George Bird Grinnell - The Cheyenne Indians, Volume 1: History and Society

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George Bird Grinnell The Cheyenne Indians, Volume 1: History and Society
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The Cheyenne Indians: Their History and Their Ways of Life is a classic ethnography, originally published in 1928, that grew out of George Bird Grinnells long acquaintance with the Cheyennes. Volume I looks at the tribes early history and migrations, customs, domestic life, social organization, hunting, amusements, and government. In a second volume, Grinnell would consider its warmaking and warrior societies, healing practices and responses to European diseases, religious beliefs and rituals, and legends and prophecies surrounding the culture hero Sweet Medicine.

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DANCERS WITH WILLOWS MEDICINE LOOGE EDITION STATEMENT The two-volume Bison - photo 1

DANCERS WITH WILLOWS MEDICINE LOOGE EDITION STATEMENT The two-volume Bison - photo 2

DANCERS WITH WILLOWS, MEDICINE LOOGE

EDITION STATEMENT

The two-volume Bison Books edition of The Cheyenne Indians is reproduced from the first edition published by Yale University Press in 1923. Volume II contains the index for both volumes and chapters titled as follows:

War and Its Ways
Warrior Societies
Religious Beliefs
Disease, Healing, Death
Useful Plants
Ceremonial
Medicine Lodge
Massaum Ceremony
The Culture Heroes
Appendixes A, B, C

ISBN 0-8032-5771-6
ISBN -13: 978-0-8032-7683-3 (electronic: e-pub)
ISBN -13: 978-0-8032-7684-0 (electronic: e-mobi)
Library of Congress Catalog
Card Number 23-17688

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Picture 3

PREFACE

M Y first meeting with the Cheyenne Indians was hostile, and after that, though often in the country of the Cheyennes, I never knew them until their wars were over.

My first visit to their camp was in 1890 when, at the invitation of my old schoolmate and friend, Lieut. Edward W. Casey, 22d Infantry, who had enlisted a troop of Cheyenne scouts, I visited him at Fort Keogh and made their acquaintance. Lieutenant Casey was killed in January, 1891, and his scouts were disbanded a little later.

From that time on, no year has passed without my seeing the Cheyennes in the North or in the South, or in both camps. I have been fortunate enough to have had, as interpreters in the North, William Rowland, who married into the tribe in the year 1850, and later his sons, James and Willis. In the South, Ben Clark helped me; and until his death in 1918 George Bent, an educated half-breed born at Bents Old Fort in 1843, who lived his life with his people, was my friend and assistant. He was the son of Owl Woman and Col. William Bent, a man of excellent intelligence and of extraordinary memory.

After a few years acquaintance, the Indians began to give me their confidence, and I have been able to some extent to penetrate into the secrets of their life. On the other hand, I am constantly impressed by the number of things about the Indians that I do not know.

In describing the life, the ways, and the beliefs of the Cheyennes, I have gone into details which may sometimes appear superfluous; but after all, if one is to understand the viewpoint of the Cheyennes, this seems necessary. These primitive people in certain ways live more in accordance with custom and form than we do, and a comprehension of the motives which govern their acts cannot be had without these details.

I have never been able to regard the-Indian as a mere object for studya museum specimen. A half-century spent in rubbing shoulders with them, during which I have had a share in almost every phase of their old-time life, forbids me to think of them except as acquaintances, comrades, and friends. While their culture differs from ours in some respects, fundamentally they are like ourselves, except in so far as their environment has obliged them to adopt a mode of life and of reasoning that is not quite our own, and which, without experience, we do not readily understand.

It is impossible for me to acknowledge all the kindness that I have received during my long association with the Cheyennes. My Indian friends have always been cordial and helpful. To my interpreters, Ben Clark, George Bent, William Rowland and his sons, as well as to Mr. and Mrs. J. R. Eddy and to Mr. and Mrs. A. C. Stohr, I owe much.

