The Arapaho


Book Description

Examines the history, culture, and changing fortunes of the Arapaho Indians.




The Arapaho


Book Description

First published in three parts in 1902, 1904, and 1907, The Arapaho quickly established itself as a model of description of Indian culture. Its discussion of Arapaho dance andødesign provides one of the most thorough studies of Indian symbolism ever written. Alfred L. Kroeber was sent in 1899 to study the Southern Arapaho in western Indian Territory (present Oklahoma). In 1900 he lived in the camp of the Northern Arapaho in Wyoming, and in 1901 he visited the Gros Ventre, a related tribe, in Montana. He researched his subject at first hand, speaking with Arapaho men and women of all ages about their customs, beliefs, and ceremonies. The Arapaho touches upon nearly every imaginable facet of the Indians' culture. Careful attention is paid to ceremonies, games, religion and stories of the supernatural, tribal organization, kinship, decorative art and regalia, and the articles of everyday life: clothes, pottery, utensils, tens, and the all-important pipe.




The Sand Creek Massacre


Book Description

Sometimes called "The Chivington Massacre" by those who would emphasize his responsibility for the attack and "The Battle of Sand Creek" by those who would imply that it was not a massacre, this event has become one of our nation’s most controversial Indian conflicts. The subject of army and Congressional investigations and inquiries, a matter of vigorous newspaper debates, the object of much oratory and writing biased in both directions, the Sand Creek Massacre very likely will never be completely and satisfactorily resolved. This account of the massacre investigates the historical events leading to the battle, tracing the growth of the Indian-white conflict in Colorado Territory. The author has shown the way in which the discontent stemming from the treaty of Fort Wise, the depredations committed by the Cheyennes and Arapahoes prior to the massacre, and the desire of some of the commanding officers for a bloody victory against the Indians laid the groundwork for the battle at Sand Creek.




Arapaho Journeys


Book Description

In what is now Colorado and Wyoming, the Northern Arapahos thrived for centuries, connected by strong spirituality and kinship and community structures that allowed them to survive in the rugged environment. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, as Anglo-Americans pushed west, Northern Arapaho life changed dramatically. Although forced to relocate to a reservation, the people endured and held on to their traditions. Today, tribal members preserve the integrity of a society that still fosters living ni'iihi', as they call it, "in a good way." Award-winning photographer Sara Wiles captures that life on film and in words in Arapaho Journeys, an inside look at thirty years of Northern Arapaho life on the Wind River Indian Reservation in central Wyoming. Through more than 100 images and 40 essays, Wiles creates a visual and verbal mosaic of contemporary Northern Arapaho culture. Depicted in the photographs are people Wiles met at Wind River while she was a social worker, anthropology student, and adopted member of an Arapaho family. Among others pictured are Josephine Redman, an older woman wrapped in a blanket, soft light illuminating its folds, and rancher-artist Eugene Ridgely, Sr., half smiling as he intently paints a drum. Interspersed among the portraits are images of races, basketball teams, and traditional games. Wiles's essays weave together tribal history, personal narratives, and traditional knowledge to describe modern-day reservation life and little-known aspects of Arapaho history and culture, including naming ceremonies and cultural revitalization efforts. This work broaches controversial topics, as well, including the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians. Arapaho Journeys documents not only reservation life but also Wiles's growth as a photographer and member of the Wind River community from 1975 through 2005. This book offers readers a journey, one that will enrich their understanding of Wiles's art—and of the Northern Arapahos' history, culture, and lived experience.




The Arapahoes, Our People


Book Description

The Arapahoes, who simultaneously occupy the three major divisions of the Great Plains, are typical but the least known of the Plains tribes. Overshadowed by their more hostile allies, the Sioux and Cheyennes, they have been neglected by historians. This book traces their history from prehistoric times in Minnesota and Canada to the turn of the century in Wyoming, Montana, and Oklahoma, when their cultural history ended and adjustment to the white man's way began. It covers their way of life, dealings with traders, treaties, battles, division into branches, and reservation life. There are detailed accounts of the Ghost Dance and peyote cult. A study of the two branches-Southern and Northern-is a dramatic lesson in the effects of acculturation. Forced to accept the white man's way, the Southern people, after losing their ceremonials and tribal lands in Oklahoma, have gradually resigned themselves to the alien culture. The Northern Arapahoes on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, however, still cling to their original traditions. They tell their time-honored tales, pour out their souls in music, and dance to their drums much as they did in pre-reservation days-although they dress in the manner of the white man and abide by his regulations. Flat-Pipe, the sacred palladium, said to have come to "our people" when the world began, stays in their safe-keeping, and they honor it in occasional ceremony. The Pipe is the unifying symbol of the two branches of the tribe.




