One of the difficulties in looking at the Indian cultures of the Great Plains is that there has been a great deal of migration onto the Plains and within the Plains. Some of these migrations took place prior to the European invasion and some of the migrations were caused by the European colonists. Today the Cheyenne are often seen as a typical nomadic buffalo-hunting Plains Indian tribe, but this was a relatively recent adaptation.
In an article in the Plains Anthropologist, Margot Liberty and Raymond Wood suggest that the Cheyenne migration to the Great Plains started about 1635. They report:
“Cheyenne migration westward from an original Cheyenne homeland near the headwaters of the Mississippi River took place piecemeal, group by group, and it may have taken as long as two centuries for all of the bands to cross the Missouri River.”
This was not, however, the first Cheyenne migration as oral tradition tells of an earlier migration. According to Cheyenne anthropologist Henrietta Mann, in her book Cheyenne-Arapaho Education: 1871-1982:
“The Cheyennes say that in the ancient time they lived far to the northeast in Canada, where they had a hunting economy and subsisted on wild game.”
Disease prompted them to leave their homeland and move south into the marshy areas between Ontario and Minnesota.
The Cheyenne oral history goes on to tell of a time when the people were a fishing people who lived in a marshy area near a large body of water. Next, they became villagers living in earth lodges, planting corn, and hunting without horses. Then, they migrated westward and received the buffalo from the Sacred Mountain (Bear Butte). The Cheyenne divide their history into four parts: (1) “ancient time” when the people were happy but were decimated by a terrible disease leaving the people as orphans; (2) “time of the dogs” when the dogs were used as beasts of burden; (3) “time of the buffalo” when the people moved beyond the Missouri River and began to hunt buffalo; and (4) “the time of the horse.
At the time of first contact with the Europeans, in 1680, the Cheyenne were living at the mouth of the Wisconsin River. Here they established trading relations with the French. The French called them Chaa, which was most likely a corruption of the Dakota (Sioux) word Sha-Hi-Ya-Na, which means “people of the alien speech.”
The Cheyenne later moved west to the Minnesota River valley because of Sioux expansion. By 1700 they were in the Sheyenne River Valley in eastern North Dakota. Here they lived in earthlodge villages and farmed corn, beans, and squash in a manner similar to the tribes of the Missouri River (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara). Archaeological records show that the Cheyenne were occupying the Biesterfeldt site in southeastern North Dakota by 1750.
At about that time, the several bands of the Cheyenne came together to form the Council of Forty-Four, one of the most formal governmental systems on the Plains.
In the mid-1700s, the Plains Cree, Plains Ojibwa, and the Assiniboine pushed them farther west. The Cheyenne established themselves in the Black Hills area where they acquired the horse and began to become buffalo hunters. In the Black Hills, the Cheyenne encountered the Arapaho who had probably moved out of the Minnesota area ahead of them. The Arapaho accepted the Cheyenne intruders as friends and the two peoples became confederated.
By 1700, the pressure from the Algonquian-speaking tribes was also pushing the Sioux out of Minnesota and out onto the Great Plains. Pressure from the Teton Sioux, in turn, soon pushed the Cheyenne even farther west.
As they moved out onto the Plains, the Cheyenne underwent more cultural changes. Since they had been in close contact with the Mandan and the Hidatsa, they came to incorporate elements from these cultures into their ceremonial complex. According to John Moore, Margot Liberty, and Terry Straus, in their chapter on the Cheyenne in the Handbook of North American Indians:
“New political forms originated during this time, and the Mandan Okipa ceremony and Hidatsa Sacred Arrow traditions, among others, no doubt helped to inspire the development of the Cheyenne ceremonial complex.”
As late as 1800, the Cheyenne still had some villages which were planting corn along the Missouri River. After 1825, the Cheyenne began to divide into a Northern tribe and a Southern tribe. The Southern Cheyenne, closely allied with the Arapaho, began to migrate south into Colorado. The Northern Cheyenne continued to hunt on the Plains of Montana and became allied with the Sioux.
Indians 101/201
Twice each week this series explores American Indian topics. Indians 201 is an expansion of an earlier essay. More from this series:
Indians 101: Choctaw Migrations
Indians 101: Tlingit Migrations
Indians 101: Kootenai Origins and Spirituality
Indians 101: A Brief Overview of the Assiniboine Indians
Indians 101: The Northern Cheyenne Escape
Indians 101: A very short overview of treaties
Indians 101: Plains Indian Pipes in the Maryhill Museum (Photo Diary)
Indians 101: Plains Indan Art in the Maryhill Museum (Photo Diary)