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.

Book Review: Ojibwes: Native American Peoples

Ojibwes: Native American Peoples, Sierra Adare, Gareth Stevens Publishing, Pleasantville, NY 2003.

This book introduced me to a people I had not hear of, at least by this name.  I had heard of the Chippewa.  The name preferred by the group themselves is Anishinaabe.  It would be accurate to call them the Great Lakes Indians, because their traditional land was around the Great Lakes on both the Canada side and the U.S. side.  Today they number about 120,000 on the U.S. side and at least 40,000 in Canada.  Their history includes the encroachment of Whites, and other Native American groups who had been forced out of the East.  Their land became smaller and smaller.  They were placed on reservations, but with the promise of continued hunting on their traditional lands.  They have had to go through the courts to reestablish this right.  The reservation period was sad as the traditional ways of supporting oneself were gone.  They would use hunting, harvesting of wild rice, and harvesting of maple to make sugar as their primary means of support.  They are also known for birch bark canoes.  There was also a period of forced assimilation with boarding schools and forced migration to urban areas.  However through all this the culture has survived.  Today they have Native American schools, taught in Ojibwe, and with cultural lessons.