Cheyenne

01Summary

Plains horsemen and close allies of the Lakota and Arapaho. Encounters with emigrants ranged from peaceful trade to growing tension as wagon trains thinned the buffalo and cropped the grass. The Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and subsequent wars are part of the trail era's later violence.

02History

The Cheyenne, Tsétsêhéstâhese, 'Like-Hearted People', moved onto the plains from the Great Lakes in the 18th century. By 1832 they had divided into the Northern Cheyenne, allied with the Lakota in the Powder River country, and the Southern Cheyenne, south of the Platte in present-day Colorado and Kansas.

Through the 1840s the trail crossed Cheyenne hunting territory but rarely Cheyenne settlements. Most encounters were peaceful, especially around Fort Laramie's annual trading season. The 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie included the Cheyenne as one of the eight Plains nations.

Tension built sharply in the 1850s and 1860s. Buffalo herds collapsed under combined pressure from emigrants, the railroads, and commercial hide hunters. On 29 November 1864, Colonel John Chivington's Colorado militia attacked a peaceful Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho camp on Sand Creek under a U.S. flag of truce, killing roughly 230, most of them women, children, and elders. The Sand Creek Massacre triggered a generation of war.

The Northern Cheyenne fought alongside the Lakota at the Little Bighorn in 1876. They were forced south to Indian Territory in 1877. Many died there, and the survivors' 1,500-mile breakout north under Dull Knife and Little Wolf in 1878 and 1879 is one of the most extraordinary survival journeys of the era.

03Notable leaders

• Black Kettle (Mo'ohtavetoo'o)
  Southern Cheyenne peace chief, c. 1803-1868, who survived Sand Creek but was killed at the Washita.
• Dull Knife (Vóóhéhéve)
  Northern Cheyenne chief, c. 1810-1883, who led the 1878 breakout from Indian Territory.
• Little Wolf (Ó'kôhómôxháahketa)
  Northern Cheyenne war chief, c. 1820-1904, co-leader of the 1878 northward exodus.

04Today