BULL. 30] 



CHEYENNE 



253 



southward. The old men of both tribes 

 tell of numerous encounters during the 

 next few years, chief among these being 

 a battle on an upper branch of Red r. in 

 1837, in which the Kiowa massacred an 

 entire party of 48 Cheyenne warriors of 

 the Bowstring society after a stoutdefense, 

 and a notable battle in the following 

 summer of 1838, in which the Cheyenne 

 and Arapaho attacked the Kiowa and 

 Comanche on Wolf cr., n. w. Okla., with 

 considerable loss on both sides. About 

 1840 the Cheyenne made peace with the 

 Kiowa in the s., having already made 

 peace with the Sioux in the n., since 

 which time all these tribes, together with 

 the Arapaho, Kiowa, Kiowa Apache, 

 and Comanche have usually acted as 

 allies in the wars with other tribes 

 and with the whites. For a long time 

 the Cheyenne have mingled much with 

 the western Sioux, from whom they 

 have patterned in many details of dress 

 and ceremony. They seem not to have 

 suffered greatly from the small-jwx 

 of 1837-39, having been warned in 

 time to escape to the mountains, l)ut 

 in common with other prairie tribes 

 they suffered terribly from the cholera in 

 1849, several of their bands being nearly 

 exterminated. Culbertson, writing a 

 year later, states that they had lost about 

 200 lodges, estimated at 2,000 souls, or 

 about two-thirds of their whole number 

 before the epidemic. Their jjeace with 

 the Kiowa enabled them to extend their 

 incursions farther to the s., and in 1853 

 they made their first raid into jNIexico, 

 but with disastrous result, losing all but 

 3 men in a fight with Mexican lan- 

 cers. From 1860 to 1878 they were 

 prominent in border warfai-e, acting with 

 the Sioux in the n. and with the Kiowa 

 and Comanche in the s. , and have prob- 

 al)ly lost more in conflict with the whites 

 than any other tribe of the plains, in pro- 

 portion to their number. In 1864 the 

 southern band suffered a severe l)low by 

 the notorious Chivington massacre in Col- 

 orado, and again in 1868 at the hands of 

 Custer in the battle of the Washita. 

 They took a leading part in the general 

 outbreak of the southern tribes in 1874-75. 

 The Northern Cheyenne joined with the 

 Sioux in the Sitting Bull war in 1876 and 

 were active participants in the Custer 

 massacre. Later in the year they received 

 such a severe blow from Mackenzie as 

 to compel their surrender. In the winter 

 of 1878-79 a band of Northern Chey- 

 enne under Dull Knife, Wild Hog, aiid 

 Little Wolf, who had been brought down 

 as prisoners to Fort Reno to be colonized 

 with the southern portion of the tribe in 

 the present Oklahoma, made a desperate 

 attempt at escape. Of an estimated 89 men 

 and 146 women and children who broke 



away on the night of Sept. 9, about 75, 

 including Dull Knife and most of the war- 

 riors, were killed in the pursuit which 

 continued to the Dakota border, in the 

 course of which about 50 whites lost their 

 lives. Thirty-two of the Cheyenne slain 

 were killed in a second break for liberty 

 from Ft Robinson, Nebr., where the cap- 

 tured fugitives had been confined. Little 

 Wolf, with about 60 followers, got through 

 in safety to the n. At a later period the 

 Northern Cheyenne were assigned to the 

 present reservation in Montana. The 

 Southern Cheyenne were assigned to a 

 reservation in w. Oklahoma by treaty of 

 1867, but refused to remain upon it until 

 after the surrender of 1875, when a num- 

 ber of the most prominent hostiles were 

 deported to Florida for a term of 3 years. 

 In 1901-02 the lands of the Southern 

 Cheyenne were allotted in severalty and 

 the Indians are now American citi- 

 zens. Those in the n. seem to hold their 

 own in population, while those of the s. 

 are steadily decreasing. They numbered 

 in 1904— Southern Cheyenne, 1,903; 

 Northern Cheyenne, 1,409, a total of 

 3,312. Although originally an agricul- 

 tural people of the timber country, the 

 Cheyenne for generations have been a 

 typical prairie tribe, living in skin tipis, 

 following the buffalo over great areas, 

 traveling and fighting on horseback. 

 They commonly buried their dead in 

 trees or on scaffolds, but occasionally in 

 caves or in the ground. In character 

 they are proud, contentious, and brave to 

 desperation, with an exceptionally high 

 standard for woman. Polygamy was 

 permitted, as usual with the prairie trilies. 

 Under their old system, before the divi- 

 sion of the tribe, they had a council of 44 

 elective chiefs, of whom 4 constituted 

 a higher body, with power to elect one 

 of their own numljer as head chief of the 

 tribe. In all councils that concerned 

 the relations of the Cheyenne with other 

 tribes, one member of the council was ap- 

 pointed to argue as the proxy or "devil's 

 advocate" for the alien people. This 

 council of 44 is still symbolized by a bun- 

 dle of 44 invitation sticks, kept with the 

 sacred medicine-arrows, and formerly 

 sent around when occasion arose to con- 

 vene the assembly. 



This set of 4 medicine-arrows, each 

 of different color, constitutes the tribal 

 palladium which they claim to have had 

 from the beginning of the world, and is 

 exposed with appropriate rites once a 

 year if previously "pledged," and on 

 those rare occasions when a Cheyenne 

 has been killed by one of his own tribe, 

 the purpose of the ceremony being to wipe 

 away from the murderer the stain of a 

 brother's blood. The rite did not die 

 with the final separation of the two sec- 



