Cheyenne Buffalo Hunt
“THE BUFFALO CULTURE”
The American bison, or buffalo, ranged in countless numbers on the rich grassland of the great plains until the 1870s. Migrating herds moved south in winter and returned to the northern range with the first sign of spring. The Indians utilized almost every part of the carcass of the buffalo in some manner. The flesh and internal organs were eaten fresh or smoked for storage. The hides were tanned for tents, garments, robes, moccasins and packing bags. The bones were crushed for marrow or made into implements. The horns were softened by boiling and made into bowls and spoons. The hoofs were melted for glue and the tendons made sinew for thread.”
“A CHEYENNE HUNT”
The Cheyenne were a typical nomadic hunting group wandering wherever living was best and meat most plentiful. In the art of decoration they excelled, and their highly developed dance ceremonies are famous. Somewhat larger than their fellow plainsmen, they were known for their fine appearance. Although the Cheyenne were unusually peaceful, they were finally driven to battle by encroaching whites, becoming the great warriors of the prairies. The Indian tribes of the region were nomadic, following the buffalo herds for the never-ceasing hunt which gave them everything they needed for their simple existence. Living in teepees made of Buffalo hides, they could set up a village in an hour and leave it deserted in even less time. The Cheyenne became very skillful at the several ways of hunting Buffalo: surrounding them in the manner of the modern wolf hunt or decoying them into enclosures of brush and logs. After the Spanish brought horses to North America the running hunt was widely used.”
A Contemporary Perspective
At the time of European contact, the Cheyenne lived in the Great Lakes region where they practiced a mixed economy of farming, hunting, and gathering—especially wild rice. Interactions with European fur traders and the introduction of firearms and Old World diseases in the 18th century, however, upended the balance of power in the region. Pushed westward by rival tribes like the Ojibwe and Dakota, the Cheyenne moved onto the northern Plains where they adopted an equestrian lifestyle, refocused their economy on hunting, and followed the seasonal migrations of the bison herds.
By the 1830s, the tribe had split into two major branches: the Northern Cheyenne, who dominated the Black Hills and the Powder River Country, and the Southern Cheyenne, who commanded a territory that stretched from eastern Colorado to western Kansas. In their new homelands, the Cheyenne adopted practices, political structures, ceremonies, and traditions that reflected the increasing centrality of the bison hunt to their way of life. Although the original diorama text describes some of these customs, it does not reflect on how they were born out of a particular set of historical circumstances, nor how these practices were later disrupted by the westward expansion of the United States.
The Cheyenne world changed again in the mid-19th century as White American fortune-seekers and settlers poured into the West following the Mexican-American War. In particular, the arrival of commercial buffalo hunters and the expansion of the railroads threatened the lifeways that the Cheyenne had cultivated over the last 100 years. Spurred by Eastern demands for hides for the production of industrial machinery belts, White hunters killed hundreds of thousands of American bison, which pushed the species to the brink of extinction. The U.S. government condoned this destruction as a strategy to subdue the Indigenous people of the Plains. As one U.S. Army leader proclaimed to his troops, “kill every buffalo you can. Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.”
As noted in the original text of the diorama, White encroachment led to violence between the Americans and the Cheyenne. This violence reached a fever pitch in 1864 after U.S. troops led by John M. Chivington launched an unprovoked attack on a camp of Cheyenne and Arapaho at Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado Territory. Following this massacre of some 230 Indigenous men, women, and children, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors conducted a series of retaliatory raids on American army posts, wagon trains, and settlements.
In an effort to restore peace, Cheyenne and other southern Plains leaders agreed to the Medicine Lodge Treaty in 1867, which proposed moving the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowas, and Prairie Apache to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Two years later, the federal government set aside land for a combined Cheyenne-Arapaho reservation. Warfare nevertheless continued for several more years.
Cheyenne resistance to American pressure grew less sustainable over time, however, especially as the bison herds dwindled. The Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho gradually accepted reservation life in Indian Territory beginning in the mid-1870s. This involved giving up bison hunting and pursuing a new life as farmers and laborers. The transition was a difficult one: federal officials failed to provide the tribes with sufficient resources on the reservation, which led to years of poverty, malnutrition, and disease. The Northern Cheyenne held out longer against the Americans, but ultimately retreated to a separate reservation in southeastern Montana in the 1880s.
Federal assimilation policy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries resulted in the dismantling of the Cheyenne-Arapaho reservation in Oklahoma and the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana as well as to the dissolution of their tribal governments. Under the Indian New Deal, however, the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho organized a new tribal government and achieved federal recognition as the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. The Northern Cheyenne similarly gained federal recognition as the Northern Cheyenne Tribe of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation.
Today, there are more than 12,000 enrolled tribal members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes and a similar number of enrolled Northern Cheyenne. The Cheyenne remain proud of their history as bison hunters. In the 1980s, the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes began rebuilding a tribal herd, which now includes more than 500 bison. The Northern Cheyenne likewise maintain a herd of around 200 bison.
