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Life of George Bent

Written From His Letters

UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS

MY PEOPLE, THE CHEYENNES

A short introductory paragraph would not be amiss here setting forth the fact that in the early chapter or chapters Bent will set forth the reliable accounts of early history of tribe, accounts seldom told only among themselves. GB.

OUR PEOPLE call themselves T sis tsis tas, meaning "people alike" or simply "our people," but by the whites we have always been termed "Cheyennes," from a Sioux word, Shai ena, which means "people speaking a strange tongue." The Sioux gave us this name over two hundred years ago, and many other tribes, and the whites, have adopted the name from the Sioux.

Indian tribes are grouped by enthnologists in linguistic families or stocks, each stock composed of a number of tribes speaking dialects of the same language. Some of those stocks are very small, including only three or four tribes, while the Kiowas form a stock all by themselves, as no tribe has ever been found speaking a language in any way related to the Kiowa tongue. The Cheyennes belong to the great group of tribes speaking the Algonquian language, in which stock are included the Algonkins, Cheyennes, Arapahos, Crees, Chippewas or Ojibwas, Blackfeet, Atsinas, Missisaugis, Micmacs, Ottawas, Penobscots, Sacs and Foxes, Potawatomis, Piankashaws, Michigameas, Peorias, Narragansets, Powhatans, Mohegans, Delawares, Shawnees, and a great many other tribes, occupying in early times a vast territory extending from the Rocky Mountains to Newfoundland and from the Churchill River of Hudson Bay to Pamlico Sound.

Our old people say that the Cheyennes were formerly a part of the Cree tribe and that we separated from the Crees long ago and wandered off toward the south and west. The oldest people now living say that the earliest home of the Cheyennes was on the shore of great lakes in the far north. This was very long ago, probably as early as the year 1600. In those times the Cheyennes were very poor, famine dwelt almost constantly in the camps, and the men were so badly armed that they did not go to war and were even afraid of the larger animals, which they had great difficulty in killing with their rude stone-pointed weapons. When the old people tell stories of those far-off times they often begin by saying, "Before the Cheyennes had bows and arrows." The people were fish-eaters in those early times and dwelt on the shores of the lakes the year round. They made seines of willow shoots and used them in the shallow water near shore. These seines were very long, and each one was drawn toward shore by a number of men, while the women and children lined up at the two open ends of the seine and beat the water with clubs and sticks, to frighten the fish back into the seine. In this way they made good hauls and caught some very large fish. The people were so famished that they even boiled the fish bones and pounded them up, extracting a pure white oil, which they ate.

From these lakes in the great cold land of the north, the Cheyennes migrated in canoes and at last came to a land of great marshes filled with tall grass and reeds. On the edge of the marshland the tribe halted and went into camp, while the chiefs selected a number of young men and sent them into the marshes to explore. The grass and reeds in the marshes were so tall and dense that the young men were afraid that they would lose their way, so before entering the marsh they cut a large number of long poles and placed them in the canoes, and as they advanced into the marsh they stuck a long pole up in the shallow water every little way, to mark their trail. After some days the scouts returned and reported that they had found on the other side of the marshlands a large lake with some fine open prairie along its shore. The tribe then broke camp, loaded the canoes, and by following the line of poles crossed the marshes safely and came out on the large lake the scouts had spoken of.

Here the Cheyennes set up their camp and lived for many years, fishing in the lake and hunting on the prairie. The people lived more comfortably here than they had in the far north. They built good wigwams by fixing long poles in the ground, bending the poles over and tying them together at the top; the frame of poles was then covered with dry grass, which was coated with mud to stop up the holes, and then the final covering, made of sheets of bark or mats woven from reeds, was put on. These were the houses used in winter. When the people went away on hunts they had little lodges made of poles covered with sheets of bark, reed mats or skins. These old-time lodges were very small and light and could easily be packed on a dog's back. While they lived in this village on the lake the Cheyennes had enough to eat except during the hungry time of late winter and early spring. There was abundance of fish in the lake, and wild fowl swarmed in season. In spring the people gathered birds' eggs, and in early summer they caught fledgling ducks and other waterfowl. Out in the prairies, far from the lake, was a hill which was called "the hill of the skunks" because skunks were very plentiful there. Each autumn the whole tribe moved out across the prairies to this hill and held a grand skunk-hunt. All the oldest people who are now living remember the stories about these annual skunk-hunts, two hundred and fifty years ago. They say the northern skunks were very large and in fall were fat. With their camp outfits and little lodges packed on dogs, the people went on foot to this hill and there everybody engaged in the hunt. As the hunt went on the skunks that were killed were all placed in one large pile, and when the hunt was over the headmen laid the skunks out in regular rows on the grass and they divided them up, giving each family its fair share of the game. In the prairies around this hill the grass was very tall. There was no wood, nothing but the tall grass, and when the tribe went on these skunk hunts the women gathered the dry grass and bound it into long tight bundles to be used as fuel. By lighting only one end of the bundle, the grass was made to burn slowly and a bundle lasted a long while. In this country there were no buffalo, but deer abounded, and in winter the whole tribe engaged in hunting the deer. Men, women, and children surrounded the deer and drove them into the deep snow, where the men ran up and killed the animals as they floundered about in the drifts.

