moonet] CHARACTER OF THE CHEYENNE 1027 



general Indian custom, the several divisions encamping in the order 

 shown in figure 100. 



The Cheyenne, like the prairie tribes generally, are, or were until 

 within a few years past, a nation of nomads, living in skin tipis, and 

 depending almost entirely on the buffalo for food. Yet they have a dim 

 memory of a time when they lived in permanent villages and planted 

 com, and in their genesis tradition, which occupies four " smokes" or 

 nights in the telling, they relate how they "lost" the corn a long time 

 ago before they became wanderers on the plains. They deposit their 

 dead on scaffolds in trees, unlike their confederates, the Arapaho, who 

 bury in the ground. Their most sacred possession is the bundle of 

 "medicine arrows," now in possession of the southern division of the 

 tribe. They have a military organization similar to that existing among 

 the Arapaho and other prairie tribes, as described under number 43 of 

 the Arapaho songs. Above all the tribes of the plains they are dis- 

 tinguished for their desperate courage and pride of bearing, and are 

 preeminently warriors among people whose trade is war. They are 

 strongly conservative and have steadily resisted every advance of civil- 

 ization, here again differing from the Arapaho, who have always shown 

 a disposition to meet the white man half-way. In fact, no two peoples 

 could well exhibit more marked differences of characteristics on almost 

 every point than these two confederated tribes. The Cheyenne have 

 quick and strong intelligence, but their fighting temper sometimes 

 renders them rather unmanageable subjects with whom to deal. Their 

 conservatism and tribal pride tend to restrain them from following 

 after strange gods, so that in regard to the new messiah they assume a 

 rather skeptical position, while they conform to all the requirements of 

 the dance code in order to be on the safe side. 



Clark, in his Indian Sign Language, thus sums up the characteristics 

 of the Cheyenne : 



As a tribe they have beeu broken and scattered, but in their wild and savage way 

 they fought well for their country, and their history during the past few years has 

 been written in blood. The men of the Cheyenne Indians rank as high in the scale of 

 hoDesty, energy, and tenacity of purpose as those of any other tribe I have ever met, 

 and in physique and intellect they are superior to those of most tribes aud the equal 

 of any. Under the most demoralizing and trying circumstances they have preserved 

 in a remarkable degree that part of their moral code which relates to chastity, and 

 public sentiment has been so strong in them in regard to this matter that they have 

 been, aud ate still, noted among all the tribes which surround them for the virtue of 

 their women. 



The Cheyenne language lacks the liquids I and r. It is full of hiss- 

 ing sounds and difficult combinations of consonants, so that it does not 

 lend itself readily to song composition, for which reason, among others, 

 the Cheyenne in the south usually join the Arapaho in the Ghost dance 

 and sing the Arapaho songs. 



