Book Review: Spotlight on Native Americans: Cheyenne

 Spotlight on Native Americans: Cheyenne by Terra Rose Maron, Power Kids Press, Rosen Publishing Group, New York, 2016.

The Cheyenne are a people from the great plains area.  Their creation story says the creator mae three types of people, white, red and hairy.  The red people followed the hairy south.  The hairy people disappeared.  When the red people returned north the wite people were gone, so the red peope made their homes there.  The creator gavre them corn and buffalo.  At this time they lived in th Great Lakes area.  However their enemies (the Ojibwes and  Assiniboine drove them west.  There the became nomadic buffalo hunters.  By the 1830s the Cheyenne had become two groups, one in the north, Montana area and the other in the south, Arkansas area.  

War came to the Cheyenne on the Plains after an incident with a wagon train.  The soldiers from Fort Kearney countered by killing eight Cheyenne.  This lead to a war that lasted 30 years.  As part of this war Colonel John Chivington with a militia attacked a peaceful village under Black Kettle.  Many women and children were killed.  This is known as the Sand Creek Massacre.  Over 230 Native Americans were killed.  In 1867 Black Kettle's camp was attacked again by Colonel George Armstrong Custer.  Black Kettle was killed.  The southern Cheyenne were forced onto a reservation in Oklahoma.  In the 1860s the northern Cheyenne joined Red Cloud and the Sioux in the war over the Bozeman Trail.  They forced the abandonment of forts along the trail.  In the 1870s was broke out again as gold miners were taking Indian land with the support of the army.  The army was defeated at the battle of Rosebud and the Little Big Horn.  However these victories only made the army fight harder and bring more and more men.  They too were forced onto the reservation in Oklahoma, with the promise they could return if they did not like it.  They did not.  It was a sickly place with malaria.  Even though originally denied, a group returned to Montana and were finally granted a reservation.  

The Cheyenne were famous for their horse riding skills.  Young people learn to ride from a young age.  Cheyenne were famous for their governing council of 44, four chiefs from eleven different bands.  There are less bands today.  Cheyenne also had different societies.  The most famous of these is the dog soldiers.  

There are two sacred relics for the Cheyenne.  The first is the sacred arrows which are replenished each year in a cremony.  The other is the sacred medicine or buffalo hat.  The northern Cheyenne guard the sacred medicine hat and the northern Cheyenne the sacred arrows.  The southern Cheyenne share their reservation with the Arapaho.  They deal with environmental issues.  The southern Cheyenne support a wind farm.  The northern Cheyenne fight against strip coal mining.

Native American Biography: Black Kettle and Little Robe: Cheyenne Peace Chiefs

Black Kettle

Sometimes, in dealing with White opportunists, it does not pay to be a peace chief.  Chief Black Kettle was likely the most firm and loyal of the peace chiefs.  He encouraged peace and accommodation with the Whites.  He even went so far as to use his own money to help in the release of whites who had been kidnapped.  When his people were starving, he went to Fort Lyon and was told to move to the Sand Creek area.  However shortly after going there, his camp was attacked.  He and his wife survived, but the Sand Creek Massacre lives in infamy to the detriment of John Chivington and the governor of Colorado, who knew where Black Kettle would be as they had told him where to go, and then the lead the attack against him.  Black Kettle waved and American flag thinking the attackers did not know of the agreement at Fort Lyon.  However they did know, and were just taking advantage of the peaceful nature of the group.
Oven though he had survived this attack, within four years he and his wife were killed in another surprise attack by troops answering to George Armstrong Custer.

Little Robe

Little Robe was another peace chief.  However he faired better than Black Kettle.  He was a contemporary with Black Kettle, an upon Black Kettle's death inherited the role of the primary peace chief among the Cheyenne.  He traveled to Washington to negotiate peace.  He settled into reservation life, but would never let children from his band attends White schools.

Biography: John Chivington

John Chivington. Much of this is taken from The Good The Bad and the Mad by E. Randall Floyd.

Reverend John Chivington was not a professional soldier, but he is most remembered for soldiering.  On the positive side, during the Civil War he and his men of the First Colorado Volunteer Regiment were instrumental in turning back the rebel invasion of the West, which hoped to control the gold country.  At that point he was a military hero.

However, it was after another military victory that he became known as a coward.  In 1864, the Native American population, including Cheyenne, were protesting the encroachment of Whites on their society.  Relationships were not good, and having been commissioned by the governor of Colorado, Chivington was set on putting down, and driving the “red devils” out of the state.  His orders, “burn villages and kill Cheyennes wherever and whenever found.”

He came upon a small group of Cheyenne, mostly women and elderly, under the leadership of Black Kettle, who was friendly with the Americans, and flew an American flag over his teepee.  Even though there had been hostilities with other groups, Black Kettle believed the war was over.  He camped at Sand Creek.  On November 29, Chivington sent his men charging through there camp as they slept.  Honoring their leaders orders that no prisoners be taken, “Men women, children and even infants perished in the orgy of slaughter, their bodies scalped and barbarously mutilated.” 

When they returned to Denver, they were welcomed as heroes.  However when word reached calmer heads of the murder of women and children, some tried to repeat Chivington’s words, “nits make Lice,” but after military hearings Chivington was forced form the military.  He was also forced from politics, though he was never punished for his role in the Chivington massacre.