The illustrations shown are a few of the many photographs taken by Mrs. Grinnell and by Mrs. J. E. Tuell, who have kindly permitted their use. They picture some of the old-time practices and ceremonies, never to be seen again.

Rev. Rodolphe Petter has been most generously helpful to me on the linguistic side; and finally, my friend, Frederick W. Hodge, so well equipped with general knowledge of American Indians, and the first living authority on the Indians and the history of the southwest United States, has performed for me the great service of reading over my manuscript. George E. Hyde has helped me with the index. To all these persons, past and present, my thanks are due.

G. B. G.

New York
August, 1923.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece
FacingPage

Map of the Cheyenne Country

At end of Volume

EARLY CHEYENNE HISTORY

DIVISIONS, NAMES, GENESIS, MIGRATION

T HE Cheyennes are one of the westernmost tribes of the great Algonquian family. They formerly lived far to the east of their present range, in fixed villages and cultivated the soil; but moving west and southwest, becoming separated from their kindred of the East, they at last thrust out into the plains beyond the Missouri, and secured horses. In later days they were a typical Plains tribe of buffalo hunters, possessing energy and courage, and taking rank as one of the most hardy and forceful tribes of the great central plains.

The Cheyennes today are settled in two divisions: the Northern Cheyennes in Montana, where in 1921 they numbered 1411 individuals, and the Southern Cheyennes in Oklahoma, numbering in the same year 1870, giving a total for the tribe of 3281 persons. The arbitrary and modern division into Northern and Southern sections means nothing more than that a part of the tribe elected to reside in one region, and a part in another. The separation began about 1830. At first the movement was slow, but the building of Bents Fort in Colorado in 1832 hastened it. Constant intercourse has always been carried on between the two divisions, and they regard themselves merely as two different camps of the tribe. Until the white occupancy of the plains made this impossible, Northerners moved south from time to time and remained there, and Southerners moved north. Often members of the same family lived, some in the North and others in the South. Frequent visiting still goes on by way of the railroads, and there are still changes of location by individuals or families.

and perhaps not much more than two hundred years ago, or in the early part of the eighteenth century. The Cheyennes were also called N m -h tn iu , the Sandhill Men.

For years during our first knowledge of the tribe, the name Cheyenne was supposed to be derived from the French word chieriy dog, and this appeared to receive confirmation from the fact that an important soldier society of the tribe was called Dog Soldiers. The tribal name is now known to be an abbreviation of the Sioux terms Sh h y na , or Sha h la , red talkers, meaning people of alien speechthose who talk a language which is not intelligible. The Sioux speak of people whose language they understand as white talkers, and of those whose language is not understood as red talkers. Thus Sha ia = sh , red, and a , If the Matoutentas were Otoes, it may have been from them that La Salle secured the name of his visitors, for at that time the Otoes were near neighbors of the Cheyennes.

The tribe does not use the name which we have given them. They call themselves Tsistsistas, which the books commonly give as meaning people. It probably means related to one another, similarly bred, like us, our people, or us. The Rev. Rodolphe Petter has pointed out that it may be translated cut people, gashed people, for the two words are nearly alike. This last meaning is practically that given them on the prairie in early times by whites and Indians alike, and evidently comes from the distant sign which they used to designate themselves, which means cut arms. If one is speaking by signs to a Cheyenne close at hand and asks his tribe, he will make on the back of the left forward-directed forefinger two or three diagonal cross lines drawn toward his body with the right forefinger, and this is often explained as striped feathersreferring to those used on the arrows. The sign at a distance is, as said, that for cut arms, but that sign has been misinterpreted by the Blackfeet, who have mistaken it for the somewhat similar sign for spotted, and call the Cheyennes spotted people, a designation which seems without appropriate meaning. It has been said that the terms gashed or cut people, and cut arms, were applied to them from their old practice of cutting strips of skin from their arms arid other parts of the body to offer in sacrifice, to bring good fortune. The name Black Arms, supposed to have been a designation of the Cheyennes, may also have arisen from a misunderstanding of the sign.

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