The other morning, in my subconscious pre-awakening sleep, the names of two Northern Cheyenne leaders came into my head. I struggled remembering one, because of its similarities to a Dakota leader Little Crow, the name of Northern Cheyenne leader Little Wolf was confusing to me at that time of morning. The indecisiveness made me get up out of bed to clear my mind. Why these names surfaced in my sleep was curious to me, but not unusual.
It’s not so strange of me to think about things that happened over one hundred years ago, because I read a lot. I’m very much interested in Native history, in part because I’m interested in American history and in part because I have Native relatives, one of whom is my 8-year old grandson, Ozaawaa, an Ojibwe boy living on the Red Cliff Reservation in northwest Wisconsin.
Ozaawaa isn’t Northern Cheyenne, although from what I understand Ojibwemowin (Ojibwe language) and Tsėhésenėstsestȯtse or Tsisinstsistots, the Cheyenne language are both Algonquin-based languages, suggesting a similar language origination.
As I’ve written before, as his non-Native grandfather, I feel I owe Ozaawaa, at minimum, a fundamental knowledge of the history of Native experience in North America, if not perhaps as a scholar, then at the very least, someone genuinely interested our convergent paths: As always, one thing leads to another.
A few years ago, my daughter and son-in-law purchased a book for me as a gift at a Planned Parenthood book sale about the stories of Western Nebraska, where she knew I had travelled in the past accompanied by Joe McDonnnell.
One of the stories referenced a pioneer, “Old Jules”, an early noteworthy European settler in the region of the upper Niobrara country Nebraska Sand Hills, who was befriended by the Oglala Sioux who occupied the land there before him, unlike so many of his peers. Old Jules lived unafraid of anyone who attempted to interfere with his independent trajectory. He understood the plight of the Indians, and so offered his friendship in return for thiers.
Old Jules, I learned, was the biography of author Mari Sandoz’s father, Jules Ami Sandoz. Although a sometimes brutal and violent man, Old Jules learned much about the land from the Oglala, that helped him thrive.
History was woven through the book, wandering in and out of long paragraphs through towns like Valentine, Chadron, Alliance, and places like Fort Niobrara and Fort Robinson, Running water, the White River, the Snake, many of which I’ve been to with Joe. I can’t understand how anyone can drive across that landscape and not sense the gravity of the history that has taken place there.
Fort Robinson intrigued me in particular, and not because it’s the place where Crazy Horse was killed, most everyone knows that, but for what I learned later, in another Sandoz book, titled Cheyenne Autumn, which was the story of over 300 Northern Cheyenne, men, women and children, under the leadership of Dull Knife and Little Wolf, who slipped out of the Darlington Indian Territory Agency, under the noses of the U. S. Army, on September 9, 1878, in an attempt to return to their northern homelands in the Tongue River Country of what later became Montana, a 1500 mile exodus from disease and starvation, although knowing that many may not make it alive.
Reading of their hardships and sacrifices during their desperate flight, I was often reduced to silence, for wont of a better description, wherein noises around me stopped and I was left alone with an idea of their sufferings and their tragic predicament without horses, sufficient food, and warm clothing, dependent solely on their own wit and knowledge on the land. They survived for many months against the odds, often humiliating the hundreds of infantry and cavalry troops, in running battles, who were searching for them.
Lastly, Cheyenne Autumn lead me to Holding Stone Hands by Alan Boye, a book about a contemporary group of descendants of Dull Knife, and author Alan Boye, who retraced, on foot, the 1878 journey the Northern Cheyenne took across four states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska. On-line resources have furthered my interests.
I can only presume 'September' triggered a memory of the Cheyenne Exodus and awoke me with a nudge, alas.
It’s not so strange of me to think about things that happened over one hundred years ago, because I read a lot. I’m very much interested in Native history, in part because I’m interested in American history and in part because I have Native relatives, one of whom is my 8-year old grandson, Ozaawaa, an Ojibwe boy living on the Red Cliff Reservation in northwest Wisconsin.
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| Ojibwe powwow dancer |
Ozaawaa isn’t Northern Cheyenne, although from what I understand Ojibwemowin (Ojibwe language) and Tsėhésenėstsestȯtse or Tsisinstsistots, the Cheyenne language are both Algonquin-based languages, suggesting a similar language origination.
As I’ve written before, as his non-Native grandfather, I feel I owe Ozaawaa, at minimum, a fundamental knowledge of the history of Native experience in North America, if not perhaps as a scholar, then at the very least, someone genuinely interested our convergent paths: As always, one thing leads to another.
A few years ago, my daughter and son-in-law purchased a book for me as a gift at a Planned Parenthood book sale about the stories of Western Nebraska, where she knew I had travelled in the past accompanied by Joe McDonnnell.
One of the stories referenced a pioneer, “Old Jules”, an early noteworthy European settler in the region of the upper Niobrara country Nebraska Sand Hills, who was befriended by the Oglala Sioux who occupied the land there before him, unlike so many of his peers. Old Jules lived unafraid of anyone who attempted to interfere with his independent trajectory. He understood the plight of the Indians, and so offered his friendship in return for thiers.
Old Jules, I learned, was the biography of author Mari Sandoz’s father, Jules Ami Sandoz. Although a sometimes brutal and violent man, Old Jules learned much about the land from the Oglala, that helped him thrive.
History was woven through the book, wandering in and out of long paragraphs through towns like Valentine, Chadron, Alliance, and places like Fort Niobrara and Fort Robinson, Running water, the White River, the Snake, many of which I’ve been to with Joe. I can’t understand how anyone can drive across that landscape and not sense the gravity of the history that has taken place there.
Fort Robinson intrigued me in particular, and not because it’s the place where Crazy Horse was killed, most everyone knows that, but for what I learned later, in another Sandoz book, titled Cheyenne Autumn, which was the story of over 300 Northern Cheyenne, men, women and children, under the leadership of Dull Knife and Little Wolf, who slipped out of the Darlington Indian Territory Agency, under the noses of the U. S. Army, on September 9, 1878, in an attempt to return to their northern homelands in the Tongue River Country of what later became Montana, a 1500 mile exodus from disease and starvation, although knowing that many may not make it alive.
Reading of their hardships and sacrifices during their desperate flight, I was often reduced to silence, for wont of a better description, wherein noises around me stopped and I was left alone with an idea of their sufferings and their tragic predicament without horses, sufficient food, and warm clothing, dependent solely on their own wit and knowledge on the land. They survived for many months against the odds, often humiliating the hundreds of infantry and cavalry troops, in running battles, who were searching for them.
Lastly, Cheyenne Autumn lead me to Holding Stone Hands by Alan Boye, a book about a contemporary group of descendants of Dull Knife, and author Alan Boye, who retraced, on foot, the 1878 journey the Northern Cheyenne took across four states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska. On-line resources have furthered my interests.
I can only presume 'September' triggered a memory of the Cheyenne Exodus and awoke me with a nudge, alas.
Anyone who thinks Nebraska is a dull place needs to get off I-80 and hit the back roads. Beautiful.
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