The exodus of the Northern Cheyennes in 1878 and 1879, an attempt to flee from Indian Territory to their Montana homeland, is an important event in American Indian history. It is equally important in the history of towns like Oberlin, Kansas, where Cheyenne warriors killed more than forty settlers. The Cheyennes, in turn, suffered losses through violent encounters with the U.S. Army. More than a century later, the story remains familiar because it has been told by historians and novelists, and on film. In The Northern Cheyenne Exodus in History and Memory, James N. Leiker and Ramon Powers explore how the event has been remembered, told, and retold. They examine the recollections of Indians and settlers and their descendants, and they consider local history, mass-media treatments, and literature to draw thought-provoking conclusions about how this story has changed over time. The Cheyennes’ journey has always been recounted in melodramatic stereotypes, and for the last fifty years most versions have featured “noble savages” trying to reclaim their birthright. Here, Leiker and Powers deconstruct those stereotypes and transcend them, pointing out that history is never so simple. “The Cheyennes’ flight,” they write, “had left white and Indian bones alike scattered along its route from Oklahoma to Montana.” In this view, the descendants of the Cheyennes and the settlers they encountered are all westerners who need history as a “way of explaining the bones and arrowheads” that littered the plains. Leiker and Powers depict a rural West whose diverse peoples—Euro-American and Native American alike—seek to preserve their heritage through memory and history. Anyone who lives in the contemporary Great Plains or who wants to understand the West as a whole will find this book compelling.

A Northern Cheyenne Album presents a rare series of never-before-published photographs that document the lives of tribal people on the reservation during the early twentieth-century—a period of rapid change. Reservation physician and expert photographer Thomas B. Marquis captured Northern Cheyenne life in numerous images taken from 1926 to 1935. After 1960, former tribal president John Woodenlegs and others interviewed tribal elders and, drawing on tape recordings, composed the photos' lively captions. Margot Liberty, editor of this volume, has added her own descriptions, filling in details of Northern Cheyenne culture and history from a scholar's viewpoint.

Northern Cheyenne Ledger Art by Fort Robinson Breakout Survivors presents Dodge City ledger-art images and biographies that document a Native perspective at the cusp of reservation life in 1879.

What should a man do when the army sends him to help kill his wife's family? His grandson and Northern Cheyenne tribe member, Gerry Robinson, reaches back through time to unravel the emotional and complex story. Bill Rowland married into the Northern Cheyenne Tribe in 1850, eventually becoming the primary interpreter in their negotiations with the U.S. government. On November 25, 1876--five months to the day after Custer died at the Little Bighorn--Bill found himself obligated to ride into the tribe's main winter camp with over a thousand U.S. troops bent on destroying it. The Cheyenne Sweet Medicine Chief, Little Wolf, had been to the white man's cities. He knew how many waited there to follow the path cleared by soldiers who were out seeking revenge for their great loss. He also knew that the hot-blooded Kit Fox leader, Last Bull, emboldened by their recent victory and convinced he could defeat them all, posed a dangerous threat from within. Tradition and the protestations of the boisterous young leader prevented Little Wolf's warnings from being taken seriously. This is the balanced and compelling story of the ensuing battle"€"its origins and the devastating results"€"told beautifully from the perspective of both Little Wolf and his brother-in-law, the government interpreter, Bill Rowland. Pulled from the dark historical shadow of Custer, Crazy Horse, and the Lakota, The Cheyenne Story vividly brings to life the little known events that led to the end of the Plains Indian War and the beginning of the Cheyenne's exile from the only home and lifestyle they had ever known. In a commendable effort to preserve the Cheyenne language in written word, Gerry Robinson worked closely with tribal elders and Cheyenne cultural leaders to accurately and seamlessly incorporate the language into his text. Robinson's characters use the Cheyenne language in their dialogue, and the reader comes to know and understand its meanings contextually and by employing the accompanying glossary of Cheyenne words and phrases found at the back of the book.

Many stories that non-Natives tell about Native people emphasize human suffering, the inevitability of loss, and eventual extinction, whether physical or cultural. But the stories Northern Cheyennes tell about themselves emphasize survival, connectedness, and commitment to land and community. In writing Webs of Kinship, anthropologist Christina Gish Hill has worked with government records and other historical documents, as well as the oral testimonies of today’s Northern Cheyennes, to emphasize the ties of family, rather than the ambitions of individual leaders, as the central impetus behind the nation’s efforts to establish a reservation in its Tongue River homeland. Hill focuses on the people who lived alongside notable Cheyennes such as Dull Knife, Little Wolf, Little Chief, and Two Moons to reveal the central role of kinship in the Cheyennes’ navigation of U.S. colonial policy during removal and the early reservation period. As one of Hill’s Cheyenne correspondents reminded her, Dull Knife had a family, just as all of us do. He and other Cheyenne leaders made decisions with their entire extended families in mind—not just those living, but those who came before and those yet to be born. Webs of Kinship demonstrates that the Cheyennes used kinship ties strategically to secure resources, escape the U.S. military, and establish alliances that in turn aided their efforts to remain a nation in their northern homeland. By reexamining the most tumultuous moments of Northern Cheyenne removal, this book illustrates how the power of kinship has safeguarded the nation’s political autonomy even in the face of U.S. encroachment, allowing the Cheyennes to shape their own story.

From her birth in a one-room cabin the 1930s on the Northern Cheyenne reservation in Montana, Ann Strange Owl's memoir chronicles her remarkable life through BIA boarding school to her escape from the reservation as a dental assistant, to being a contestant in the first Miss Indian America contests in Sheridan, WY. Her ancestral stories cover much of the history of the West from a personal perspective. She tells of her "illegal" marriage to a white man, a career as an entrepreneur, actress, model, and world traveler. Her path led her finally to ownership of a most unique trading post, Eagle Plume's near Estes Park, CO. Rich in photographs and historical information, hers is a unique tale and a fascinating slice of Native American and Western history.