Day 7 (D-54) The Cheyenne, Native Americans

The Cheyenne tribe of Native American Indians were one of the most well known of Plains Indian tribes.  They were often allies of the Sioux and Arapaho but originally they came from Minnesota.  In the early 1800s, they migrated to the high plains, near the Black Hills in today's Wyoming and South Dakota.  They were divided into the Northern Cheyenne and the Southern Cheyenne. 

The Cheyenne tribe were a proud people who valued their freedom and relationship with the created world.  On horses acquired from the Spanish, they hunted buffalo which was the source of many of life’s necessities.  They lived in tepees and they often migrated with the buffalo herds.  Important rituals included the smoking of the peace pipe as a routine custom at council meetings, and storytelling as a way of preserving the past.  The Cheyenne originally called themselves the Tsistsistas, which meant beautiful people. The Sioux, however, referred to them as Cheyenne which means "red talker," or people with a different speech, and it was that name which was eventually adopted.

Their language is part of the Algonquian language and is still spoken by many Cheyenne descendants.  When the gold rush began, the Cheyenne tribe, like many other plains Indians, were eventually forced off their land and put on reservations.  Today, the Northern Cheyenne live primarily in Montana on their own reservation and the Southern Cheyenne tribe resides in Oklahoma.  The 2013 census shows a population of 22,970 Northern Cheyenne and 12,130 Southern Cheyenne.

When the land was their land, here is where the Cheyenne and other tribes lived: 

                                                                Montana

 Wyoming  

                                                                                                    South Dakota                                      

Theirs is a sad story, like the story of all the Native American tribes.  We'll return to them later in this blog.

My best,

Jane
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--proud =  http://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/anglais-francais/proud/604599
--herd =  a group of animals
--gold rush =  mass migration to goldmine