From this village on the lake the Cheyennes moved farther south and camped on the shore of another large lake. Here they secured corn from some neighboring tribe and began planting fields, and here they abandoned their small wigwams and built a strong permanent village of large earth lodges protected by a surrounding ditch and log stockade. The Cheyennes now for the first time met the Sioux, who lived on the upper Mississippi to the east of the Cheyenne village. The two tribes made peace with each other and for a long time were on friendly terms.

White Frog, a very old Northern Cheyenne, was down here on a visit in 1912. We had several talks, and the old man told me a number of stories of the old days when the Cheyennes lived in the lake country of western Minnesota. One story he told was about a Cheyenne war party that set out from this stockaded village on the lake, intending to make an attack on some hostile tribe over toward the Missouri. As this party, all on foot, was moving across the prairie the warriors came upon a large buffalo bull that was red in color. The Cheyennes approached the bull and shot him with arrows, and when they went up to examine the animal they found that he had been rolling in some strange kind of red dust or mud, and this had made him bright red all over. Following the trail of the bull back across the prairie the warriors came to a wonderful place where there were rocks and all the rocks bright red. And that was how the Cheyennes first discovered the famous Red Pipestone Quarry.

While living in this village by the lake, the Cheyennes first saw white men. A party of Cheyennes went to the big river and visited a French fort. With these Cheyennes was a party of Red Shields, that is, Cheyenne warriors belonging to the Red Shield or Buffalo Bull Society. These Red Shield men went inside the stockade of the fort and began to dance the Red Shield Dance, but in the middle of the dance the wind blew the gate of the fort shut, and the Red Shield men, thinking that the French had set a trap for them, went out over the stockade pickets in a great hurry. A Frenchman ran and opened the gate, and the Cheyennes being reassured returned inside the stockade and finished their dance. The Cheyennes were camped near the fort, and after the dance the French sent out some presents to the Cheyenne camp. A Frenchman brought the presents in a cart or wagon, and as he drove to the Cheyenne camp he stood up in the cart, driving his team while standing. The Cheyennes had never seen a wheeled vehicle before and were very much astonished at sight of this Frenchman standing up in the cart and driving his team. An old Cheyenne man stood up and spoke to the warriors. He said, "See this white man doing wonderful things," just as if the Frenchman had been a great conjurer.

After many years in the village by the lake, the Cheyennes moved again, but the old people do not know why or when this movement was made. Abandoning the village on the lake, the tribe moved west of Red River and built a very strong village of earth lodges surrounded by a stockade on a bluff overlooking the valley of Sheyenne Fork, which flows into Red River from the west. This stream is still called by the Sioux, Shaien wojubi ("Place where the Cheyennes plant.")

To the west of this new village lay the plains of eastern Dakota; these plains were full of buffalo, and now the Cheyennes began to make regular trips into the plains to hunt buffalo. The home village on the bluff was only occupied at certain seasons. As soon as the corn was planted in May or June the tribe left the village and moved out into the plains to hunt buffalo; in the fall they returned to the village to harvest and store their crops, but as soon as this was accomplished they again returned to the buffalo range for their fall and winter hunt. In those days the Cheyennes had no horses, everyone was on foot, but the tribe had a great number of large dogs, and these animals were employed to pack or drag burdens. When the people were moving about in the buffalo plains these dogs transported the little lodges and lodge-poles, all the camp equipage and baggage. The dogs were used just as horses were in later times. Some of the dogs had little packsaddles or saddlebags and carried loads on their backs; others were fitted up with little travois made of two small poles the ends of which dragged on the ground behind the dog. The load was fastened to the poles on short crosspieces. These dogs of the olden time were not like Indian dogs of today. They were just like wolves, they never barked but howled like wolves, and were half-wild animals. The old people say that every morning just as day was breaking, the dogs of the camp, several hundred of them, would collect in one band and all howl together, waking the whole camp.

