The Cheyenne

Prior to the mid-1800s the Cheyenne Indian Tribe had split into two segments.  In white man’s language they were known as the Northern Cheyenne and the Southern Cheyenne.  Often the Northern Cheyenne were allied with the Sioux in battles against the white soldiers attempting to steal their hunting grounds.

By 1870 the Southern Cheyenne had been defeated by the swarms of Civil War hardened white soldiers and those Indians remaining were placed on a reservation in west central Oklahoma Territory near Fort Reno.  Although they were promised 3 ½ million acres it was soon being encroached upon by white settlers.  They were promised sustenance for their tribal members, but meat was very scarce and so tough it was barely palatable, yet they were not allowed to hunt.

In 1877 the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne were also beaten into submission by the vastly superior U S Army troops with their vicious cannons.  They surrendered at Fort Robinson in the ten-year-old state of Nebraska.  The U S Government in all of its wisdom decided to send the Northern Cheyenne to live on the reservation with the Southern Cheyenne and the Arapahoe Tribe. 

Army Lieutenant Henry Ware Lawton was assigned the task of escorting the Northern Cheyenne to their new home.  At well over six feet Lawton was known as the tall white man by the Indians.  The Northern Cheyenne band was pleased with the man sent as their escort on the long march.  Lawton allowed the old and the sick of the tribe to ride in wagons during the long trek.  He insured all had enough bread, meat, coffee, and sugar.  They sighted a few small herds of antelope so Lawton issued rifles to thirty warriors and allowed them to hunt for fresh meat.

From Fort Robinson 972 tribe members set out on the southward march in late April.  It took about 100 days of travel to reach Fort Reno on August 5, 1877.  A few elders had died along the way, a few warriors had slipped away, but 937 ended the journey.  As was customary among the Indian tribes, the Southern Cheyenne invited the newcomers to a feast.  The Northerners began to suspect everything was not right when the feast consisted of a pot of watered down soup with little sustenance, but it was the best the Southern Cheyenne could offer.

The Indians believed they had been marched south merely to look at the reservation and after looking it over they asked to be returned north, but this was not to be.  After much complaining the Army sent the Tall White Man to address their woes.  He reported women and children were sick from want of food.  Lawton called the elders together to listen to them.  They asked permission to hunt the buffalo, but when that was ultimately offered they found nothing but piles of bones on the prairie where the white men had wantonly slain the buffalo herds.

Slowly starving, on September 9^th 297 Northern Cheyenne, less than 100 of them warriors broke away and set out for the Sioux Country.  They had some horses but not enough for all, so they took turns riding and walking.  Four days later they had made 150 miles and had crossed the Cimarron River before soldiers caught up to them.  There was a skirmish there, but the Cheyenne slipped away to the north while the soldiers retreated.  Later they split into two groups.  About 150 headed toward Fort Robinson in an attempt to reach the Sioux Red Cloud’s band, while 134 headed toward former Cheyenne hunting grounds, the Tongue River area.

By the following spring nearly all had died by the white man’s guns, some in battle, some by treachery, but only a few survived.  The Cheyenne Nation had been nearly obliterated.