Tribes

Cheyenne are a Native American nation of the Great Plains. The Cheyenne Nation is divided in three united tribes. The earliest known official record of the Cheyenne comes from the mid-seventeenth century, when a group of Cheyenne visited Fort Crevecoeur, near Chicago. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Cheyenne moved from the Great Lakes region to present day Minnesota and North Dakota and established villages. The most prominent of these ancient villages is Biesterfeldt Village, in eastern North Dakota along the Sheyenne River. The Cheyenne also came into contact with the neighboring Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara nations and adopted many of their cultural characteristics. In 1804, the Lewis and Clark visited a Cheyenne village in North Dakota. Pressure from migrating Lakota and Ojibwa nations was forcing the Cheyenne west. By the mid 19th century, the Cheyenne had largely abandoned their sedentary, agricultural and pottery traditions and fully adopted the classic nomadic Plains culture. Tipis replaced earth lodges, and the diet switched from fish and agricultural produce to mainly bison and wild fruits and vegetables. During this time, the Cheyenne also moved into Wyoming, Colorado and South Dakota. In 1851, the first Cheyenne territory was established in northern Colorado. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 granted this territory. Today this former territory includes the cities of Fort Collins, Denver and Colorado Springs.Starting in the late 1850s and accelerating in 1859 with the Colorado Gold Rush, European settlers moved into the lands reserved for the Cheyenne and other Plains Indians.. The influx eventually led to open warfare in the 1864 Colorado War, primarily between the Kiowa with the Cheyenne largely uninvolved but caught in the middle of the conflict. The Northern Cheyenne participated in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, which took place on June 25, 1876. The Cheyenne, along with the Lakota and a small band of Arapaho, annihilated Lt. George Armstrong Custer and much of his 7th Cavalry contingent of Army soldiers. It is estimated that the population of the encampment of the Cheyenne, Lakota and Arapaho along the Little Bighorn River was approximately 10,000, which would make it one of the