce Southern Cheyenne's were brought to bay by the U.S. Army and herded onto a reservation in western Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Their turbulent, colorful history related by Berthrong will interest the general reader as well as the historian and anthropologist

A Plains tribe that subsisted on the buffalo, the Cheyennes depended for survival on the valor and skill of their braves in the hunt and in battle. The fiery spirit of the young warriors was balanced by the calm wisdom of the tribal headmen, the peace chiefs, who met yearly as the Council of the Forty-four. "A Cheyenne chief was required to be a man of peace, to be brave, and to be of generous heart," writes Stan Hoig. "Of these qualities the first was unconditionally the most important, for upon it rested the moral restraint required for the warlike Cheyenne Nation." As the Cheyennes began to feel the westward crush of white civilization in the nineteenth century, a great burden fell to the peace chiefs. Reconciliation with the whites was the tribe's only hope for survival, and the chiefs were the buffers between their own warriors and the United States military, who were out to "win the West." The chiefs found themselves struggling to maintain the integrity of their people-struggling against overwhelming military forces, against disease, against the debauchery brought by "firewater," and against the irreversible decline of their source of livelihood, the buffalo. They were trapped by history in a nearly impossible position. Their story is a heroic epic and, oftentimes, a tragedy. No single book has dealt as intensively as this one with the institution of the peace chiefs. The author has gleaned significant material from all available published sources and from contemporary newspapers. A generous selection of photographs and extensive quotations from ninteteenth-century observers add to the authenticity of the text. Following a brief analysis of the Sweet Medicine legend and its relation to the Council of the Forty-four, the more prominent nineteenth-century chiefs are treated individually in a lucid, felicitous style that will appeal to both students and lay readers of Indian history. As adopted Cheyenne chief Boyce D. Timmons says in his preface to this volume, "Great wisdom, intellect, and love are expressed by the remarkable Cheyenne chiefs, and if you enter their tipi with an open heart and mind, you might have some understanding of the great 'Circle of Life.'"

A study of contemporary Southern Cheyenne women's music, including an overview of Cheyenne culture and history as well as analyses of 32 songs and their variants: lullabies and children's songs, hand-game songs, social songs, and Christian spiritual songs. A sampling of closely related Arapaho India

In this remarkably balanced history, Jerome A. Greene describes Custer attack on the Cheyenne at the Washita River--its causes, conduct, and consequences--even as he addresses the multiple controversies surrounding the conflict.

An evenhanded account of a tragic clash of cultures On November 27, 1868, the U.S. Seventh Cavalry under Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer attacked a Southern Cheyenne village along the Washita River in present-day western Oklahoma. The subsequent U.S. victory signaled the end of the Cheyennes’ traditional way of life and resulted in the death of Black Kettle, their most prominent peace chief. In this remarkably balanced history, Jerome A. Greene describes the causes, conduct, and consequences of the event even as he addresses the multiple controversies surrounding the conflict. As Greene explains, the engagement brought both praise and condemnation for Custer and carried long-range implications for his stunning defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn eight years later.

In writings about the Great Sioux War, the perspectives of its Native American participants often are ignored and forgotten. Jerome A. Greene corrects that oversight by presenting a comprehensive overview of America's largest Indian war from the point of view of the Lakotas and Northern Cheyennes.

The Cheyennes were originally a woodland people. Today, the tribe is divided between the Northern Cheyennes and the Southern Cheyennes--both actively governing themselves, protecting their land, and passing on their culture and religion.

This book recounts the reservation period of the Cheyennes and the Arapahoes in western Oklahoma and the following fifteen years. It is an investigation-and an indictment-of the assimilation and reservation policies thrust upon them in the latter half of the nineteenth century, policies that succeeded only in doing enormous damage to sturdy, vital people. Confined to a reservation in the Indian Territory in 1875, the Southern Cheyennes and their neighbors, the Arapahoes, traditionally hunting and mobile societies, were forced into the federal government's image of "educated, Christian farmer-citizens." Lacking the support of adequate appropriations or protective legislation, the Cheyennes' lives were dominated by hunger, disease, and despair. Continuing niggardliness on the part of Congress in providing adequate agricultural equipment and instruction and an environment hostile to cultivation made agricultural self-sufficiency all but impossible. The continued reduction of their land base through allotments under the 1887 Dawes Act and later leasing and sale of land to whites further eroded the Indians' meager sources of income and security. An educational policy that left Cheyenne children without hope of jobs, the banning of traditional religious ceremonies, the prejudice of white citizens and institutions, and the undermining of the roles of head men and medicine men led to further despair. But, as the author demonstrates, despite these crushing burdens and in the face of the slow and inevitable changes in the society, the Southern Cheyennes retained their identity, a testimony to their courage and character. This well-documented, compassionate account of the ordeal of the two tribes serves as a classic example of what happened to America's Indians at the hands of the whites.