Cheyenne

A word of Lakota origin, Cheyenne means “red talkers” or “foreign talkers.” They call themselves Tsitsistas, for which one meaning is “people of a different speech.” Members of the Algonquian language group, the Cheyenne were originally a nation of farmers, but as they migrated, they became nomadic hunters and gatherers. In the 19th century, the tribe split into the Northern and Southern Cheyenne. According to the 2010 census, there are 11,375 Native Americans who self-identify solely as Cheyenne, and another 5,311 who are Cheyenne in combination with some other tribal identity. The Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana was established in 1884. Most Southern Cheyenne live in cities and towns of western Oklahoma.

Historians place Cheyenne first among the Algonquian-speaking tribes who may have come north from the lower Mississippi Valley. In the 16th and 17th centuries, they lived in permanent villages in the upper Mississippi Valley, in what is now northern and western Minnesota, where they grew corn, beans, and squash and fished and hunted game. By the 18th century, attacks by other tribes forced them to leave their home and migrate westward. They acquired horses from the Spanish and gradually combined farming with hunting buffalo. By the early 19th century, raids by the Sioux had forced them onto the Plains, where they ceased to plant crops and became buffalo hunters and fierce fighters. Building alliances first with the Arapaho and later with the Lakota, they lived primarily near the Black Hills and then in the upper Platte–Powder River area. About this time, they absorbed the Sutaio tribe, another Algonquian group.

Around 1832, some bands of Cheyenne moved, lured by trade in Taos, New Mexico, and Bent's Ford, Colorado. The move led to a tribal split into Northern and Southern Cheyenne. The Cheyenne were a party to the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, an agreement between eight Indian nations and the United States that established territorial boundaries to end war among the tribes and guaranteed the safety of settlers on the Oregon Trail. It also recognized the Northern and Southern Cheyenne as distinct groups, thus making their split formal.

The Gold Rush of 1848 and the Homestead Act of 1862 brought more and more white settlers into Indian territories. The Southern Cheyenne—although they were being heavily pushed into leaving the region after the Pike's Peak gold rush of 1859—under Chief Black Kettle compromised repeatedly in an effort to avoid war and retain their land in Colorado. But the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864, when hundreds of Cheyenne and Arapaho were slaughtered at Sand Creek, Colorado, where they had been told to camp by the U.S. Army, left them with no choice but to cede their land to the state.

The Cheyenne divided once more. The greater number ended up on the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Reservation, which was lost to white settlement in 1902. Some went north to the Powder River Country, and a few continued to fight with the Kiowa, Comanche, and Arapaho until 1875. The Northern Cheyenne had their own struggles with invaders seeking land and gold in violation of the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty. After the Sand Creek Massacre, they joined the tribes who were at war. In 1876, the Northern Cheyenne were among the warriors who emerged victors at the Battle of Little Bighorn.

...