Cheyenne

Cheyenne veterans of the Battle of the Little Bighorn on the 50th Anniversary of the battle.

NPS- Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument collection

The Cheyenne camp was the northernmost village, with up to 300 family lodges. It was situated on the west side of the river directly across from the mouth of Medicine Tail Coulee. Their camp circle was open to the East, and in the center was the lodge of on of their Sacred Covenants, Issuwun.

This camp represented the last of the free Cheyenne. Most of their bands in the southern plains had already surrendered and were settled on a reservation in Indian Territory in 1869.

The Cheyenne Nation was comprised of two similar Algonquin-speaking tribes: the Suhtaa and Tsi-tsi-staas. They were traditionally organized into ten bands led by a Council of 44 Chiefs with formidable warrior societies such as the Elkhorn Scrapers and Dog Soldiers. Cheyenne ethnographic and religious origins are based at the sacred site of Bear Butte and the Black Hills. At the height of the Plains Indian horse culture and before the treaty-and-war era, the Cheyenne’s primary nomadic hunting range throughout the Great Plains was from between the Black Hills and Bighorn Mountains – sweeping down to southeastern Colorado across to the Smokey Hills region of Kansas. Allied with the Lakota Sioux and Arapaho, the Cheyenne’s tribal enemies included the Pawnee, Crow, and Shoshoni.

Throughout the Plains Indian Wars, the Cheyenne experienced a high number of significant conflicts with the Army, such as the Sand Creek Massacre, the Platte Bridge Fight, the Fetterman Battle, the Powder River Battle, and the Battle of the Rosebud, to name a few.

Of note is the fact that Lt. Colonel George Custer had a long history with the Cheyenne, beginning in April 1867 when he relentlessly chased escaping Cheyenne families while General Winfield Hancock burned their village on the Pawnee Fork River. In November 1868, Custer destroyed a Cheyenne village at the Washita River, killing the elderly chief Black Kettle and his wife along with forty men, women, and children. Then in March 1869, Custer besieged the Cheyenne camp of Sweet Water Creek, where he famously smoked the pipe in peace with the Sacred Arrows Covenant Keeper, then underhandedly took four Cheyenne hostage. Custer would be destined to meet the Cheyenne again, for one last time, in June 1976 at the Little Bighorn.

Notable Cheyenne chiefs at the battle were: Old Bear, Dirty Moccasin, Crazy Head, and Lame White Man. Some of the notable Cheyenne warriors in the battle were: Bobtail Horse, Roan Bear, Calf, Mad Hearted Wolf, White Shield, Wooden Leg, Yellow Hair, Brave Wolf, Yellow Nose, Two Moons, Last Bull, and Old Man Coyote, Scabby, and Black Coyote and his wife Calf Trail Woman.

Seven Cheyenne warriors died from the battle: Whirlwind (age 16), Crooked Nose (age 16), Limber Bones (age 20), Black Bear (age 20), Lame White Man (age 38), Noisy Walking (age 18), and Cut Belly (about 30 years old.) There was no victory dance or celebration the night after the Custer battle, for too many Cheyenne families were mourning. As was customary after deaths in the tribe, and to avoid further attacks, the six camp circles moved from the area the following day.

The following year, 1877, after losses at the Battle on the Red Fork and the Battle of Wolf Mountains, the last of the free Cheyenne bands would surrender in different groups at Fort Keogh and at the White River Agency. One thousand of these Cheyenne would be sent south to Indian Territory to join their brethren already on a reservation there – only for three hundred of them to defiantly leave and fight their way back north to Montana Territory in 1878-1879, led by chiefs Little Wolf and Morning Star.

Today the Cheyenne are separated into two different federally recognized tribes: The Northern Cheyenne Tribe and the Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. The Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation is in the southeastern Montana and is 20 miles east of the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. The Cheyenne & Arapaho of Oklahoma no longer have a reservation but retain their remaining trust lands and are headquartered in Concho, Oklahoma.