Life of George Bent


Book Description

George Bent, the son of William Bent, one of the founders of Bent's Fort on the Arkansas near present La Junta, Colorado, and Owl Woman, a Cheyenne, began exchanging letters in 1905 with George E. Hyde of Omaha concerning life at the fort, his experiences with his Cheyenne kinsmen, and the events which finally led to the military suppression of the Indians on the southern Great Plains. This correspondence, which continued to the eve of Bent's death in 1918, is the source of the narrative here published, the narrator being Bent himself. Almost ninety years have elapsed since the day in 1930 when Mr. Hyde found it impossible to market the finished manuscript of the Bent life down to 1866. (The Depression had set in some months before.) He accordingly sold that portion of the manuscript to the Denver Public Library, retaining his working copy, which carries down to 1875. The account therefore embraces the most stirring period, not only of Bent's own life, but of life on the Plains and into the Rockies. It has never before been published. It is not often that an eyewitness of great events in the West tells his own story. But Bent's narrative, aside from the extent of its chronology (1826 to 1875), has very special significance as an inside view of Cheyenne life and action after the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, which cost so many of the lives of Bent's friends and relatives. It is hardly probable that we shall achieve a more authentic view of what happened, as the Cheyennes, Arapahos, and Sioux saw it.




The Cheyenne in Plains Indian Trade Relations, 1795-1840


Book Description

In this illuminating book, the Plains Indians come to life as shrewd traders. The Cheyennes played a vital role in an intricate and expanding barter system that connected tribes with each other and with whites. Joseph Jablow follows the Cheyennes, who by the beginning of the nineteenth century had migrated westward from their villages in present-day Minnesota into the heart of the Great Plains. Formerly horticulturists, they became nomadic hunters on horseback and, gradually, middlemen for the exchange of commodities between whites and Indian tribes. Jablowøshows the effect that trading had on the lives of the Indians and outlines the tribal antagonisms that arose from the trading. He explains why the Cheyennes and the Kiowas, Comanches, and Prairie Apaches made peace among themselves in 1840. The Cheyenne in Plains Indian Trade Relations is a classic study of "the manner in which an individual tribe reacted, in terms of the trade situation, to the changing forces of history."







War Dance at Fort Marion


Book Description

War Dance at Fort Marion tells the powerful story of Kiowa, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Arapaho chiefs and warriors detained as prisoners of war by the U.S. Army. Held from 1875 until 1878 at Fort Marion in Saint Augustine, Florida, they participated in an educational experiment, initiated by Captain Richard Henry Pratt, as an alternative to standard imprisonment. This book, the first complete account of a unique cohort of Native peoples, brings their collective story to life and pays tribute to their individual talents and achievements. Throughout their incarceration, the Plains Indian leaders followed Pratt’s rules and met his educational demands even as they remained true to their own identities. Their actions spoke volumes about the sophistication of their cultural traditions, as they continued to practice Native dances and ceremonies and also illustrated their history and experiences in the now-famous ledger drawing books. Brad D. Lookingbill’s War Dance at Fort Marion draws on numerous primary documents, especially Native American accounts, to reconstruct the war prisoners’ story. The author shows that what began as Pratt’s effort to end the Indians’ resistance to their imposed exile transformed into a new vision to mold them into model citizens in mainstream American society, though this came at the cost of intense personal suffering and loss for the Indians.




The Southern Cheyennes


Book Description

For almost fifty years George Bird Grinnell's great work The Fighting Cheyennes has stood unrevised and virtually unchallenged as the definitive account of the struggles of the Cheyenne Indians to preserve their way of life. Now Donald J. Berthrong has re-examined Grinnell's findings and searched historical records unavailable to or not used by Grinnell to verify or correct his conclusions. The result is this accurate, highly interesting account of the Cheyennes' life on the Great Plains, their system of government and religion, and their relation to the fur and hide trade during their last years of freedom. After nearly two centuries of fighting other Indians and whites for their lands, in the eighteenth century the Cheyenne's were forced to shift their range from the Minnesota River Valley to the Central and Southern Plains. From 1861 through 1875, they fought to maintain their free, nomadic existence. There were bloody wars with territorial forces and federal troops, and a few years of intermittent peace and retaliation (including the massacre at Sand Creek in 1864). Finally, after the intensive winter campaign of 1874-75, the fierce Southern Cheyenne's were brought to bay by the U.S. Army and herded onto a reservation in western Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Their turbulent, colorful history related by Berthrong will interest the general reader as well as the historian and anthropologist