ions like most other tribes. Today’s Cheyenne lives a life similar to his or her non-Indian neighbors. While many of the Cheyenne traditions and customs are lost, modern Cheyenne retain enormous pride in their heritage and struggle to keep it alive. This research on the Cheyenne will provide details of Cheyenne life from a historical and contemporary perspective.
Before the late 1600s, the Cheyenne remained largely in the areas north and west of the Great Lakes. They began to migrate towards Minnesota and into North Dakota as the 18th century unfolded. By the 1800s, many of the Cheyenne had built villages along the riverbanks of the Missouri when another migration period saw a majority of Cheyenne relocate to the Black Hills of South Dakota. The Sutai was an Algonkin-speaking tribe that the Cheyenne encountered after crossing the Missouri River, one that would become part of the Cheyenne nation “The Sutai gradually became thought of as a band within the Cheyenne. In the plains area, and with the Sutai, the Cheyenne became a unique and powerful hunting and gathering population” (Ritter, Haessly, and Brohammer, 1996, 1).
Eventually, the Cheyenne were divided into Northern and Southern tribes who remained on friendly terms and often joined forces against a common enemy. The Cheyenne of the 1600s and 1700s lived a simple life of the land, in small huts of animal skins on settlements on the Great Plains where they raised corn, beans, and squash. Around the mid- to late-1700s, Buffalo hunting became an increasing occupation of the Cheyenne. The Buffalo were extremely valuable to the Cheyenne as a source of food, clothing, weapons, tools, housing, and a variety of items for daily use such as household utensils like spoons, cups and bowls. Only the horse would have a more dramatic impact on Cheyenne life, an animal that would create new reasons for fighting with other tribes as well as the very nature of Indian warfare ...