Antelope Woman, very old [between eighty and ninety] years old in 1912, recently informed me that when she was small her mother used to tell her stories about the winter buffalo hunts the Cheyennes made when all the tribe was on foot. Everyone went on these hunts, men, women, children, and dogs. A herd of buffalo was surrounded by the people and driven into the deep drifts; then while the huge animals were floundering about in the snow, the men ran up and shot them with arrows. In this way a whole herd could be killed without one animal escaping. If a buffalo got away the dogs were set on it, and they quickly drove it back into the deep drifts. After the kill, the buffalo were skinned and the hides were laid on the snow, fleshside down; the meat was then cut up and laid on the hides, which were then folded up over the meat, and the whole bundle was then corded up with rawhide thongs. Thongs were then tied to the bundles and the other ends of these long thongs were fastened to the dogs' necks. The hunters then set out for the camp, the dogs dragging the bundles of meat over the snow. If a stream was handy the dogs dragged the loads of meat over the ice, where the going was much better. As soon as the camp was reached, the dogs were loosed, and at once the whole pack rushed back across the plain to the place where the herd had been slaughtered, and there they feasted on the parts of the game that had been thrown aside while the butchering was going on. I have often heard old people describe how mother dogs who had little puppies in the camp would run to the slaughter ground and gorge themselves with meat and then run back to camp and disgorge part of the meat for their puppies to feed on. Sometimes a mother would make several trips to the slaughtering place, miles from camp, to get enough meat for her litter of young ones.

While the Cheyennes were living in this village on the bluff they were frequently attacked by the Crees and Assiniboins from the north and the Ojibwas from the east. These three tribes had secured guns from the French traders and from the English on Hudson Bay, and the Cheyennes, still armed with bows and stone-tipped arrows, were kept in a constant state of terror by the raiding parties that came against them armed with guns. One time the Cheyennes had gone out into the plains to hunt buffalo, and there was no one left in the village on the bluff except one old woman. This old woman lived in an earth-house near the edge of the bluff. On this side of the village the bluff broke off and descended in a steep precipice to the river below. Down this side of the bluff ran the water paths which were used by the women when they went to the river for water. One evening this old woman was in her lodge preparing a meal. She had some bones in a stone mortar and was pounding them up so she could boil them and get out the grease to mix with her corn. She was sitting on the floor with a crooked pine knot thrust between her robe and the back of her neck, so that she could see to work. The old woman had a big wolf-dog with her. All at once the dog growled. The old woman knew something was wrong. She got up and went out of the lodge, and just as she came out of the door enemies whooped right in her face.

The old woman ran towards the edge of the bluff. This bluff was very steep, and down its face ran the water paths to the river below. As the old woman ran she pulled the blazing torch out from the back of her neck, and when she came to the bluff edge she threw the torch straight out in front of her as hard as she could. Then she ran down one of the water paths a few yards and squatted there. The enemies, seeing the light go straight on ahead of them, ran whooping after it, and all fell over the edge of the bluff. The old woman squatted on the water path and listened. She could hear the enemies groaning at the foot of the bluff. Pretty soon she went back to the lodge. She got ready, took her dog, and set out to find the tribe. The tribe had been gone from the village only one day and the old woman soon found the hunting camp. She told what she had done, and the tribe at once started back for the village. When they arrived they found the enemies, a war party of Assiniboins, lying at the foot of the bluff, some dead and some dying. The ones who were not dead were killed at once, and the Cheyennes gathered up all the guns, iron tomahawks, and knives. This was how the Cheyennes first secured guns. Fearing that some of the Assiniboins had escaped and would bring back a large party to take venegeance, the Cheyennes at once left the village and moved out into the buffalo plains again.

These raids made on our tribe by Indians armed with guns grew so frequent that at last our tribe was compelled to abandon the village on the bluff and move out into the plains toward the Missouri. Thus a new migration was begun. On this journey the Cheyennes were accompanied by the Moiseyu, a tribe whose home was in the lake country of northwestern Minnesota. These Moiseyus were good friends of the Cheyennes, and as they were also being attacked by Indians armed with guns, they determined to go with the Cheyennes to the Missouri. The two tribes hunted buffalo in the plains north of the Missouri, but after some time the Moiseyus lost heart and moved back to Minnesota. They said that they were hungry for the ducks in the lakes of their old home and that they were afraid to kill any more buffalo for meat, because at night the ghosts of the dead buffalo came into their lodges and stared at them with big eyes. Our old people say that these Moiseyus were Sioux Indians and that for many years they kept moving back and forth, sometimes living with the Cheyennes on the Missouri and then returning again to their old home. Their last visit to the Cheyennes seems to have been made about one hundred years ago (1814); after this visit they moved north again and the Cheyennes lost them; but we still have a clan in our tribe called Moiseyu, which is said to be mixed Cheyenne and Moiseyu.

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Excerpted from Life of George Bent by George E. Hyde, Savoie Lottinville. Copyright © 1968 University of Oklahoma Press. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
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